15-04-2021: World governments are relentlessly driving ahead with what appears to be a desperate gamble – the vaccination of the entire planet. Supposedly this will guard against the “danger” of the SARS-CoV-2 “virus”, which allegedly causes a respiratory illness known as Covid-19. The very existence of SARS-CoV-2 is scientifically disputed, given that no institute anywhere has isolated and purified a sample of the virus.[1] Needless to say, if the virus does not exist, there can be no illness which is named Covid-19. If we assume however, for arguments sake, that the SARS-CoV-2 virus does exist, there is a wealth of evidence which indicates that the infection fatality rate (the proportion of people who MAY pass away after becoming infected) is 0.13% across all age groups, whereas the regular flu is estimated at 0.1%.[2] In other words, if SARS-CoV-2 has been circulating, it is no more dangerous than seasonal influenza which comes around every winter without fail.
Doing away with the infirm
The absurdity of attempting worldwide vaccinations for an alleged virus which around 99.98% of people survive without any ill-effects should be obvious. There is clearly another political agenda here, and it has nothing to do with “public health”. The Astra-Zeneca vaccine is now notorious for triggering intravascular coagulation, i.e., blood clots.[3] In the US, VAERS data from December 14 2020 to April 1 2021 indicates 2342 deaths and 7971 serious injuries from the Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson Covid shots.[4] In Europe, Germany, Italy, France and Spain have suspended the administration of the Astra-Zeneca Covid vaccine over serious concerns about blood clots – even while their governments are cagey about specifically blaming the Covid vaccine.[5] In Australia, those aged under 50 are now being turned away from vaccination hubs if they attempt to access the Astra-Zeneca jab.[6] Rather than abandon these clearly dangerous “inoculations” altogether, the government switched to advising under 50s should now take the Pfizer injection![7]
Even by the standards of capitalist politics, the attempted rollout of Covid vaccinations is a farce – and a dangerous one. Even those who somehow still uphold the narrative of a “pandemic” are becoming wary. Combined with the lunacy of lockdowns and facemasks – also extremely dangerous to human health – the vaccine rollout is patently not about preventing any type of illness. The targeting of the elderly and the disabled to be the first ones to be vaccinated is another indicator that what could be taking place is a program of selective state-sanctioned murder. Arguably, the capitalist state is replicating the worst eugenicist programs of the Nazis in the 1930s – the elimination of the infirm.
Grappling with being targeted
Those who are struggling to deal with unbearable lockdowns and oppressive facemask mandates may well be tempted to just line up for a Covid vaccine, in the hope that with one shot, it will all be over and life can get back to what it was before 2020. Yet a recent statement from Pfizer CEO Albert Bouria definitively puts an end to these hopes. Bouria stated that it was “likely” that recipients of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid vaccine will need a third shot within a year, and then an annual booster shot for “maximum protection against infection”.[8] So even despite the temporary halt to the Astra-Zeneca blood clot special vaccine rollout (Denmark recently became the first country to permanently suspend use of the Astra-Zeneca Covid vax[9]), the elites plan to steam ahead with a permanent “vaccination” regime. Citizens may well have little choice but to carry either an electronic or paper record of your Covid vaccination status, detailing whether or not you have been injected with the current version of an experimental gene manipulating[10] cocktail. Basic democratic and civil rights be damned!
Microbiologist Dr Mike Yeadon is a former Pfizer Vice-President who has been straining to blow the whistle on what Big Pharma and world governments are trying to do with the Covid vax rollout. He maintains that it is certainly possible that what is being attempted is a eugenicist campaign, or a depopulation program, or both. He remarks that when he tells highly intelligent people that your government is lying to you in a way which could lead to the death of yourself and your children, they simply cannot comprehend what is being conveyed.[11] Our governments are putting in place measures to kill off large portions of the population, so they don’t have to pay pensions or social security to the elderly and disabled, and even to knock off a few people who were previously healthy?
It is at this point that a Marxist political analysis helps achieve clarity. The governments of the imperialist bloc – the USA/EU/AUST/JAP/NZ etc. – are NOT “our” governments, as far as working people are concerned. They are imposed on the working class as instruments of the capitalist state, which means their class basis is that of the very Big Pharma corporations which will reap billions from a permanent vaccination rollout. Alas, the governments of the non-imperialist bloc – Russia, China, Iran, the DPRK, Venezuela etc. – are not “our” governments either, for they have colluded with the governments of the imperialist bloc to impose the gruelling lockdowns, facemasks and vaccines.
Permanent escape from the tyranny of the Covid vax and lockdown terror will therefore only materialise when the governments which have waged the Covid class war against workers are overthrown. In the West, nothing short of socialist revolutions will suffice. That is, working people need to establish their own government and their own state – one which will represent toiling humanity, and will therefore have no need for mass repression. Key to this task is the forging of Leninist vanguard parties. In the meantime, workers must demand an immediate cessation of the Covid vax rollout, and all associated lockdown constraints, in the interests of public safety and human survival.
Above: A march in support of the Tatmadaw and for the unity of Myanmar in Yangon, February 2019. Image from http://www.mmtimes.com
09-04-2021: According to Western corporate media, Myanmar’s military forces (Tatmadaw) are currently engaged in a “massacre” of innocent civilians who are objecting to a coup which cancelled popular elections. The Tatmadaw is apparently engaged in unrestrained and unprovoked violence against genuine citizens who wish to transition further towards “democracy” and become part of the international community, where the democratic and human and civil rights of all of Myanmar’s 54 million[1] people are upheld. The Tatmadaw have allegedly engaged in ethnic cleansing and political repression in the past, and if the Western powers do not intervene to save the people of Myanmar, there will be a slaughter of unprecedented proportions which will forever stain history.
Upside down narrative
The only problem is that virtually none of this narrative contains a grain of truth. It is a storyline which is wilfully falsified and deliberately distorted. It is a portrayal carefully designed to pull at the heartstrings of liberals the world over, which invariably gives imperialism “humanitarian” cover to wage yet another regime change war by any means they see as necessary to address the dwindling fortunes of global capitalism. In fact, Western imperialism – led by the governments of the USA (US) and the United Kingdom (UK) is engaged in yet another proxy war of regime change on Myanmar, modelled on the “success” of NATO’s obliteration of Green Libya in 2011, the Ukronazi[2] coup in Ukraine in 2014, and the failure of the ten year ISIS/Al Qaeda proxy regime change war on Syria.[3]
Unlike the regime change operations in Ukraine and Syria – which were largely aimed at Russia (and Iran), the current fix in Myanmar is aimed squarely at the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Red China’s inexorable rise as a socialist economic power cannot be overcome by the floundering for-profit economies of the US and the European Union (EU), and nor can the US/EU offer anything remotely comparable to that which the PRC can with regard to South East Asia. It is not simply dollars that the US/EU forgoes when Myanmar chooses to deepen its economic partnerships with the giant state backed enterprises operating just across the border in mainland China. It leads to a changing of the political balance of forces in the region, and from a unipolar world to a multipolar one. This is what the US/UK seeks to degrade in Myanmar, and they are prepared to resort to the same internal/external regime change tactics that caused staggering loss of life in Libya and Syria.
UK government attempts to regain its “lost” colony
Until 1988, Myanmar was officially the Socialist Republic of the Union of Burma. Since then, it has been renamed the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. British imperialism ruled what was then Burma from 1885 until independence in 1948.[4] During World War II, British imperialism used minority ethnic groups (e.g. Karen, Kachin, Chin) within the then Burma as part of its colonial army, a divide-and-rule tactic against the majority Burman ethnicity. Today, the Karen, Kachin and Chin armed separatist groups are used to politically and militarily destabilise economic and infrastructure co-operation with the PRC[5], to derail the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI or New Silk Road) projects. They are also being used as a base for an alternative military to form a para-state with the aim of overthrowing Myanmar altogether.
The UK government is quite open about its formidable backing of Myanmar’s “pro-democracy protestors”. Loudly and openly on the British government’s own website, it states clearly that the “British government is encouraging and supporting Myanmar’s transition”. It lists its own Foreign Commonwealth Development Office (FCDO), its Department of International Trade (DIT) and its Ministry of Defence (MOD) as “working closely together” with the British Embassy in Yangon to “support transition”.[6] The aims here are so transparent that they are barely hidden. The UK government is involved up to its neck in a regime change war in Myanmar, whatever the consequences. It is aimed not so much at Myanmar as towards its gigantic neighbour, the PRC. The PRC itself cannot be overthrown by military means, so the UK embarks in not so subtle political subversion in one of its smaller neighbours. Chipping away at a building brick by brick, the UK hopes to bring down the leviathan of the PRC itself – the world’s most powerful deformed workers’ state.
US government funding scores of fronts
Needless to say, the UK government does not attempt to subvert Myanmar on its own. The US government has far more involvement in fostering unrest there, stretching back decades. The notorious National Endowment for Democracy (NED) even lists on its website just some of the “civil society” fronts it funds in Myanmar – but using the British colonial name of Burma. So called activists from the Karen, Shin, Mon, Arakan and Kachin states are listed, alongside claimed journalists, women’s rights centres, think tanks, so-called media empowerment, amongst others.[7] It is farcical to claim that the NED – the public relations arm of the CIA – cares one whit about democratic and civil rights for working people in Myanmar. Rather, Washington and London (backed by Canberra) are creating and funding “opposition” within Myanmar which is reliant on the West itself. This “opposition” can then call for US intervention, which effectively facilitates a stepping stone toward the strategic goal of pressuring the PRC via the presence of US troops (or their proxies) directly on their borders.
The US ruling class is livid at the prospect of the deepening economic, trade and joint infrastructure development co-operation between the PRC and Myanmar. In January 2020, PRC President Xi Jinping became the first high-level PRC official in 20 years to visit Myanmar.[8] At that meeting President Xi and then State Counsellor Aung Sung Suu Kyi released a joint statement committing to an acceleration of the building of the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor, a crucial part of their co-operation on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).[9] Suu Kyi signed on for the obvious economic benefits for Myanmar, including much needed development, rather than any political backing of the PRC.
For decades, the US government – along with billionaire woke anti-socialist George Soros – has been openly funding fronts within Myanmar which masquerade as NGOs. For example, the plan for the development of the Myitsone Dam on the Irrawaddy River in the Northern Kachin State was halted in 2011 due to “protests” allegedly about environmental issues and “disruption” caused by the dam’s construction.[10] In reality, what occurred is that a network of US government backed organisations operated in cahoots with big capital outlets such as George Soros’ Open Society Foundation (OSF)[11], alongside NED funded[12] “media” units in Myanmar such as The New Era Journal, The Irrawaddy and Democratic Voice of Burma. They made a ruckus about invented “human rights abuses” during construction. In reality, what these US fronts objected to was the involvement in the mega-project of several Chinese state-owned enterprises, such as the China Gezhouba Group and the China Power Investment Corporation.[13]
The generation of vast amounts of electric power via the dam, in an underdeveloped region, will obviously benefit the surrounding population and the economy of Myanmar. Yet, these US government funded “activists” would prefer Myanmar remain without development, with less socio-economic advance – lest “China” should mutually benefit from the construction of such projects. The Myitsone Dam construction halt occurred almost ten years before President Xi and Aung Sung Suu Kyi agreed to advance the China-Myanmar economic corridor. It is absurd to go on to claim that today, some of the very same people and organisations in Myanmar with a history of blocking economic development projects are “peaceful pro-democracy protestors” or are “grassroots” organisations. The US state department does not fund “grassroots” organisations and armed separatist militias for no reason.
Parallel government part 2
As in the regime change wars on Libya and Syria, a parallel government has now declared itself in Myanmar. The “Committee Representing the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw” (CRPH), said to be composed of ousted National League for Democracy (NLD) members, is apparently operating in secret, and is appealing to foreign nations for recognition.[14] This is a transparent call for imperialism – to which they are inextricably linked – to intervene. These US/UK funded fronts, from the NLD to each of the armed ethnic separatist militias, are well aware that they do not have a hope of displacing the military of Myanmar without the largest and most powerful Western states behind them. The US/UK funded political and civil organisations had effectively already formed a parallel government within Myanmar, to such an extent that it had become easy for them to manipulate elections to ensure “victory” for the NLD.[15] Now, the CRPH is a second phase of a long-term plan to destroy Myanmar’s sovereignty.
Belatedly, the Tatmadaw has recently taken some measures against the virtual army of imperialist backed fronts posing as NGOs, which had been operating within Myanmar with impunity. In late March, the Tatmadaw seized the bank accounts of George Soros’ OSF, accusing it of violating multiple financial restrictions for such organisations, and of providing financial assistance to the “civil disobedience” movement. It also accused Aung Sung Suu Kyi of personally meeting with Soros.[16] The strategy of Western finance capital is clear – fund and help organise political subversion, give political cover to ethnic armed separatist militia, foster a pro-Western “civil disobedience” movement which links with them, and then declare a parallel government which then calls for intervention,[17] i.e. invasion, by the strongest Western powers. We should not need a reminder that this scenario could well be a replay of the catastrophic US led war on Syria, where for 10 years the Syrian government had no option but to militarily respond to heavily armed and barbaric mercenaries bent on destroying the country at the behest of their imperialist benefactors. The spillover into South East Asia in such an outcome would cause chaos for the PRC – precisely the aim of Washington and London in their dirty war on Beijing.
Workers must resist Covid enhanced imperialism
If anything, the US/UK proxy regime change war on Myanmar is yet another example that playing along with the Covid-19 fear pandemic nonsense is no guarantee that by doing so, imperialism will regard you as a partner, and will not move to obliterate your nation. Both the Tatmadaw and the internally subversive NLD adopted and practiced the illogical Corona rigmarole, to no avail. To that end, the governments of Russia, the People’s Republic of China, Iran, the DPRK, Cuba and Venezuela also danced to the tune of Covid fraud, and yet the danger of imperialist overthrow against them all is arguably more acute than ever. Imperialism will never regard you as an equal if you demonstrate one iota of independence from Washington. In Myanmar, it is ultimately the Tatmadaw which stands in the way between the last legs of its sovereignty and total control by Wall Street and the City of London. That, and its co-operation with the PRC, means that it is now Washington’s current cartoon villain.
A war on Myanmar would be catastrophic, and would likely spill over into Thailand, and possibly even the PRC. Workers must resist and push back US/UK led imperialism while defending Myanmar and, by extension, the bureaucratically deformed Chinese workers’ state. To be sure, if the Communist Party of China (CPC) operated through genuine Marxism, they would lead a campaign to appeal to the workers of Myanmar to rise against the ethnic armed separatists and US/UK funded faux “human rights” and “civil society” proxies, while linking up with the workers of China, South East Asia and internationally on a class basis. Alas, the political basis of the CPC is the twin Stalinist/Maoist (i.e., anti-Marxist) axioms of “socialism in one country” and “peaceful coexistence”, which means it does not even blink if it needs to lean on the workers of China and Asia to fortify imperialism itself.
As far away as it seems now, what is required in South East Asia are the forging of Marxist vanguard parties anchored with the theory of Permanent Revolution. Such organs would seek to prepare workers for socialist revolutions in Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia which would link with proletarian political revolutions in Laos, Vietnam, China and the DPRK. In the meantime, workers in Myanmar should form a temporary bloc with the Tatmadaw against US/UK imperialism and their domestic proxies, i.e., armed ethnic separatists and those in Myanmar bought off by the Western funded and fake “civil society” organisations. These miscreants have no qualms about using dishonesty, deception, and even violence to achieve their aims. Workers internationally should act in solidarity with all attempts to drive the foreign funded saboteurs out of Myanmar and Thailand, to help re-establish their independence. Genuine self-determination only arrives, however, with the bringing to power of the proletariat, as part of the international triumph of socialism. US/UK: HANDS OFF MYANMAR!
29-03-2021: Late March marks one year since global capital launched arguably its most severe assault on the working class in history. Using the fig leaf of a patently false “pandemic”[1], the governments of the imperialist West threw society into deliberately stoked fear, which provided the cover for ordering whole countries and continents into lockdowns. Significant sections of economies were shutdown, hurling millions of workers onto the unemployment scrapheap.[2] Workers who remained in employment were driven from workplaces and into working from home – if they could do so behind a computer screen. Ostensibly to protect children and teachers from contracting an allegedly deadly disease, schools were closed, and parents had to then supervise the education of their children from home. Lockdown orders in some places included “stay at home” orders, enforced by the police, for 23 hours a day. Protest, along with other cultural and sporting gatherings, were made illegal. Free speech, basic civil liberties and democratic rights were summarily abolished – and have barely been returned.
Lockdown left capitulates
The use of the cover of “Covid” for the most extensive historical attack on working people starkly demonstrates the level of decay of the capitalist socio-economic system. The system of production for private profit has degenerated to the point where it must degrade or kill off the holders of the very element which is its lifeblood – labour power. The capacity of the workers to labour is what capital needs to survive and grow, but workers’ expectations of maintaining living and working conditions together with basic political and civil rights at a certain point come into open conflict with this system in decline. Wars and recessions need to be waged or created, to protect the profits of corporations which in decades past were seen as part of the “free world”. Hence, the self-inflicted lockdowns.
Given the sheer magnitude of the broadside against workers, one would have reasonably expected leftist and workers parties to have been at the forefront of a spirited defence of workers in the face of such mortal blows. As we now know, almost the precise opposite occurred. Most left parties which for decades claimed to uphold the aims of socialism and Marxism were in fact the first organisations to utterly capitulate before “their own” bourgeoisie. With some exceptions, what previously passed for the organised left genuflected before the ruling class without batting an eyelid.
Generally speaking, it is somewhat to be expected that the Trade Union bureaucracy would fall into line so assiduously behind the capitalist class on Covid lockdowns. Union officials (not members) have a material interest in imposing the full spectrum of capitalist ideology onto their own members and the working class as a whole. Union officials often act as an auxiliary police force which keeps workers within certain bounds, even while organising them to defend or win a minor gain here or there. Their role is entirely contradictory, but almost always they fall politically on the side of the elite.
The bourgeois state as saviour?
Left parties which, for decades, had railed against the bourgeois state on any number of issues, flipped in the early parts of 2020. Many of those who previously swore allegiance to socialism, Marxism and revolution were now effectively arguing the capitalist state is imposing lockdowns and facemasks because they are primarily concerned with the health and well-being of the working class and the poorest sections of society. Needless to say, this is beyond laughable. It glaringly exposes these “revolutionaries” as bare reformists. The capitalist state consists not just of the apparatus of repression – cops, courts, prisons and armed forces. The extremely well remunerated education and health bureaucrats also form part of the capitalist state also. The maintenance of their careers is all they need to regurgitate whatever campaign the capitalist politicians and their masters dictate. As has been amply demonstrated during the fraudulent “pandemic”,[3] any number of these bureaucrats can recite the very opposite of whatever scientific and medical research and training they may have conducted in the past. In the case of Covid, their lies match the lies of the corporate politicians, and many who are not politically experienced can be convinced that the government is “trying to save them”.
Yet there is no excuse for hardened leftists, many of whom have been activists for decades, to seemingly throw a class analysis of the state out of the window when they hear of a “health emergency”. As if the capitalist state, which has stripped its health care systems of funding for 40 or 50 years, is now trying to “save lives”!! The Australian so-called left capitulated almost universally. Socialist Alternative (SALT), the largest self-proclaimed socialist party in Australia, not only offered a full throated defence of lockdowns. They also argued that while workers should defend their right to protest and strike (thank goodness for small mercies!), it is “fundamentally misguided to see the main enemy in this crisis as state authoritarianism”.[4] It cannot be clearer – SALT defendthe capitalist state in the process of inflicting economic and psychological terror on workers,[5] while claiming to be left-wing radicals. With radicals like these, who needs enemies?
The Socialist Alliance (SA) is not as direct as SALT in ramming lockdowns down the throats of workers, as they are somewhat aware that they are loathed by the majority of workers. Yet they uphold lockdowns as necessary, even while acknowledging the lockdowns are causing massive job losses. Their response is not to campaign against lockdowns (which they sometimes term “shutdowns” so they do not sound as onerous), but to urge employers to pay pandemic leave![6] This is dressed up as a progressive campaign when some Union officials have made similar calls. They do not seem to be aware that such calls imply that workers should agree with employers on the need to sack or stand down workers from employment, and then plead with the same employers for leave payments when they do. Needless to say, SA has knelt down before ruling class ideology so far that they do not even challenge “Covid” job cuts. In fact, by then campaigning for “pandemic leave” they are further reinforcing the “pandemic” nonsense[7] of the politicians they supposedly oppose. One would think the natural option for socialists is to reject “Covid” job losses outright and help to mobilise workers to defend jobs. Yet this would mean a political break with the bourgeois state, which appears beyond SA.
“Trotskyists” and Stalinists for the government
The Trotskyist Platform (TP), known for brandishing the hammer and sickle and claiming to stand under the banner of “communism” and “Trotskyism”, also jump the purely reformist “paid pandemic leave” bandwagon. Like their allies in the lockdown left, they appear to lack self-awareness. The “coronavirus as a deadly threat” is unfiltered bourgeois ideology. Any acceptance and/or practice of bourgeois ideology renders the workers’ movement virtually unable to win gains. As soon as the left accepts the “pandemic” concept, it stands on the ground of capital, not labour. TP is aware that job cuts have occurred supposedly due to “Covid”, but merely complain that the employers are “using the pandemic as an excuse to cut jobs”.[8] They don’t seem to realise that the main reason for the fake pandemic IS job cuts to ensure the suppression of the cost of labour power (i.e.,wages).[9] And by falling for wholesale corporate media hype of a supposed world threatened by an imaginary black plague, TP have handed employers and the government the political fuel needed to impose millions of job cuts without mass resistance. TP enforce “pandemic” ideology (an entirely false pretext) amongst workers, and then act innocent as employers and the government use this political context to wreak havoc. These “revolutionaries” could almost be hired by the Prime Minister.
The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) formerly had possibly the largest online presence of any left party prior to the lockdowns of 2020. Then its renowned World Socialist Web Site switched to a position which is potentially more conservative than the imperialist bourgeoisie itself. These “Trotskyists” repeatedly called for harsher and stricter lockdowns and even for schools to effectively remain closed.[10] Even the United Nations (UN) – hardly even a liberal organisation – has cited studies which show that lockdowns and other restrictions could lead to an additional 10 000 children dying per month.[11] Yet, in the name of “socialism”, the SEP are more pro-lockdown than the wealthiest ruling classes in world history. If the vampire squids of finance capital are not prepared to go as far as you demand, how on earth can such a party claim to be pro-worker?
Socialist Fight (SF) paint themselves as pristine Trotskyists untainted by other interpretations of what became of the Fourth International. Yet from day one, SF crumbled in the face of manufactured bourgeois hysteria on an allegedly deadly plague besetting the planet. They took the extraordinary step of expelling one of their members without recourse (who subsequently joined the Workers League – WL) for having the temerity to enquire as to why the SF had apparently taken to the view that the states of imperialist capitalism could suddenly adopt a position of ensuring health care for the working-class and the poor majority as their raison d’etre. They went on to slander the WL for “red-brown fascism” for its position of building the anti-lockdown movement despite the presence of supporters of former US President Trump and QAnon devotees.[12] On our part, the WL stands for militant opposition to capitalism descending into arguably its most politically repressive phase in history – the pinnacle of which are the inhumane and dictatorial lockdowns. As for the accusation of “fascism”, whether of the red-brown variety or not, we suggest the most apt axiom is the one which maintains “the one who accuses is the one who is”.
Australia’s Stalinist parties are universally onside with pandemic hysteria, placing them onside with the Liberal Federal government and the state Labor Premiers, irrespective of their rhetoric. The Communist Workers Party of Australia (CWPA) do not print one word about the forced lockdowns, facemasks and vaccines in the March 2021 issue of their publication The Agitator.[13] It’s as if the entire machinery of corona state repression is something that can be regarded by workers as a footnote. Similarly, the Australian Communist Party (ACP) barely mention lockdowns, and when they do, they imply that only the likes of QAnon “conspiracy theorists” are opposed to “coronavirus restrictions”.![14] One wonders if they are even aware of the thousands of people who have regularly mobilised throughout the country against forced lockdowns and forced vaccines.[15] The Communist Party of Australia (CPA), meanwhile, demands a worldwide rollout of the Covid vax![16]
One must wonder what the parties of the lockdown left actually plan to do in response to the capitalist state dispersing the proletariat through lockdowns, social distancing, the banning of gatherings, meetings, rallies and demonstrations. These measures are designed to make it extremely difficult to politically organise resistance. Their response is to either do nothing, or even virtually assist the police subject innocent working-class men, women and children to house arrest. Meanwhile, working people the world over have been resisting billionaire finance capital’s lockdowns in anyway they can. Despite a corporate media blackout, millions of workers and their allies have repeatedly demonstrated against the unstated but obvious agenda of severe economic and political subjugation under the false guise of a “pandemic”.[17] The whole time, the parties of the lockdown left have been absent, or, as in the case of Germany, actively attempt to counter anti-lockdown demonstrations.[18] Clearly, the “revolutionary” pretensions of the lockdown left have been shattered into a million pieces.
The end of the Spartacist tradition?
Arguably the most surprising card-carrying members of the lockdown left are the parties derived from the heritage of the Spartacist League. Seemingly without irony, the Spartacist League[19] and its off shoots including the International Bolshevik Tendency,[20] the Bolshevik Tendency[21] and the Internationalist Group,[22] fall like dominoes in thrall to the billionaire class they have sworn to overthrow for decades. We acknowledge the contribution that the Spartacist League and their “family” have made to the study and practice of Leninist-Trotskyism, whatever their shortcomings. Now though, this entire apparatus must be called into question. It is not for us to sling mud and label other left parties as “fascist”, as it hardly helps. However, we have characterised the use of lockdowns and the imposition of scientifically groundless rules (e.g.,social distancing, tracking and tracing, the banning of singing and dancing) as a form of fascism which uses liberalism as its political vehicle. We do not believe that the banning of protest, the effective cancellation of basic civil and democratic rights, and the use of state power to confine healthy and innocent men, women and children to their homes (for those that have homes) for up to 23 hours a day, for months on end, can be politically assessed in any other way.
The parties derived from the Spartacist tradition have openly joined with other left parties they have critiqued as reformist when it comes to the fear pandemic. These include the Workers World Party[23] and the Party for Socialism and Liberation.[24] In fact, with a small handful of exceptions, “Trotskyists”, Stalinists, Maoists and others who identify as “Marxist” or “socialist” have crumbled before the limitless propaganda of the corporate media and capitalist politicians on Covid. The fact that the propaganda barrage is much more intense than usual capitalist messaging should not be used as an excuse. Even though there is horrendous online censorship, the internet has not (yet) been completely cut off. There is no reason why leftists and revolutionaries cannot research and study alternative information to that which the vast apparatus of imperialism disseminates. The failure to do so reflects the fact that on lockdowns – arguably the largest broadside against the working class in history – the lockdown “left” have taken a class position on the wrong side of the barricades. Whatever heritage and past activism they may have to their credit, their avid assistance to big capital for lockdowns is class betrayal.
Fascism appears whenever capitalism lurches into an existential crisis, and lockdown fascism is certainly no exception. Workers need not fear this development, for it signals an opportunity to rise and defeat it through workers’ revolution. Indeed, the descent into fascism is a sure indicator that capitalism can no longer offer workers even minor reforms, and it must use extreme political repression to save itself. Finance capital is showing its vulnerability in doing this, despite the appearance of dominance. The overwhelming majority of workers despise lockdowns, or at the very least suspect something fishy is going on. They could be mobilised alongside the existing anti-lockdown movement if the requisite political leadership of the working-class was at hand. As one of the few left organisations to oppose lockdowns, the Workers League commits itself to helping forge the Marxist vanguard the global working class so desperately seeks. Capitalism belongs the old world, and the time of socialism has arrived. The revolution is rumbling beneath, and we need to prepare. Join us!
21-03-2021: On March 15, thousands of women and their supporters around Australia rallied and marched[1] against the threat and reality of sexual assault and rape, shaking the foundations of the system which has denied them justice for generations. Or did they? At least, such is the narrative of the corporate media. Undeniably, many attendees believed that is precisely what they were doing. Yet there are progressive rallies and marches, and rallies and marches which are organised with an agenda which is not at all what they are purported to be. If the mainstream narrative was to be believed, these actions, triggered by the revelations of Brittany Higgins’ claims of being raped in the parliamentary office of the Defence Industries Minister Linda Reynolds in 2019,[2] were organised by a few women such as academic Janine Hendry,[3] who had “had enough”. Is this plausible?
Significant material support
How can nationally coordinated simultaneous rallies and marches take place specifically on the opening day of parliament, with booming sound systems providing amplification, and with one rally being joined by a Labor state Premier, other female members of cabinet, as well as a Liberal National Party Opposition leader and Opposition spokesperson for women? Quite frankly, such actions cannot come about through a handful of activists with meagre resources. Extensive funding and institutional support at the very least is required. And the real organisers are very cagey about revealing exactly who they are. The “March4Justice” website provides virtually no information about how this thing just happened to spring into existence. It is a flashy and professionally put together website[4], with little or no indication about which organisation or groups or individuals are behind it. All of this is deliberate, but also dishonest and disingenuous. Yet a look at the actual politics of the actions reveals plenty.
In Melbourne, an aeroplane flew over the “March 4 Justice” flying a banner which read, “Women vote too”.[5] This took place as the Deputy Secretary of the Victorian Trades Hall spoke. Coincidence? Hardly. Such glaring red lights point to a presumption which is hidden in plain sight. We suspect the real forces organising the “March 4 Justice” were the liberal troika of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), the Trade Union bureaucracy, and the Labor Party feeder organisation GetUp![6] The liberal politics of these three are all over the March 4 Justice, as they gear up for a federal election later this year or early next year. It is transparently an attempt to put ALP politicians on the government benches in Canberra, and in addition, an attempt to re-gain political ground lost to the anti-lockdown movement. Just four weeks ago, tens of thousands of Australians protested in national rallies against the forced “Covid” lockdowns and supposedly voluntary and experimental vaccine on the eve of its rollout.
Not so radical
The bulk of the participants who were part of the “March4Justice”, ostensibly in support of women, were also firmly with the government – whether Labor or Liberal (or Green) – on the forced lockdowns which devastated Australia and much of the globe during 2020. This is hardly radical, because the government imposed lockdowns during the fake “pandemic” led to the worst year in history for domestic violence in Australia. Domestic violence is overwhelmingly inflicted against women, and the lockdowns during 2020 caused massive unemployment, increased inequality, anxiety and stress, leading to overwhelmed support services.[7] Where were the Labor Party, the Union officials, GetUp! and the liberal left at this time? They blocked with the Liberal government to help enforce inhumane lockdowns which had not a shred of scientific justification.[8] They assisted the capitalist state (one could argue they are the capitalist state) in removing the most basic civil and democratic rights from all citizens, including half of the population who are women. Women bore the brunt of these actions, at the very least through job losses AND vastly increased domestic violence. And now this lot – with a federal election approaching – are concerned about women’s rights?
To be sure, Brittany Higgins may well have been sexually assaulted in Parliament House in 2019, and sexual assault and rape is a huge issue which needs to be confronted. Yet it is clear that at least one of the major causative factors of sexual assault and domestic violence is poverty, unemployment and inequality. This is ultimately caused by the stage that capitalism now finds itself in, and the lockdowns are part of a further ruling class attempt to assault the working class still further. If the liberal “left” are really serious about ending sexual assault, and making workplaces and society at large safe for women, they will need to break with the entire ideology and politics of the current form of class-divided society – based on private production for private profit. This certainly means breaking from the Labor Party (and the Greens), but it also means breaking from the entire parliamentary and political apparatus of the capitalist system, in Australia and internationally.
Yet the “March4Justice” was aimed in precisely the opposite direction. It was a conscious attempt to drive women and their supporters back towards the federal parliament, and therefore back into the arms of the very capitalist system which is itself the ultimate cause of violence against women. The demands put forward were so narrowly confined to parliament that it was basically a petition. Some of the demands were:
1. Independent investigations into cases of gendered violence
2.Strengthening of the Sex Discrimination Act
3. Mandatory gendered violence and sexual harassment training for MPs and their staff
4. For all Australian parliaments to have a 50:50 gender split by 2030
5. The enactment of a Federal Gender Equality Act, to include a gender equity audit of Parliamentary practices.[9]
Get the picture? To say that these demands are minor reforms to the system understates the issue. Liberals such as the Labor Party and the Union officials consciously try to paint the most minimal legislative amendments as a huge step forward. When in reality, it politically and ideologically reinforces “political change” as arriving through a bourgeois parliament – as if a bourgeois parliament is the end of historical achievement. If there was a genuine movement for women’s rights, such acts and processes of parliament may come about as a by-product of a struggle. But to restrict the aims of a movement entirely within a parliament which is in fact the direct foe of working women (and men) gives the game away.
For women’s liberation through socialism
The oppression of women is bound up with class society, which is thousands of years old. The oppression of women under capitalism, as Frederick Engels outlined,[10] is bound up with the nuclear family, private property and the state. A movement for women’s liberation therefore must have the goal of the overthrow of these three pillars of class society. Feminism, as such, only attempts to redress the situation of women within the confines of capitalism – irrespective of whether some feminists claim to be “socialist feminists” or even “Marxist feminists”. Feminism – with its cross class basis – is far too easily used by the political forces of the liberal wing of the ruling class for their increasingly minimal agendas. Granted, the “March4Justice” was not posited as feminism per se. Yet it was a conscious attempt to politically restrict and restrain women and their supporters from overstepping the boundaries of capitalist politics. More than this, it was even restricted to a not-so-subtle “vote ALP” drive.
In this sense, the “March4Justice” was a cynical and hypocritical manipulation of a genuine issue to drive conservative politics – shrouded in “progressive” verbiage – into women, the working class, and society at large. Violence against women today is the unfortunate product of the breakdown of the capitalist mode of production, most particularly represented by the descent of the US, Europe, Australia and New Zealand into a barbarous form of lockdown fascism. Liberal political forces such as the ALP, the Union officials and their hangers on firmly defended, or joined with, the capitalist state during the time when it was arguably at its most repressive point in history. Liberals may oppose instances of violence against women today, but they are the foremost defenders of capitalist imperialism in its lockdown phase. Therefore, their railing against “sexism, misogyny, patriarchy” is mere hot air.
Women cannot be truly equal partners in society until and unless the working class is able to supercede capitalist oppression through revolution, and the march towards a classless society. This requires the forging of a Marxist vanguard party capable of leading workers in a pitch battle against finance capital for its own state and its own government. Such a party must champion women’s liberation as an essential component of the struggle for revolutionary internationalist socialism, which leaves lockdowns and all forms of repression as relics of a distant past.
20-03-2021: As worldwide rallies for freedom take place on March 20, most of Western Europe remains under some form of lockdown or curfew, with protest remaining illegal. People can be arrested and charged for “being outdoors without a valid reason”. While lockdowns are being partially lifted in other parts of the world, the lies supposedly justifying previously unimaginable oppression continue. The attempt to vaccinate 7.8 billion people on the planet proceeds, for a virus whose very existence is scientifically disputed. These “vaccines” are entirely political, purely experimental, and are likely to be extremely harmful if not deadly. The same governments which forced healthy men, women and children into barbarous lockdowns now claim that the vaccine is not mandatory at the same time as preparing “Covid Passports” for international travel, domestic travel, and even for access to cinemas, concerts, sporting events and to shop at local grocery stores. This is already a reality in Israel.
Fraudulent removal of rights
Even though it may appear as though business is returning to pre-Covid times, this is also an illusion. Most governments around the world continue to hold the Covid card and are ready to wield it at any moment. Basic civil and democratic rights have either been removed or can be removed once again – with the excuse of “Covid” or “Covid variants”. The right to protest, the right to travel, freedom of movement, the right to purchase food, the right to leave your house, the right not to be forced into wearing an ineffectual and unhealthy facemask, the right to see your friends, the right to see your relatives, the right to visit the elderly and unwell in care homes or hospitals – all of these and more can be removed at any time the authorities deem it so. There was no “pandemic” and there is no “pandemic”. There are only mountains of lies from the corporate media and puppet politicians. Covid is a fraud which is used to increase political repression to levels which arguably exceed historical examples of fascism. In that sense, Covid is the highest form of class war against working people.
Covid was the shroud for the removal of employment for millions of workers worldwide. Whole sections of capitalist economies where shutdown or driven into bankruptcy. Millions of small businesses collapsed, while the largest and wealthiest monopoly corporations on the planet stepped into the void and subsequently amassed windfall profits. This happens in every recession, but this time it is much more apparent. This indicates that the real Covid agenda was a deliberate destruction of some sections of capital to secure and bolster the highest sections of finance capital. It was political action by the ruling classes of the imperialist West undertaken to protect capitalism regardless of the economic, political, and human cost to billions of people around the globe.
Covid is also geo-political. World imperialism, led by the ruling classes of the US and the EU, tailed by their lackeys in Canada, Holland, Australia, New Zealand etc., were floundering behind the economic rise of China, and the military power of Russia. Defeated and repelled at war in Syria, the imperialist powers used the cover of Covid to further develop internal subversion aimed at regime change in Myanmar, Thailand, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Lebanon, Algeria, Sudan, Venezuela and the list goes on. NATO uses the fig leaf of Covid to continue to militarily provoke Russia, China, the DPRK and Iran.
Liberalism the vehicle chosen by the elite
There is worldwide resistance to lockdown terror. Mass rallies and demonstrations repeatedly occur across Europe, the US, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. These are largely blacklisted or ignored by the mainstream media, as the ruling class actively attempts to deny there is mass public opposition – or deride it as being comprised of “anti-vaxxers” and “conspiracy theorists”. Yet the main reason these demonstrations are not overwhelmingly backed by the vast majority of the working class is the epic betrayal of Union officials and parties which falselyclaim to be “left-wing” and “socialist”. These layers are not at all left-wing, as their enlistment in the service of the capitalist state over Covid makes crystal clear. These forces are liberal, i.e., they insist they are reforming the system in a progressive direction. However, the loyalty of these elements to capitalism is now so strong that they are prepared to enact fascist-like measures against workers fighting for freedom from lockdowns.
Hence, the “Great Reset” and the “New Normal” launched or backed by the World Health Organisation (WHO), and the World Economic Forum (WEF) is NOT part of a left-wing agenda. It is a capitalist attack headed by liberals with left-sounding phraseology. It can appear as though it is the conservative and nationalist political forces which are resisting planet lockdown. This is only partially true, because while many conservatives and nationalists oppose lockdowns from the point of view of liberty, they of course do not extend this to recognise the need for the overturn of the capitalist system via the establishment of workers’ governments administering a series of workers’ states.
For a general strike!
The anti-lockdown movement thus far has more than demonstrated the bravery required to defy totalitarian rule. At the same time, to achieve its goals it needs two elements which are yet to materialise. One is clear political leadership, and the other is a firmly pro working-class orientation. Due to the nature of the assault issuing from finance capital, it is only the working class organised internationally which has the potential to stop and reverse lockdown terror. The petty-bourgeois class, despite being pummelled by lockdowns, is genetically unable to take a political line independent of big capital. To spur the development of both the political leadership and the proletarian orientation necessary, the anti-lockdown movement needs to call for a general strike against forced lockdowns, facemasks, vaccines, economic shutdowns, border closures, tracking and tracing and the use of state power to enforce absurd and offensive dictates which obviously have no medical basis. The organisation of a general strike requires the formation of strike committees, with the only stipulation for entry into such committees being a sworn opposition to every element of Covid oppression. If developed with vigour, such strike committees can then lead to organs of a new state, which will vie with the lockdown states for the loyalty of working and oppressed people. At the same time, all parties which oppose lockdowns will contest each other for workers’ political allegiance. Permanent relief from lockdown fascism will only arrive with this new power – a workers’ government.
28-02-2021: As far as comprehensive attacks on pay and working conditions go, you just can’t go past the IR (Industrial Relations) Bill presented to the Australian parliament by the federal government over Christmas in 2020. The deceptive wording of the Bill’s title hides an agenda which is anti-worker and anti-Union in its very essence. Referred to as the IR Omnibus Bill, the “Fair Work Amendment (Supporting Australia’s Jobs and Economic Recovery) Bill 2020” could, if it becomes an Act, reduce Unions to IR bystanders. In some cases, it may remove the right of workers to collectively bargain with the employer on ANY aspect of pay and conditions. There is little doubt it will vastly increase casual and insecure work, amongst a workforce which is already one of the most highly casualised in the world. As it stands, workers employed as casuals in Australia do not receive annual and/or sick leave. Labour researcher David Peetz points out that 130 out of 163 countries require temporary workers to have the same leave entitlements as permanents – but not workers in Australia.[1]
Outright removal of workers’ rights
The Omnibus Bill is slated by establishment as a “Covid recovery” mechanism. In reality, the Covid “pandemic” fraud[2] is the fig leaf for the onslaught against the very conditions of life workers need for existence under the rule of capital. In fact, the fake pandemic is itself the ideological and political enabler of the enforced recession in which workers suffer but the super elite prosper. Even a brief overview of the Omnibus Bill will reveal its sinister intent. If enacted, it would lead to fewer permanent jobs with the rights they entail. The casual conversion (to permanent) provisions are laughable, with an employer not being bound to convert a temporary employee to permanent if he/she believes it is not “reasonable” to do so. All Awards – the previously legislated minimum set of conditions – are likely to be reduced even further from what they are today. The Bill would allow for Enterprise Bargaining Agreements to be made even if they fail the BOOT(Better Off Overall Test), for businesses “affected by Covid”. It would allow the creation of workplace agreements with pay and conditions BELOW the Award – effectively making minimum pay and conditions laws null and void.[3]
The current limited rights for workers under Enterprise Bargaining are savaged by the Omnibus Bill. Workers can be stripped of the right to an explanation of an agreement on which they are expected to pass a vote. Agreements that exclude the National Employment Standards (NES) can be approved. Employers can impose inferior pay and conditions in a “Greenfields” (i.e., a new workplace) agreement, meaning workers have no right to negotiate at all. The Bill also includes provisions on wage theft which make it virtually impossible to prove the employer willingly underpaid staff.[4]
No defence without lockdown defiance
These attacks are a mortal threat to working people. The Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) has researched and accurately decried the scale of the virtual abolition of a list of workers’ and Union rights. However, the ACTU officials only offer the meekest of resistance. ACTU Secretary Sally McManus wistfully complains that the workers which will be hurt the most by the Omnibus Bill are the “ones that helped get this country through a once-in-a-century crisis….they deserve job security and respect……Australian workers are suffering from years of wage stagnation….the rate of casualisation of our workforce desperately needs to be addressed….if this bill cannot be fixed, it needs to be dumped.”[5] The ACTU officials talk like capitalist politicians, rather than fighting Unionists.
Needless to say, the “once-in-a-century crisis” is the fake pandemic engineered by finance capital and dealt by their marionettes heading governments, corporate media and “health” bureaucracies. Union officials have been at the forefront of consciously imposing the coronavirus pack of lies onto their members and all workers, siding with the largest and wealthiest woke corporations on planet earth in the process. Why? While Unions are mainly comprised of honest rank and file workers, the Union officials are anything but. They have a material interest in striking a delicate balance between keeping workers alive and able to slave for the “captains of industry”, and mitigating the workers’ bitter dissatisfaction at the state of their living and working conditions. Sometimes the Union officials side with the workers in this tightrope walk – but most of the time they are with the employers and the government. They are keenly aware of what is acceptable to the bourgeoisie and what is not – and they are skilled at preventing and stifling the efforts of workers in striving towards anti-capitalist goals.
There can be no defence against the Omnibus IR Bill unless and until it is combined with worker defiance of the absurd and dangerous lockdowns,[6] and the entire “health crisis” ideology. Arguably, the raison d’etre for the fear pandemic was to drastically reduce the cost of labour power (wages and conditions of workers) through any means possible. Hence the millions of job cuts and the fascistic measures governments imposed to prevent workers from organising and fighting back – social distancing, lockdowns, forced facemasks and vaccines, tracking and tracing, quarantine and isolation. Transparently, these measures are NOT about a virus, but are political methods to remove civil, democratic and even Union rights won over the last 150 years. If workers accept ANY part of the ruling class “pandemic” narrative, they will not be able to defend the ground they stand on.
What is required to even begin the necessary fight against the Omnibus Bill, is a frontal challenge to the Union officials’ enforcement of Covid baloney. Workers need to affirm: “We reject Covid nonsense as a cover for the assault on us, and which you are assisting the government in imposing. We do not accept Corona lies and we demand permanent and secure jobs for all workers – through a six-hour day with no loss in pay.” Such an approach would lay the groundwork for the replacement of Union officialdom with class struggle militants committed to a world where workers hold power.
14-02-2021: Russian Roulette. The deadly game where participants place a gun to their head and hope that when they pull the trigger the revolver chamber will be empty is in many respects a close analogy for those who, reluctantly or otherwise, will line up for a vaccine which supposedly will alleviate some symptoms of the alleged illness labelled Covid-19.[1] This is hardly an exaggeration. In the US, the Centres for Disease Control (CDC)’s own Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) reported 653 deaths amongst 12 697 adverse reactions following Covid-19 vaccinations – and this is just between December 14 2020 and February 4, 2021.[2] Speaking under the condition of anonymity, a Beijing based immunologist called for the halting of Covid vaccinations for the elderly, given that people over 80 have weaker immune systems. This followed a Norwegian government investigation into the deaths of 23 elderly nursing home residents who died after taking the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which found that in 13 cases the Covid vax was the direct cause.[3]
Covid vax is political, not scientific, not medical
The sheer absurdity of attempting to vaccinate the entire world’s population of 7.8 billion people for a claimed disease which, if it exists, has an infection fatality rate of between 0.1 and 0.2%,[4] should be obvious. The global death rate over the past 20 years has remained stable, or has even declined, even during 2020.[5] One does not need ANY scientific or medical qualifications to conclude that there is no pandemic, there was no pandemic, and what has taken place is a malicious fraud. What has and is taking place is the largest assault in history on the working class by the top echelons of finance capital. Primarily this is led by US/EU imperialism, with the treacherous backing of the governments of the non-imperialist powers and nations targeted by the West – the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Russian Federation, Iran and so on. The sacking of millions of workers, the driving of millions into poverty and desperation, the closure of national and state borders, the shutting down of whole sectors of economies – none of this is carried out in the name of “health”. To claim so invites ridicule.
The attempted administration of any Covid vaccine is entirely political; it is an abomination of both science and medicine. It is yet another fascistic measure introduced to track and trace whole populations, not only abolishing the most elementary civil rights, but singling out those who refuse the vax as dissenters, “anti-vaxxers”, “conspiracy theorists” and other labels. Independent thought is an impediment to an uncontrolled totalitarianism, so those thinking in a way that does not conform must be shunned, ostracised and even taken away to quarantine camps. The labels do not really matter – it is just an “other” which is supposedly harmful to the rest of society, so no questions will be asked when they are removed by people in white coats, or perhaps even the military. The world has been here before, and many can see us heading down the same path today. The difference today is the switching of the roles of “left” and “right”. In the 20th Century, fascist movements arose and were sustained by the forces of the political right, e.g. Mussolini’s Italy, Franco’s Spain and Hitler’s Germany.
Liberalism serves reaction
2020 saw what appeared to be the reversing of the historical roles of left and right politics. Instead of the right-wing leading a movement of reaction, it is the so-called left which is driving the ultra-conservative repression we see today. Far from being enlightened and pluralist “live and let live” reformers, today’s liberals have been animated by billionaire capitalists as the henchmen of a dark fascism which brooks no opposition. Witness “cancel culture” right up to and including verbal and physical attacks on those not wearing facemasks, or those who simply point out logical inconsistencies with the acts and statements of politicians and health bureaucrats. We stress that these political forces are liberal, they are not “left-wing” in the slightest. Liberals can serve global capitalism more loyally than conservatives, and this is precisely what is now occurring. This confuses many, on both sides of the anti-lockdown and pro-lockdown divide. However, genuine Marxism provides illumination.
During the 20th Century, the capitalist ruling classes handed power to right-wing fascist movements where they arose, and where they feared the alternative would be a left-wing or socialist seizure of power. In Italy, Spain and Germany during the 20s and 30s, the ruling classes utilised fascist forces which were not previously established in the bourgeois parliamentary system. Yet the bourgeoisie is not by any means obligated to use conservative forces to impose fascism. They can use liberal political forces to do so because both liberalism and fascism has the same class basis. That is to say, both liberalism and fascism are political forms of capitalism – the rule of unelected super-wealthy financiers and industrialists based on the exploitation and suppression of working people. The ruling classes may in fact use existing parliamentary parties to introduce and enforce fascist dictates – it does not necessarily need to create new far-right parties. This phenomenon, while novel in history, only increases the need for organised working-class resistance to “woke” capitalism.
All forms of fascism – including the Covidian – issues the working class with an ultimatum; yield or stand and deliver. The proletariat has no choice but to fight for its freedom, and the anti-lockdown movement is already taking the lead around the globe. It has every reason to be optimistic in this struggle, as the overwhelming majority of workers detest lockdowns, forced facemasks and forced vaccines. But many are dismayed, given the base treachery of the lockdown left – fake “socialist” parties, Union officials and social-democrats who have merged with the imperialist state as it imposes the Covid fraud. Whatever their rhetoric, the lockdown left are but the hangmen of Jeff Bezos.
The building of the anti-lockdown movement and resistance to forced vaccines, tracking and tracing, testing, quarantine camps, isolation and facemasks is the first step towards liberation. The permanent elimination of lockdowns will require the formation of workers’ councils as the incipient organs of a new state which can begin to dismantle the old world and lay the basis for the end of the profit system. Public ownership of the means of production and a planned economy will forever end the horror and abuse of Covidian terror, and generations to come will revere those who stood fast.
24-01-2021: The marking of January 26 as Australia’s national day is undoubtedly a stain which needs to be removed. January 26 in 1788 marked the beginning of the British colonisation of what later became Australia, and the subjugation and near total genocide of Aboriginal (or First Nations, or Indigenous) people. It is generally accepted amongst archeological researchers that the Aboriginal people had inhabited Australia for at least 60 000 years prior to 1788.[1] What followed was essentially 150 years of dispossession through pitiless war by imperialist envoys and colonial settlers, which later established the Australian state. It is estimated that the Aboriginal population was around 750 000, which was reduced by some 90% in subsequent years. This slaughter came about through the introduction of new diseases the Aboriginal people had no immunity to, and the barbarous expulsion from their ancestral lands they had occupied for millennia through unrestrained and brutal violence.[2]
For decades, Aboriginal people and their supporters have demonstrated on January 26, decrying it as “Invasion Day”. For years, these rallies had mobilised relatively small crowds of Aboriginal people and progressive minded and left-leaning non-indigenous people. Then around 2016, the demand “Change the Date” was raised – calling for Australia’s national day to be changed to some other date other than January 26. This would be a first small step in no longer celebrating the start of a genocide against the original inhabitants as a country’s national day. This demand gained vast support, and the attendance at Invasion Day rallies grew by tens of thousands around the major cities of Australia. Then, some of the indigenous groups organising the rallies abruptly shifted course to adopt the demand “Abolish Australia Day”. Attendance at subsequent Invasion Day rallies dropped substantially, the nation-wide debate lost momentum, and even those who automatically sympathise with the cause of Indigenous rights and the plight of Aboriginal people, were left disconcerted.
What went wrong?
The demand to “Change the Date” of Australia’s national day to not mark the desecration of indigenous people is indeed a moderate demand, but it is a small progressive step forward. It would not end the oppression that Aboriginal people face in Australia – for this is bound up with the entirety of the capitalist system of class domination, which is now generating staggering levels of inequality. However, it would at least strike a significant blow at the base of the establishment of colonialist Australia, by degrading one of the prominent myths about its founding. Small victories are essential on the road to ultimate victories, and the rejection of them in favour of an all-out struggle for total victory is rather unwise. Moreover, the replacement of the demand “Change the Date” with “Abolish Australia Day” has the effect of alienating and turning away the active or passive support of millions of people who readily acknowledge that a great historical wrong was perpetrated against Aboriginals.
The struggle for basic rights of Aboriginal people is a struggle against the foundations of Australian capitalism, and thus is in itself progressive. However, it does not necessarily follow that the politics adopted by Indigenous people and their organisations is always or automatically progressive. In decades past the Aboriginal organisations leading campaigns for justice have aligned their politics largely with left-wing and workers’ causes. Yet in the last five years or so, some leaders of the Aboriginal rights movement have succumbed to a form of identity politics (elevating an identity such as Aboriginality above all else which can lead to self-defeating cross-class alliances) which has harmed the cause. They have been egged on by some parts of the so-called left, which has opportunistically allowed identity politics to flourish. Then last year, during the alleged “Covid pandemic”[3], these organisations have flipped to almost entirely embrace the colonialist and capitalist power structures they claim to oppose.
Use liberalism when it is moving forward
One of the prominent Aboriginal organisations pushing the “Abolish Australia Day” demand is the Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance (WAR). While WAR plays a welcome organisational role in leading many Aboriginal rights protests, they have fallen into error, or have been ill-advised, on a series of issues. WAR in Brisbane have organised the January 26 Invasion Day rally explicitly under the demand of “Abolish Australia Day”, claiming that Australia Day is “rooted in white supremacy”, which needs to be “cancelled”, and that there “can’t be an alternative day to celebrate until colonialism is changed in so-called Australia”.[4] What WAR appear not to recognise is that the forces of liberalism – those who have generally progressive viewpoints but have not yet reached the stage of acknowledging the necessity of a workers’ revolution to overthrow the system – are the strongest allies of the cause of Aboriginal rights. It is liberalist political sentiment generally which, when moving in a progressive direction, can immensely aid and assist the Aboriginal rights struggle AND ongoing efforts to improve the wages, health care, education and living standards of working people. To repel the forces of liberalism with the demand “Abolish Australia Day” – when otherwise they would willingly offer their services to bolster the cause – is a political error of the highest order.
The assistance of the forces of liberalism in fact had already made progress towards the demand of “Change the Date”, which indicates that this demand is eminently winnable. Three examples demonstrate this. Back in 2017, the liberal youth radio station Triple J made the decision to move their “Hottest 100” countdown away from January 26 in response to the majority of young people expressing defacto support for “Change the Date”.[5] More recently, the Australian government changed the national anthem by excising the words which understandably offend Indigenous people. “Young and Free” was changed to “One and Free”.[6] One factor which arguably influenced this decision was Indigenous Rugby League player Cody Walker refusing to sing the national anthem before a State of Origin match in 2019.[7] Also, this year organisers of the “Big Bash” cricket tournament announced they would not be referring to “Australia Day” for its fixtures being played on January 26, after consultation with Indigenous elders.[8] There is no doubt these are minor reforms which are symbolic, but they do indicate a very strong public sentiment in favour of the “Change the Date” demand. To throw away this progress, while repelling those who agree with your cause, is a political blunder of some magnitude.
For or against the state?
Some ostensibly socialist parties have capitulated to the political errors of WAR. Socialist Alternative, (SA) writing in their Red Flag newspaper, have not only endorsed the “Abolish Australia Day” demand, they also go onto demand the abolition of the prison system itself.[9] This highlights the fact that, in practice, the demand to “Abolish Australia Day” and NOT allow any marking of a national day, is a demand for the capitalist state to abolish a part of itself. Likewise, the demand to abolish prisons – because they are used to incarcerate Aboriginal people disproportionately – is also a demand for the self-abolition of a part of the capitalist state. Such demands are misleading, because it calls on the capitalist state to act on your behalf, and further fuels illusions that the capitalist state can be made, through “pressure”, to act in the interests of working and oppressed people (Indigenous and non-Indigenous).
Working people feel instinctively that whatever the crimes of the current state, states themselves – including their apparatus of repression, e.g. prisons, cannot YET be abolished and done away with. For one thing, the working class in its struggle against capitalist oppression will most likely have to make use of prisons to deal with its class adversaries, in the interests of their revolution. But this does not at all undermine the overall aim of socialism, which is a classless society. If we advance that far, the classless society will have no need for state repression – for states themselves will “wither away”. Hence, the demands “Abolish Australia (Day)”, “Abolish Prisons”, and even “Defund the Police” now, at this stage, cannot win over a majority of working people, and the raising of them can only disorient and confuse the struggle of workers and the oppressed.
As much as WAR and SA fulminate against the state for colonial oppression and the fostering of nationalism, at the same time they fall into line with the very same state on other rather large issues. WAR, SA and the lockdown left (conservative Union officials and self-declared socialist parties) during 2020 openly embraced the “racist” and “colonialist” and “white supremacist” state when it launched a civil war against working people under the rubric of an alleged Covid-19 “public health emergency”. The “pandemic” was, and is, a ruse which covers for the largest attack on the working class since the 1930s,[10] but the entirety of the liberal political spectrum swallowed it hook, line and sinker. Indigenous and non-indigenous people were subjected to brutal lockdowns along with the virtual removal of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of movement. WAR and their supposedly left allies were silent while the Australian Army was used to lockdown remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory (NT).[11] While the Australian military was used to assist the police in some Australian cities, non-indigenous people did not face Australian troops locking them in what dwellings they may call their home. Apparently, the use of colonialist state power for repression is fine and dandy, even against Aboriginal people – when the reason is “Covid”. The hypocrisy is staggering.
Liberalism transforms into reaction
The glaring double standards do not stop there. 2020 witnessed the wholesale transformation of liberalism into a fully fledged vehicle for imperialist repression, as they were mobilised as police auxiliaries of Covid repression. Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots in the US, and the WAR led mobilisations for “racial justice” in Australia were both used as political reinforcement of the deep state coup to install Joe Biden and the Democrats[12] AND to demand workers’ subservience to the same capitalist state under the entirely false guise of “public health”. While liberal sentiment can and should be used for progressive causes such as “Change the Date”, liberalism in its entirety must be countered when it acts directly as a cat’s paw for global capitalism. Marxists must know how to skillfully manoeuvre between the two faces of liberalism to advance the interests of workers internationally.
The organisation of this years’ Invasion Day rallies introduces huge contradictions. In some instances, attendees are urged to wear a facemask (!), practice social distancing (!) and stay at home if you have any cold and flu like symptoms (!!).[13] In the first place, the facemask is THE symbol of Covid repression, and is the key indicator of submission to authority. Wearing a facemask while protesting against the capitalist state is like going into a fight with both hands and both legs tied behind your back. It is akin to protesting against Australian nationalism while waving the Australian flag. State enforced “social-distancing” is clearly used to breakdown both human relations and working-class cooperation, not to achieve any medical goal.[14]
Moreover, the facemask and the lockdowns and everything else associated with Covid ideology – is enforced at the point of a gun by the very same colonialist state they are urging us to protest against! The very same state which waged a genocide of historically unprecedented proportions against Aboriginal people – is at the same time trying to save our lives? The very same state which stole children from Aboriginal parents and shipped them off to live with blended families for decades in an attempt to “breed them out” – is at the same time concerned that we might come down with a flu? The very same state which did not officially recognise Aboriginal people as human beings until begrudgingly accepting a referendum result in 1967 – is at the same time trying to protect us using hand sanitiser? No. This state is not “ours”, and indigenous and non-indigenous working people must reject each and every manifestation of its ultra-repressive rule.
This whole scenario is a verification of the basic precept that neither Aboriginal people nor their non-indigenous allies can, on their own, reach the level of political awareness necessary to win liberation. Both identity politics and liberalism are far too easily used by the class enemy. What is required is the assimilation of the full Marxist program. The struggle against racial oppression in Australia and internationally is only progressive when it is integrated with the struggle of working people against the rule of the banks and the stock markets. Covid repression is imposed against Aboriginal people and their working-class allies and is the crystallisation of capitalism declining into a new form of fascism. More than ever, it can best be fought by the linking of Aboriginal and working class struggles via the forging of an integrated multi-racial and multi-ethnic Leninist vanguard party, which champions Aboriginal rights as a key component of the international struggle for a socialist order.
17-01-2021: The USA is once again divided, this time over the events of January 6 in the capital of Washington DC. A protest called by President Donald Trump possibly drew up to 300 000 supporters, all of them rightly enraged by blatant electoral fraud[1] in the November election which the corporate media called for Joe Biden and the Democrats. In circumstances that remain under a cloud, a very small section of the crowd was either allowed or forced their way into the Capitol Building where the Congress was deciding whether to accept the electoral college votes, the final process which elects the Presidency. During some clashes with police and security, one woman was shot dead, while three others died from “medical emergencies” at the Capitol grounds.[2] The woman who lost her life was Ashli Babbitt[3], a Trump supporter and Air Force veteran of some 14 years. She was totally unarmed, and was shot at close range while there were police in front and behind her.
Hypocrisy of the so-called left
Without a hint of irony, some on the so-called left, such as the Socialist Equality Party (SEP), immediately labelled the protest a “fascist coup”.[4] The Internationalist Group (IG) breathlessly claimed the protest contained “white supremacists” and “racists” alongside “fascists”.[5] They were joined by the liberal corporate media who raced to label it the “worst day in American history”[6], and claimed that the protesters “stormed” Capitol Hill and resorted to political violence. Really? Out of a crowd of hundreds of thousands, a handful of them managed to get into the Congress, tip over some furniture, take selfies sitting in the halls, before being led back out? What about the violence of the police who shot dead Ashli Babbitt? Protesting outside the seat of power or a parliament in an effort to force representatives to listen to some demands is as old as the hills. And what was the demand? The main demand was “Stop the Steal” of the election, and perhaps also “Audit the Vote”. These demands are entirely legitimate, and under the circumstances – when there are videos showing suitcases full of ballots being pulled out from under a table in Georgia[7] – rather moderate.
Who was it that started the real political violence? Wasn’t that the so-called left during the fake pandemic of 2020? Ostensibly in response to the alleged murder of African American man George Floyd at the hands of police, the circumstances of which are disputed[8], much of the so-called left went on a rampage of political violence that went for months. Led by Black Lives Matter (BLM), Antifa and the lockdown left (Union officials and self-proclaimed “socialist” parties who enthusiastically joined with the capitalist state to help enforce scientifically groundless lockdowns), throngs of youth burnt, looted and destroyed buildings across the USA. In Minneapolis, the mobs attacked and burnt the police precinct to the ground, set fire to cars and 16 nearby buildings, and destroyed a bus stop.[9] More than 1500 businesses in the city were damaged, looted or destroyed by BLM/Antifa.[10] In the aftermath, many stores and even childcare centres were boarded up with signs pasted on them pleading with BLM/Antifa not to attack them. Many of the shops and businesses that were damaged or destroyed by the “anti-racist” mobs were in fact owned and run by African Americans or other minorities.[11]
In Portland, Oregon, the city was under siege form BLM/Antifa mobs for 47 days straight, while local Democrat politicians refused to take effective action against them.[12] Federal agents were deployed to protect the courthouse from being burnt to the ground. BLM/Antifa had wooden shields, and were armed with spray bottles filled with bleach, along with firecrackers which they fired at police. Explosives were launched at the courthouse, while people who disagreed with the violence were roughly shoved aside.[13] Courthouses are a part of the state as much as Capitol Hill, but liberals excused or strongly supported a daily violent assault on a courthouse in Oregon for five weeks, but condemned a rowdy protest for a couple of hours on Capitol Hill on January 6?
A short two years ago, liberals were protesting the appointment to the Supreme Court of Brett Kavanaugh, over unproven allegations that he may have inappropriately dealt with a woman some 35 years ago. At that time, liberals marched to the very same Capitol Hill and occupied part of the Hart Senate Office building.[14] No one from the so-called left at that time complained one whit about a “storming” of the home of democracy. Or, how about the establishment of the Capital Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) in the middle of Seattle in June last year? Six city blocks were occupied by BLM/Antifa and supporters, barricades were set up and police were expelled. The Democratic mayor of Seattle refused to act against the occupation until such time as an unidentified shooter shot someone dead – who happened to be a black man.[15] Riots, occupations, burning down police stations, laying siege to courthouses – this is all supposedly a protest against racism. Yet marching on Capitol Hill to demand the votes of an election be audited, where a handful breach police lines – is “domestic terrorism”[16] ?
Big Tech censors….the President
Using the spurious claim that President Trump is “inciting violence”, Twitter has permanently deleted Trump’s account, and Facebook has suspended him. This came when Trump actually called on his supporters on January 6 to “go home and go home in peace”.[17] Some incitement to violence! Whistleblower Edward Snowden, from exile in Russia, correctly noted that Twitter and Facebook banning or suspending the President of the United States of America will go down as a turning point in the battle for control over digital speech.[18] Many have observed that if the “leader of the free world” can be deplatformed, then free speech itself may well be at an end.[19] Social media is the modern equivalent of the town square. If one of the most powerful political office holders in the world can be prevented from speaking in the town square, ANYONE can be silenced. What is more, they are being silenced by Big Tech giants headed by liberals, which gives the impression that the “left” is instituting a global power grab. We must stress, repeatedly, liberals today are not left-wing in any practical sense. In fact, liberalism at the apex of some the most powerful corporations in the world, is nowadays much more dangerous to working people than conservatism.
It has happened in the past that the liberal wing of the ruling class can occasionally be more right-wing than the conservative wing. Today, however, we can observe that the liberal flank of the world bourgeoisie is consistently more reactionary and more right-wing than its conservative counterpart. Examples abound. Not only do Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg regard themselves as progressive liberals, but so does Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and billionaire financier and funder of umpteen colour revolutions, George Soros. These types personify the liberal bourgeoisie, and probably its project ever since 2016 was to depose Donald Trump using any means necessary. Arguably, the “fascist coup” began at that time, and only culminated with the BLM/Antifa riots throughout 2020 followed by the almost limitless electoral fraud in the 2020 Presidential Election.
We have no illusions that Donald Trump supporters, and whatever movement may follow, can fully represent the interests of working people. However, liberalism has moved so far to the right over the last twenty years that it can now appear that the “right-wing” Trump supporters are fighting the system which is dragging us all down into a pit of staggering inequality. Even if Trump supporters and QAnon and others identify as politically conservative, what they are actually doing in practice is at least confronting capitalism as it declines into decay. To some extent, they are preventing capitalism from further encroachments on the lives of working people. They certainly did this when many of them stridently opposed the scientifically groundless and medically absurd “Covid” lockdowns, mandatory facemask wearing and the threat of a mandatory “Covid” vaccine.
The end of liberalism
There is no political space for liberalism when capitalism cannot dole out any reforms. This is why liberalism today cannot allow any debate or discussion like it did in the 1960s and 70s, and why it degenerates into “cancel culture”. In the 1960s, 70s and even in the 80s to some extent, capitalism was still profitable enough for big capital to allow minor reforms here and there. Now, capitalism cannot allow even a small reform, because economically it is at a dead-end. The SEP, IG and the lockdown left understand this, but they still operate politically as though it is the 20th Century, i.e., liberals and social-democrats are partial allies, and conservatives are enemies. In the 21st Century, due to the exhaustion of the capitalist economic system, the roles have been reversed. So the SEP, the IG and the lockdown left and fellow travelers label Trump and his supporters as “fascist”, even though today the liberal corporate dominators of the world help enforce measures which would make a 20th Century fascist blush. No 20th Century fascist would have contemplated lockdowns in their wildest dreams.
To describe the January 6 protest in Washington, which had the central demand of “Stop the Steal” (or even Audit the Vote), as “fascist” or “white supremacist” is to misinterpret and misanalyse the basic political factors which led to the election of President Trump in the first place. Firstly, the so-called left had moved so far to the right from the year 2000 onwards, that it was barely capable of reaching working people. It had to use identity politics (the vast and almost singular overemphasis of the problems of racism, sexism and homo and trans phobia over and above the centrality of class issues) in an effort to still appear left-wing. This backfired spectacularly, as many workers correctly saw that no overblown rhetoric would solve their day to day issues. It is not “racist” or “white supremacist” to reject the class betrayal of identity politics. But neither is the answer to move to the conservative right. Nevertheless, Trump rejected identity politics, was seen as an outsider to the Washington political elite and appealed (perhaps demagogically) to the “forgotten man” and “forgotten woman”.
Trump also railed against unending regime change wars (e.g. Libya and Syria) which the Democrats had prosecuted under entirely false “humanitarian” grounds. Trump spoke his mind, did not speak with typical corporate politician spin, and gave it straight – even if this meant some level of crudity. There was certainly a history of racism in Trump’s business activity, and he no doubt used it to “build the wall” with Mexico. Even so, many working-class Americans were prepared to look the other way on such things, in order to have someone shake up the establishment. The other option was clearly not viable – the Democrats would continue tyrannical capitalist austerity with a sprinkling of deceitful “anti-racist” and “progressive” verbiage. 21st Century liberalism such as this has absolutely nothing to offer the working class. This is the basis for the popularity of Trump – not overt racism, or white supremacism or, mercifully, fascism.
Offer workers a real left
The lockdown “left” have politics upside down. Workers are not under a fascist threat from conservatism, but on the contrary, are under the threat of what might be termed liberal lockdown fascism. Liberalism has merged with the various states of capitalist imperialism to become the greatest threat facing workers today. All of its components – Big Tech, Big Pharma, the Union officials, the social-democratic bourgeois parties (Democrats in the US, Labour in the UK, Labor in Australia), liberal academia, “progressive” professionals and the lockdown left (self-described “socialist” organisations e.g. the SEP, the IG) – willingly implement the dictates of the state representing the smallest and richest minority in world history. Arguably, liberals throughout this pandemic of lies have demonstrated that they are far more aggressive and far more hostile to ANY dissenting or differing political views than the Nazis of the 1930s ever were.
Needless to say, even though the conservative right are today in some ways more left-wing than liberalism, their politics is not what workers urgently need. What is required, in the US and internationally, is a socialist movement which seeks to defend the basic interests of working people across the board – on bread and butter issues right up to and including firm opposition to imperialist war. This movement must NOT alienate or turn away any worker with identity and/or “moral” fronts, but should seek to bond the plethora of critical issues to the class struggle of labour against finance capital. Workers are prepared to fight for a movement which respects them for who they are. Vital for such a perspective is the assembly of internationally linked Leninist vanguard parties which seek to guide workers towards public ownership of the means of production and a planned economy.
Masked Brisbane City Council worker Image from elmoudjaweb.com
10-01-2021: Greater Brisbane is currently enduring a three day lockdown – due to ONE “case” of the alleged “UK strain” of Covid-19.[1] Labor Party Premier Anastacia Palaszczuk gave little notice of the abrupt decision, which was accompanied with set of “rules” that beggar belief. Facemasks have been made mandatory under the threat of a $200 fine, and are supposed to be worn every time anyone leaves their house. Incredibly, the government has issued edicts that facemasks must be worn in workplaces, at weddings and funerals (and other restrictions apply there), at shopping centres and supermarkets, and using any form of transport. Testing the outer limits of rationality, facemasks are also mandatory while exercising and while driving alone in your vehicle.[2] Needless to say, these measures are a transparent physical and health and safety threat to both individuals and other members of the public.
Logic thrown out the window
Scant evidence about the “UK strain” of Covid has been provided. One online commentator quipped: “So is the Covid vaccine now out of date?”. Logic does not apply and is not intended to apply. The pack of lies about Covid that governments the world over have been spouting grows larger and larger. Facemasks restrict the flow of oxygen to the brain, and there are some nerve cells in the hippocampus that cannot survive for longer than 3 minutes without oxygen. Depriving the brain of oxygen, especially for children and adolescents – whose brains are still developing – can cause permanent neurological damage.[3] Big Tech giants such as Facebook relentlessly “Fact Check” posts which present scientifically based arguments and findings which indicate facemasks have no effect on the prevention of the transmission of any respiratory virus.[4] These days, being “fact-checked”, deleted or de-platformed by Facebook, Google, YouTube, Amazon, Apple etc is a very firm indicator that what is being removed is actually the truth, or close to it. State censored information these days holds some keys to logic.
Even mainstream commentators are now complaining about Australia’s mishmash of state border openings and closures,[5] which allegedly claims to be “containing” Covid-19 to “hotspots” or “clusters”. Yet this has led to serious problems with some people not being able to access proper health care at hospitals across state borders, which may have the only equipment needed to treat a certain condition. Tourism and hospitality venues across the country have been driven into near bankruptcy due the lack of travel between states, and especially during the peak summer season. Some small business owners in Brisbane expressed bitter frustration with the state government for closing them down at extremely short notice[6], while huge supermarket chains like Woolworths, Coles and Bunnings never have to close down, being judged to be “essential”, and can keep trading regardless.
This was never about a virus
The concern for socialists, however, is not the petty-bourgeois small business owners who are being crushed by infinitely larger sections of capital. The main concern is not only for the welfare of the working class, but to aid and assist this class in fighting off the assault from finance capital that comes under the false façade of “Covid-19”. It is the working class alone which has no material interest in the maintenance of the system of private profit based on private ownership of the means of production. And it is the working class that is suffering the most from the deliberate shut down of whole sections of the economy. Millions upon millions of workers have been thrown out of work through no fault of their own. Big capital is attempting “The Great Reset” of the capitalist economies, which means the destruction of certain sections of capital. This can mean a boon for finance capital, but bankruptcy for small business, and a loss of livelihood for the working class.
It is not outside the realms of possibility that Queensland Labor politicians were reacting to recent events in Washington DC, where a “Stop the Steal” rally called by President Trump led to intrusions into the capitol building where Congress was sitting.[7] Federal Labor and Liberal politicians led a chorus of condemnation of the “violence” of the Trump supporters and labelled it an effective “insurrection”.[8]If only it was! Capitalist politicians may have been concerned that the fraudulent “transition” to Joe Biden and the Democrats may have been derailed if people’s eyes were fixed on the developments leading to the last days of the Trump Administration. Supporters of Donald Trump and those who can see through the diabolical Covid nonsense somewhat coincide. Hence, one sure fire way to stop the mobilisation of not only supporters of Trump, but the entire anti-lockdown movement – is to move back into a state of lockdown. With workers effectively under house arrest due to “Covid”, and bars, restaurants and churches closed down, little or no public or private political activity can occur.
Urgent need for political leadership
The limitless hypocrisy of the Union officials and the lockdown left continues – whether the issue is the political situation in the US or the locally enforced lockdowns. Make no mistake, workers in Australia and internationally would scarcely be facing scientifically groundless lockdowns and medically absurd facemask mandates IF Union officials and so-called left parties mobilised against the capitalist class on Covid. Yet workers have experienced a betrayal from these false friends of labour that defies description. Almost every top Union official and virtually every “left” organisation have acted as willing foot soldiers of corporate politicians they hypocritically claim to oppose. Overnight, they have become vassals of big capital as it introduces a form of fascism through the parliamentary system they constructed over 150 years ago. Betrayals do not come any larger than this.
The critical key missing factor is working-class leadership. At the moment, this has to be constructed from the first strivings of the anti-lockdown movement – the only movement currently pushing back against the political terror of the ruling elite. Politics in the 21st century is in some ways the reverse of politics in the 20th century. Even if the anti-lockdown movement does not explicitly identify as pro-working class, Marxists must work within it to begin to locate the bravest and most class-conscious elements amongst them. They then must be forged into a party which can lead workers directly toward the establishment of elected workers councils – incipient organs of a new state power. Lockdown fascism will only be permanently defeated with the liquidation of capitalism and the erection of a publicly owned and democratically planned economy. Publicly owned land, banks, and infrastructure must form the basis for humanity’s liberation from lockdowns. Essential for this leap is the piece by piece assembly of a workers’ party which fights for a workers’ government.
