English

New pamphlet from Mehring Books

The June 2010 Political Coup: A warning to the working class

Mehring Books is proud to announce the publication of The June 2010 Political Coup: A warning to the working class, a powerful collection of articles, comments and political statements originally posted on the World Socialist Web Site that analyse the extraordinary coup that removed Kevin Rudd as Australian prime minister. The material constitutes the only Marxist analysis of this major attack on democratic rights.

The 56-page pamphlet provides a detailed exposure of the corporate interests and political forces behind Rudd’s removal and the fashioning of a new, far more right-wing government under Gillard. Above all, it assesses the political significance and implications of this event for the Australian and international working class.

The first article in the collection is by Socialist Equality Party national secretary Nick Beams and was published on June 24, the day Rudd was sacked as prime minister. Beams explores the unprecedented events that led up to Rudd’s removal—the campaign by the mining corporations, the Murdoch media and other key financial interests working in conjunction with right-wing Labor Party faction bosses and the trade union bureaucracy.

Rudd’s dismissal, the SEP national secretary states, is “a graphic exposure of the thoroughly worm-eaten character of both the Labor Party and the entire system of so-called parliamentary democracy in Australia”. He notes that one of Gillard’s first actions as prime minister was to reassure Washington that under her leadership the Labor government would unconditionally support the war in Afghanistan.

The pamphlet also contains a comprehensive June 28 statement by the Socialist Equality Party entitled “The Australian Labor Party coup: a warning to the working class”, which highlights the volatile international conditions in which Rudd was removed and points to the undoubted involvement of Washington in the coup

Included as well is an important opening report by Beams to SEP conferences in early July on “The World Economic Crisis, the Failure of Capitalism and the Case for Socialism”.

Beams’s detailed speech emphasises that the removal of Rudd can only be understood in the context of the deepening global crisis of capitalism and the move by the ruling elites internationally to unleash austerity measures against the working class. The report makes reference to Trotsky’s 1929 analysis of the breakdown of bourgeois democracy and the emergence of dictatorship in periods of economic and political crisis.

Other comments and analyses—just a selection of the numerous articles posted on the WSWS in the month following Rudd’s removal—explore different aspects of the coup. These include the big business connections of the Labor and union leadership, Washington’s involvement and the role of the pseudo-left formations that attempt to cover-up the political significance of the coup and its implications for the working class.

This pamphlet is vital reading for all those searching for a serious, accurate and detailed analysis of the Australian coup and what it reveals about the assault on basic democratic rights, the degeneration and transformation of the Labor Party and unions, and the political challenges that confront the working class.

Copies of The June 2010 Political Coup: A warning to the working class (ISBN: 978-1-875639-40-3) can be purchased for $5, plus $3 postage, here:

or by contacting Mehring Books
PO Box 367
Bankstown
NSW 1885
Telephone 02 9790 3221
Email: mehring@ozemail.com.au

Click here for full coverage of the SEP 2010 election campaign

Authorised by N. Beams, 307 Macquarie St, Liverpool, NSW 2170

 

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