01-05-2021: May 1st – Labour Day or May Day – is the international workers’ day. Not only does it mark the historical winning of the eight-hour day, it honours the struggle of workers and their Unions and all of their victories for more than 150 years. Today, the working class is faced with the largest assault from billionaire finance capital it has ever faced – lockdowns, facemasks and forced vaccines. Workers have been subjected to a mountain of lies about an alleged “pandemic”, which is easily exposed with basic logic. Elementary critical thinking, let alone a smidgen of independent research, reveals that the “Covid-19 pandemic” is a fraud,[1] and there is another political agenda entirely. Far from being a “public health emergency”, Covid-19 is code for civil war against working people.
Freedom is a right
Transparently, the lockdowns imposed by the capitalist state are not about “stopping the spread” of anything, let alone the most “lethal virus in history” – which, if it exists at all, has a laughably low infection fatality rate of 0.15%.[2] Rather, lockdowns are aimed at preventing workers from organising and collectively resisting millions of job cuts worldwide, and the forcible closure of whole sections of economies. With workers and their families confined to their homes, obviously no protest can take place. At one stroke, the ruling class of an extreme minority imposed the harshest political repression ever seen in history. Bourgeois democratic rights – the right to protest, civil rights, freedom of movement – have been removed and only barely returned. Meanwhile, the world’s billionaires increased their wealth by 54%, or 4 trillion dollars,[3] during the year of lockdowns!
The principal aim of lockdowns is to dramatically depress the cost of labour power, i.e., wages and salaries, and to remove basic working conditions won over more than a century of struggle. To do this, the capitalist state reverted to a form of fascism, in which the primary freedoms workers believed were guaranteed under liberal democracy were removed without apology. If workers cannot leave their homes on pain of prosecution by the state, protest is illegal, facemasks become mandatory, and vaccinations are used to set up a divide between the “clean” and “unclean”, fascism has arrived.
Moreover, tracking and tracing the movement of workers hands the capitalist state virtually unlimited power – even the power to detain entirely healthy people indefinitely. Lockdowns cause exponential health problems themselves – up to and including excess death. The psychological torment and despair of lockdowns, unbearable strain on working families, the resulting huge spike in domestic violence overwhelmingly against women is just for starters. This abomination must be fought.
Unions must fight
When finance capital and its government launch an attack on workers, Unions should be the first to lead the fightback. Unfortunately, virtually without exception, Union officials (as opposed to rank and file members) have rushed to the side of the government of the enemy class. From there they assisted the capitalist state impose lockdowns and the entire “Covid” narrative on their own members and all workers. This betrayal of workers has been all but universal. The capitalist state repeatedly dresses up every assault everywhere – including Anglo/US led wars – as justified by the need to “save lives”. These lies are whoppers, especially since these same governments have been shredding the public health system of funds for some 40 years, in the same way as they have gutted education and basic public services. The capitalist state and its government is the bitter enemy of working people – we are NOT “all in this together” against a barely dangerous virus! On the contrary, the “virus” is being used as a disguise so that workers will not blame the government for a crumbling decline into a dystopian hellscape. Union officials who mimic politicians need to be held to account.
One thing is clear – workers and Unions cannot and will not be able to defend themselves from the Covid assault until and unless they make a clear break with Covid ideology. ALL facets of Covid practice – lockdowns, facemasks, vaccines, bans on travel, state border closures, Covid passports, contact tracing, social distancing, bans on protests, gatherings, marches, religious worship etc – must be rejected in toto. Workers must not comply with ANY Covid dictates issued by the bourgeois state OR by conservative bureaucracies in the deformed workers’ states. Nothing about Covid is to do with healthcare, and everything about it is used as a club with which to beat workers and their Unions. Workers must resist individually where possible, but collective resistance is the most effective.
Build the anti-lockdown movement
This is why it is crucial that workers and their Unions join and help build the anti-lockdown movement. Worldwide, the anti-lockdown movement has mobilised millions across Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Europe, and is continuing to do so. It has somewhat stayed the hand of sadistic governments which force lockdowns in order to increase political repression and partially shutdown economies. But to permanently win an end to lockdowns, the anti-lockdown movement must at the very least take on a pro-working class political character. A mass movement of everyone who stands for freedom is an important first step, there is no doubt. Yet for serious gains and to drive back rapacious elite politicians, a movement for freedom needs to arrest the terrible intrusion of the capitalist state by permeating the resistance with working class demands. The demand for a six-hour work day is vital. In this way, the anti-lockdown movement can be infused with much needed political direction.
Fascism arrives at the precise moment when capitalism is driven into an impasse. As history advises, fascism can only be brought to heel via the entry of the organised working class onto the stage of history, via its preparation for the task of establishing its own rule. A vanguard party guided by genuine Marxism is vital for these urgent tasks, to propel the fight for freedom.
Above: Map showing US military bases encircling the People’s Republic of China (PRC)
25-04-2021: The threat of war in the Asia-Pacific looms as large as it ever has in 2021. Or should we say, the Indo Asia Pacific. The language emanates from the highest levels of Washington’s war machine, which operates a number of “Commands” in regions across the globe to maintain the US Empire. In 2018, the US Pacific Command was renamed the Indo-Pacific Command,[1] as US imperialism sought to draw India into their efforts to militarily encircle the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Transparently, US imperialism and its allies such as the governments of the European Union (EU), Australia and Japan, are hell-bent on potentially apocalyptic military confrontations with Red China, demographically the largest nation on Earth. The PRC’s gigantic and still expanding socialist economy is rapidly overtaking the faltering capitalist economies of the West – something the US/EU ruling classes will risk anything to prevent from coming to pass.
The formation of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or “Quad”, is another dead giveaway as to the intentions. Hardly an innocent undertaking, the Quad is a glaring attempt to draw more US allies into an explicit anti-China military alliance – containing the US, Japan, Australia and India. Its apologists deny that the Quad is being set up as an Asian NATO,[2] but here the axiom of never believing anything until it is officially denied cannot be more apposite. The geographical surrounding of mainland China from Japan to its East, Australia to its South, and India to its West is easily triangulated by the briefest of perusals of a high school map of the region. As in the 1950s and 60s, the once supreme Western ruling classes are yet again embroiled in a deadly game to “contain and roll back communism”. This time, arguably, the stakes are even higher.
Military grade weapons expo
This is the geopolitical context which surrounds Brisbane hosting a weapons manufacturers expo in early June. The very title of the conference indicates not just a military grade weapons garage sale, but a subliminal message as to who the organisers wish to portray as the boogeyman “we” need to arm ourselves against. The first line of the publicity for the expo of Land Forces Australia Indo Asia Pacific International Land Defence Exposition states openly that the expo showcases “equipment, technology and services for the armies of Australia and the Indo Asia Pacific”.[3] The explicit exclusion of China, by far the largest component of Asia, gives the game away. The weapons manufacturers such as Thales, Rheinmetall Defence, Boeing, DB Schenker, BAE Systems, EOS etc., are joined by the Queensland Government and the Australian Army as event sponsors.[4] The links between weapons manufacturers and the governments of capitalist countries have been well documented over the last century. Such governments prosecute wars which then feeds the profits of weapons manufacturers. Yet this does not occur without underlying politics driving it. Without being stated overtly, the prevailing politics of the corporate and government sponsors of Land Forces 2021 are directed against Red China.
To be sure, what exists in the PRC is not a socialist society but rather a socialist state. And this state is heavily and bureaucratically deformed, both by the multi-class character of its 1949 revolution, and the saddling of this state with the Maoist/Stalinist politics of the Communist Party of China (CPC). Despite this, the capitalist mode of production was overthrown, land was nationalised, the predominant and strategic means of production remain publicly owned, and the economy is administered through five-year plans. This – rather than the politics of the CPC – is what must be defended by working people. At the same time, to synchronise the socialist state of the PRC with socialist politics, what is required is the rule of elected workers’ councils comprised of all political tendencies committed to the defence of modern China. That is to say, genuine Leninist-Trotskyism must prevail over the distortions of Maoism/Stalinism, despite its relative popularity in the PRC due to 20th Century history.
Disrupt LandForces 2021
Unfortunately, neither the defence of the PRC state against US/AUST imperialism, nor even opposition to war on China is on the agenda of the activists organising a series of protests against the military expo, under the hashtag of “#DisruptLandForces”.[5] In fact, by the omission of material opposing wars fuelled, led and directed by the US Empire, #DisruptLandForces can find themselves on the same side of the barricades as the US/EU/AUST imperialism, even if this is not their intention. The wars that threaten humanity in 2021 are wars waged by the imperialist bloc and their allies -US/EU/AUST/JAP/CAN/Israel/Saudi Arabia etc., against the non-imperialist bloc and their allies – China, Russia, Iran, the DPRK, Libya, Syria, Venezuela and so on. Most of these wars are proxy regime change operations waged by imperialism against the allies of the non-imperialist bloc. Examples are the destruction of Green Libya in 2011, the Nazi coup in Ukraine in 2014, the failed regime change war on Syria from 2011 on, and attempted regime change destabilisations in Lebanon,[6] Algeria,[7] Sudan,[8] the Philippines,[9] Thailand[10] and Myanmar[11]. Workers must resolutely oppose all such regime change wars and attempted colour revolutions organised and funded by imperialism as a matter of self-defence, even if this means a temporary bloc with governments targeted by Anglo/US imperialism which could not be described as left-leaning or even progressive.
Moreover, #DisruptLandForces activists implore progressive folk to picket Land Forces 2021 primarily on the basis that weapons manufacturers will make millions from making weapons of war. While this is true in itself, the implication that there should be no army, or that no nation should maintain and operate a defence force will be automatically rejected by the working class. The working class cannot be won to a position that their nation-state should reduce all military spending to zero, and nor should leftists make such an attempt. This is effectively a demand for the capitalist state to abolish itself, and while workers are no automatic fans of capitalism, they recognise that states as such cannot be abolished overnight. Working people can, however, be won to positions which oppose imperialist wars, i.e. predatory wars of conquest waged by the Anglo/US Empire – which today includes proxy wars of regime change and Western funded subversion. Therefore, the left should attempt to convince workers to oppose particular wars, not the manufacture of weapons per se.
Myanmar
At the same time, there is obviously a need for working people to oppose the $270 billion by 2030 defence spending plan of the Australian government, which was announced in June 2020[12]. This is because the Australian ruling class itself – through its government – hardly shies away from an admission that the vast bulk of this spending will be used to militarily confront and provoke China, albeit as junior sidekicks of the US government. They state openly that “we want a free and open Indo-Pacific”, i.e., one not “controlled” or even influenced by the PRC, but in fact presided over by the US and their allies. This is not even slightly realistic, as the PRC is the largest nation on earth, it is situated in the Asia-Pacific, and its economy is still growing rapidly. It is thus in a position to offer much needed economic development and infrastructure building projects to its near neighbours – something the Anglo/US powers simply cannot, given their geographical distance and their long-term economic woes. The only way the US/EU/AUST ruling classes can prevent this from happening is by sowing chaos, sabotage and destabilisation up to and including the collapse of states. Ergo, Myanmar today.
#DisruptLandforces proclaim their solidarity with the “people of Myanmar”.[13] Here they display their loyalty – perhaps unwittingly – to the very “colonisers” they claim to be protesting against. British imperialism certainly did rule what was then Burma until independence in 1948. Since then, the UK ruling class has not ceased its efforts to virtually recolonise Myanmar. It works in concert with the US state department to create and fund an entire “opposition” movement which will politically serve London and Washington, e.g., Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy (NLD).[14] They managed to subvert Myanmar’s societal institutions to such an extent that Suu Kyi became State Counsellor in 2015. The government of Myanmar had allowed this overt foreign intervention into Myanmar’s internal affairs for decades, as many third world countries generally welcome any financial assistance from the West. However, the NLD, with backing from Wall Street, London and billionaire regime change kingmaker George Soros, had ensured by around 2015 that only they could “win” elections in Myanmar. Finally, on February 1 this year, the Tatmadaw (Myanmar military) stepped in and said enough is enough. Thus the military “coup” was in fact an act which defended the national sovereignty of Myanmar.[15]
The “anti-coup” protests in Myanmar since early February have in fact been the culmination of decades of US and UK government funding for scores of imperialist backed fronts posing as “civil society” organisations and “NGOs”. The narrative in the Western corporate media of the Tatmadaw mowing down entirely innocent and unarmed “protestors” in the streets of Myanmar is utterly false and is eerily reminiscent of the storyline spun by Western governments to cover their atrocious regime change wars in Libya and Syria.[16] As much as the Tatmadaw is demonised via the corporate press, it remains the only institution standing in the way of a total takeover by Washington and London. In a similar way in which the Pentagon’s regime change war on Syria was aimed at Russia (and Iran), today’s “uprising” in Myanmar has been carefully prepared by years and decades of covert funding for ANY opposition which could serve the interests of imperialism in its losing economic war with Beijing. Patently, Myanmar’s “protests” today are in fact a US/UK proxy war of regime change against Red China.[17]
West Papua
If #DisruptLandForces fall prey to deception in relation to Myanmar, they double and triple their illusions in relation to West Papua (the Indonesian provinces of Papua and Papua Barat). #DisruptLandForces, and many “peace” activists, imagine that the Indonesian government occupies West Papua, suppresses their culture, and uses armed force to take the lives of those who call for “independence”.[18] This inversion of reality is regurgitated by liberals the world over, who are generally not aware that they are being ensnared by the very people they claim to be fighting for. The West Papuan “independence” movement is not an innocent campaign for “human rights”, but an armed separatist insurgency predominantly motivated by ethnic antagonism. This inevitably spills over into murderous anti-Indonesian violence, which the Indonesian government must respond to. For example, in December 2018, armed Papuan separatists slaughtered 31 Indonesian road workers constructing the Trans-Papua Highway.[19] Papuans who do not necessarily support separatist independence can also be targeted with lethal intent, as in the case of the town of Wamena in September 2019. On that occasion, Papuan separatist militia attacked and burnt down sections of the town, killing 30, including 8 non-Papuan Indonesians.[20]
This is not to say that there are no political and economic problems existing in West Papua. Yet Indonesia is far from an imperialist entity, and all indications are that the Indonesian government is attempting to include, rather than exclude, Papuans within the “Unitary State of Indonesia”. The Indonesian government regularly spends billions of rupiah in economic and social development in West Papua, and not only by building the Trans-Papua Highway. Where the geographical terrain does not prevent it, education (up to Year 9) and health care is provided for West Papuans free of charge. The Indonesian government is also pressing ahead with its plans to provide electricity to all areas of West Papua, in some places which have never before seen a light bulb.[21] Would a separate West Papua, standing on its own, have such resources? To ask the question is to answer it.
For an end to hybrid wars
#DisruptLandForces is also silent on the major war underway against the global south and the workers of the world – the fake “Covid-19” pandemic. The “virus” provides a cover for lockdowns, which are a form of extreme violence against working and oppressed people – no less than physical wars waged with weapons. Thus we find that both #DisruptLandForces and Land Forces 2021 in fact both agree on just who is the enemy: Covid-19 and China! Needless to say, working people need to resist ALL hybrid wars waged by imperialism – against “Covid”, or China, or Russia, or whoever is the next target. Essential for this is the building of a vanguard party upholding genuine Marxism, with international sections dedicated to the supersession of capitalism and the inauguration of a socialist order.
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 on 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.
The economic rise of the People’s Republic of China is the major concern of the US Empire. Image from http://www.msn.com
11-03-2021: The West’s flailing efforts to prevent being overtaken and left behind by the economic and political rise of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) continues. The capitalist economies of the United States of America (US), the United Kingdom (UK), the European Union (EU), Australia, Japan etc., stumble along, either in recession or barely above it. The economy of the PRC, on the other hand, moves ahead in seven league strides[1] – even despite the lockdowns and shutdowns associated with the fake coronavirus “pandemic”.[2] One could plausibly argue that the Covid lockdowns were part of an engineered recession in the West, as the capitalist ruling classes of the US and EU understood quite well that only the creative destruction of parts of their own capital would give them a chance to drag themselves out of a decade long slump. While the conservative and bureaucratic political leadership of the PRC double-crossed workers by enacting the Covid charade, its economy was largely protected due to predominantly public ownership of the means of production. The PRC does not run primarily on the basis of production for private profit, and this is the key to its indomitable economic rise.
Thailand
In response to the PRC’s inevitably increasing economic ties with its near neighbours and beyond through the Belt and Road Initiative (New Silk Road) and other means, world imperialism – headed by Washington – uses any means available to disrupt these bonds. The innocuous sounding “Milk Tea Alliance” is anything but. Ludicrous claims that the Milk Tea Alliance is an alliance of “pro-democracy activists” are fostered by the US Empire.[3] The reality is that Washington and London, politically backed by Canberra, are openly funding and organising anti-socialist and anti-government sedition ultimately aimed at regime change in the PRC itself. Any actions – up to and including street violence, physically attacking and provoking police and security forces – are then spun as a “democratic uprising”. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Milk Tea Alliance is anti-China, and little else.
The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the public relations arm of the CIA, does not really attempt to hide the extent to which it funds the “opposition” in Thailand. Its own website lists dozens of “civil society” organisations it funds in Thailand, with amounts of cash attached which are likely understated. These fronts are far from being what they are purported to be about: law reform, democratic rights, human rights, civil society building and so on.[4] Rather, they are about ending any semblance of Thailand’s independence, and punishing the Thai government for extending and deepening economic, political and even military ties with Red China. The Thai government has no choice but to deal with the PRC, and not only because it shares a long border. The PRC, thanks to its gargantuan and expanding socialist economy, offers Thailand economic opportunities that exist nowhere else. Neither the US nor any government of the European Union (EU), due to their respective economic recessions and geographical distance, are in a position to offer Thailand much at all.
The PRC, on the other hand, is a next door neighbour with a vast and expanding economy, which offers trade and investment and much needed infrastructure building projects with zero political interference. For example, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and China have signed agreements to build a railway which connects all these neighbouring South East Asian countries for the first time ever.[5] The economic benefits for Thailand and Laos and Cambodia are obvious, but cultural and political co-operation will also flow as a result. This integration and co-operation will benefit the PRC at the expense of the US Empire – which cannot offer these perks in any case. This is what the Washington seeks to dismantle – and hence the Thai wing of the “Milk Tea Alliance”.
The Thai government also had little choice but to disqualify the “Future Forward” party of corrupt pro-US billionaire Thanathorn Juangroongraungkit for violating Thailand’s electoral laws. Thanathorn had “loaned” his party six million dollars out of his own pocket – which was clearly a donation and therefore illegal under Thai law.[6] In response there were predictable “student” rallies purportedly protesting further restrictions on “democracy”, many of whom would later spring up as the “Milk Tea Alliance”. Likewise, the “Thai Lawyers for Human Rights” (TLHR), led by Anon Nampa, are transparently bound with Washington in an attempt to break Thai links with the PRC under the entirely false guise of “human rights”. Anon Nampa, who springs up and often leads “democracy” protests in Thailand, has had to admit that TLHR “receives all its funding from international donors”. The international donors are of course the NED, meaning that Anon Nampa himself – far from being a disinterested human rights lawyer – is directly paid by the US state department.[7] The Thai “democracy” movement is in fact foreign funded subversion in the service of the US Empire. The Thai government has only recently moved to regulate at least 100 foreign funded “NGOs” which had been operating with impunity.[8]
Myanmar
The latest attempted colour revolution by the US created Milk Tea Alliance is in Myanmar, where the West’s corporate media is painting a picture of a military dictatorship cancelling elections and suppressing demonstrations. This narrative is oceans apart from reality. As we wrote in February,[9] US and UK government funded “democracy” fronts had been operating unimpeded in Myanmar for decades. One result of this has been the creation of the National League for Democracy (NLD) itself, another was the defacto installation of Aung Sung Suu Kyi as State Counsellor from 2016. The Tatmadaw (Myanmar’s military) had reasonable grounds to claim that the November 2020 election – which the NLD “won” in a landslide was fraudulent, and that the actions it took to prevent a total US/EU government takeover of the state of Myanmar was necessary. It was merely one action that the Tatmadaw has taken against the virtually limitless building of para-state organisations within Myanmar, funded by imperialism itself. For example, not only was Aung Sung Suu Kyi made State Counsellor in 2016, Pe Myint was installed as Minister of Information. Pe Myint was a former doctor who was literally trained in journalism by the NED and George Soros’ OSI (Open Society Institute) at the Indochina Media Memorial Foundation in Bangkok.[10] The notion that Pe Myint would serve the interests of Myanmar rather than the US state department after such backing is fanciful at the very least.
Today, the West’s corporate media and their quislings are fanning the flames of violent unrest which they hope will lead to international (read: US/EU) intervention into Myanmar to confront and/or bring down the Tatmadaw. To do this, they must lie and lie openly about what is happening on the ground in Myanmar. They republish unsubstaniated United Nations (UN) claims that the Tatmadaw killed 38 people in one day.[11] These are baseless allegations aimed at liberals in the West, to soften up public opinion for a possible intervention into Myanmar by US forces or their proxies. At the UN, even Myanmar’s Ambassador to the UN gave the three fingered salute (a sign reportedly adopted from the Hunger Games films and by anti-government mobs in Thailand) while calling on the “international community” to hold Myanmar’s military to account. Thankfully, both China and Russia at the UN are currently against international intervention into Myanmar, calling for respect for Myanmar’s internal affairs.[12] The governments of the US and the EU, needless to say, have no such principles.
One sure indicator of the ultra-reactionary anti-socialist and anti-China nature of the Myanmar anti-coup protestors is the backing offered by Indonesian fugitive Veronica Koman. Ms Koman fled Indonesia to prevent charges for racial incitement being laid against her for false coverage of West Papuan separatist riots during 2019.[13] Ms Koman, who despite having Chinese heritage is virulently anti-Beijing, tweeted in support of the Milk Tea Alliance when Myanmar ex-pats in Sydney staged a “Save Myanmar” rally on March 6.[14] It is to be expected that the vast majority of ex-pat Myanmarese living in Australia – or anywhere outside of Myanmar – would be quickly recruited by US imperialism in its various forms. The goal is clearly to set up political conditions whereby working people internationally do not oppose US or UK or UN troops (or a proxy force) being sent into Myanmar to confront the Tatmadaw – under the guise of “peacekeeping”. This is yet one more step towards the military encirclement of PRC, again escalating the danger of a hot war.
Hong Kong
By far the most violent members of the Milk Tea Alliance are the US/UK government backed Blackshirts in Hong Kong. Throughout 2019, they terrorised Hong Kong citizens with frenzied attacks on police, hurling bricks, petrol bombs and other projectiles. On some occasions, police were struck with arrows shot from bows[15], with some of them dipped in fire before being launched. Fallaciously portrayed as “pro-democracy” activists, many Hong Kong residents argued and pleaded with them to stop destroying the city. One Blackshirt responded to a resident with a different opinion by pouring flammable liquid on him and setting him on fire.[16] Needless to say, the notion that the Blackshirts are somehow fighting for a progressive cause despite using repeated and unprovoked violence against those who disagree with them is absurd. In reality, the Blackshirts are unadulterated anti-socialist hoodlums attempting (in vain) to separate Hong Kong from the People’s Republic of China. This is despite Hong Kong officially being handed back to China as far back as 1997. There is no chance of this happening, given that Hong Kong is now linked to the mainland by rail and the longest land bridge in the world, not to speak of the fact that Hong Kong has been a part of China for millennia.
The Blackshirts – many of whom are too young to even remember 1997 – are acting as reactionary pawns for US/UK imperialist attempts to destablise China using any means necessary. For decades, the US and UK governments have funded thousands of NGOs in Hong Kong, in an effort to prevent Hong Kong’s capitalism being subsumed by the socialism (however deformed) of mainland China. The Blackshirts mobilised under the oxymoronic name of the “Civil Human Rights Front”, when multiple members of this reactionary alliance had directly received NED funding. These include: the Hong Kong Institute of Human Resource Management, the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions, Hong Kong Journalists Association, the Civic Party, the Labor Party and the Democratic Party. Some 37 000 NGOs with staff in the tens of thousands operate in Hong Kong, many of which receive funding from US and EU governments.[17] It is no wonder that the Blackshirts then wave not only US and UK flags, but even the defunct British colonial Hong Kong.[18] This wing of the Milk Tea Alliance is as right-wing as can possibly be conceived.
Defend the PRC against regime change
Taiwan, and even India and Indonesia are sometimes added to the Milk Tea Alliance, giving the game away yet again about who is really behind it. It is unequivocal anti-socialist anti-China subversion, funded and in many cases organised by arms of the imperialist states of the US and the EU. China’s vast population and previous openness to the functioning of foreign backed NGOs opens the door for the ruling classes of the West to attempt to overthrow the PRC from within. Hence the hysterical propaganda campaigns about “human rights” and “democracy” in Hong Kong, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) and Tibet. It is also the basis for the fake “democracy” movements being funded and orchestrated by Washington and London in Thailand and Myanmar. The agenda is to encircle Red China with imperialist bases on their borders, while politically destablising the PRC in its extremities. Nothing less than the overthrow of Beijing will satisfy the CIA and MI6, but they understand that this is currently not a military option. Hence, political subversion is the main modus operandi.
The PRC remains a bureaucratically deformed workers’ state, the same one which emerged from the victory of its socialist revolution in 1949. The class character of that revolution, being overwhelmingly backed by hundreds of millions of peasants, was qualitatively different to the working-class proletarian revolution in Russia in 1917. Nevertheless, the PRC today is overwhelmingly based on public ownership of the means of production and a planned economy. This is the productive basis for the 30 years of 10% GDP growth which it experienced, and which would not be possible if the economy was “capitalist”. This is just one reason why workers need to defend the PRC against internal and external imperialist backed subversion. At the same time, the PRC needs a proletarian political revolution to oust the conservative and nationalist political leadership and replace it with workers’ councils comprised of all those who seek to defend modern China and build socialism internationally.
Kataib Hezbollah fighters on the march. Image from RT.com
05.03.2021: Just two weeks after declaring the US would not return to forever wars under his administration[1], fraudulently installed President Joe Biden rained bombs on Syria, targeting Iranian supported militias fighting US backed Al Qaeda terrorists operating in the region. Biden was only 36 days into his first term before ordering the bombing of the Middle East[2], once again risking the escalation of an even more catastrophic regime change war. This comes hard on the heels of Biden’s re-invasion of Syria just two days into his Presidency, where 200 US troops and 60 military vehicles crossed the border[3] into Syria to “assist” US backed Kurdish separatist rule in northern Syria. Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby stated that the US airstrikes targeted facilities used by Iranian backed militias including Kataib Hezbollah and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada. Stretching the limits of plausibility, Kirby claimed that the strikes were in response to rocket attacks on US troops but were deliberately calibrated to de-escalate the overall situation in eastern Syria and Iraq.[4]
US Empire uses Covid to reignite regime change war on Syria
The US government claimed it gave notice to the Russian government before the strikes took place. It did – but the notice was only four minutes. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declared that “This kind of notification does nothing when the strike is literally already on its way”.[5] Transparently, US imperialism is hell bent on attempting to reverse the defeat it suffered during the regime change war it attempted in Syria from 2011 onwards. The combination of resistance from the Syrian government, with military backing from Russia and Iran, arguably dealt US imperialism its first defeat since the Vietnam War. The Pentagon did not succeed in toppling Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, despite spending $500 million, at the very least, funding and arming deranged mercenary forces[6] to do so. The superiority of Russian air power, combined with the considerable skills of Iranian backed ground militias and heroic Syrian army martyrs – delivered a crushing of ISIS and, by extension, Wall Street.
Washington was stung by this defeat and has never accepted it. Now, their assault on the world’s working and oppressed people under the code name of “Covid”, opens a small window to re-start the regime change war on Syria. While the governments of Russia and Iran performed heroics to stop US imperialism in its tracks in Syria, during 2020 both entities unfortunately marched in lockstep with the US Empire by entertaining the Covid plot.[7] The coronavirus charade was always going to be used by US/EU imperialism against their opponents, and the Russian and Iranian governments’ acquiescence to the fear “pandemic” nonsense only slightly delayed a direct broadside from Washington. Russia and Iran’s mimicking of Western government lockdowns, forced facemasks and forced vaccines was never going to be accepted as currency for respect for their national sovereignty, or much else. Nothing less than regime change and substitute pro-US satrap governments in Syria, Iran and Russia would appease the ruling classes of the US/EU. Indeed, the war on Syria was arguably a stepping stone on the road to regime change in the Islamic Republic of Iran, by first eliminating one of Russia’s key allies.
Liberalism accelerates political disintegration
When capitalism enters a steep decline, parliamentary democracy soon becomes insufficiently repressive for the tasks the bourgeoisie needs to carry out to ensure the maintenance of its rule. Basic democratic and civil rights become an obstacle and need to be sidelined. This was one of the goals of the various forms of lockdown fascism initiated by capital in the West during 2020. This particular form of fascism, which was covered with the excuse of “Covid”, was NOT led by a far-right ultra-nationalist stormtroopers but by “left-wing” anti-socialists such as: Antifa, Black Lives Matter (BLM) and the lockdown left who tailed the mind-bogglingly conservative Union bureaucracy. This liberal pro-corporate set heavily endorsed the fake pandemic and even – believe it or not – campaigned for longer and stricter lockdowns. While there is no doubt that these forces dragged along some youth and working people who believed they were doing something progressive, their leading lights knew exactly what their task was – to defend capitalist imperialism using any means up to and including violence.
The identity politics, the faux anti-racism, the disingenuous refugee rights activism of Antifa, BLM (which has conveniently disappeared from the streets now that there is a Democrat in the White House) and the lockdown left – combined with Union officialdom – has only strengthened finance capital. All of these forces endorsed and enforced the fake pandemic with its brutally anti-working class lockdowns, forced facemasks, forced vaccines, and tracking and tracing. The Covid ruse enabled the fascistic repression the ruling class required to savage the cost of labour power – through hundreds of millions of job cuts, economic shutdowns and border closures. The extreme Covid political repression also enables the bourgeoisie to wage imperialist war, such as the one being reanimated in Syria. For working people can scarcely organise political opposition to a war when they are separated from each other, when meetings have been banned, and when state borders are barricaded.
What is required is political action which demands US troops exit Syria immediately, and a prompt end to US/EU sanctions and provocations against Syria, Russia and Iran. The threatened imperialist wars against Syria, Russia, Iran and even China are bound up with the Covid war on working people at home. This is despite the deceitful Covid cooperation with Washington by Moscow, Tehran and Beijing. Wars can only be stopped by overthrowing the government waging it – this is the cardinal lesson of the October Revolution of 1917. Then, as now, Marxist leadership of the working class is a critical first step towards the end of imperialist wars and the socialist liberation of humanity.
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.
