In the struggle to end the oppression of Aboriginal people, the critical issue is the development of an independent political movement of the working class, directed against the entire political establishment, its program of war and austerity, and the capitalist system itself.
The Socialist Equality Party urges workers and youth to reject both the Yes and the No cases presented by the ruling political establishment and calls for an active boycott campaign to oppose the referendum itself.
Prime Minister Albanese issued his plea as media polls reported a parallel fall in support for the Voice and the Labor government, above all because of the worsening cost-of-living crisis.
“This boycott involves more than just casting informal ballots. It requires active participation in the campaign leading up to the referendum on the October 14.”
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The Greens have stepped in to help prop up the Labor government, under conditions in which it is in a deepening political crisis.
After the Tim Gurner furore, the latest Productivity Commission report has emphasised the need for stepped up productivity by workers.
Except for the lockdowns during the pandemic, the last time GDP per capita was smaller than it was a year earlier was during the global financial crisis and before that in the recession of the early 1990s.
The purpose of the legislation is not to reverse the growth of exploitative gig-economy and sham-contracting arrangements, but to legitimise them, establishing a Labor- and union-sanctioned cut-rate workforce.
Book launch with David North and Evan Blake: Two works, on Trotsky and the pandemic
At an event in Sydney, Australia on Thursday, May 25, World Socialist Web Site International Editorial Board Chairman David North launched his new book Leon Trotsky and the Struggle for Socialism in the Twenty-First Century. He was joined by Evan Blake, a leading member of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States, who presented another new title from Mehring Books, COVID, Capitalism, and Class War: A Social and Political Chronology of the Pandemic.
A coup attempt led by Evgeny Prigozhin, the chief of the Russian Wagner mercenary force, collapsed in the evening hours of Saturday, local time.
Australia’s prominent role in the Ukraine conflict underscores the fact that the war is morphing into a global confrontation.
In one incident, an elderly imam was allegedly shot and killed, despite being unarmed and in detention. The military command and the government defended the conduct of the soldiers involved.
The starkest aspect of the meeting was that at an event ostensibly opposing war, not a word was said about the war that is underway in Ukraine.
The refusal to affiliate the IYSSE, based on entirely false claims, forms part of a broader crackdown on anti-war opposition amid the danger of a global conflagration.
The only challenge to ex-Labor parliamentarian Peter Garrett’s militaristic speech came from International Youth and Students for Social Equality member Morgan Peach.
“The price of food has increased a lot since last year. It affects our budget. We have a small amount we get from our job. Most of the time we have to go beyond our budget, and it’s not good, because we need to save our money.”
One attendee commented: “None of the discussion in the media on the war in Ukraine, or the rapidly moving preparations for military conflict with China, provides any serious explanation of how we’ve got to this point and the insane consequences for humanity.”
The ICFI’s May Day 2023 online rally: A milestone in the building of a global, working class movement against war
The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)’s tenth online May Day Rally held Sunday centred on two interconnected processes: the escalating US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine and the rapid growth of the international class struggle. The rally provided a political direction to growing opposition in the working class to imperialist war, social inequality, the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, the threat of fascism and all the evils of a crisis-ridden capitalism.
Macquarie University workers and students announce the formation of a rank-and-file committee to link their struggles against pay cutting, casualisation and intolerable workloads with other educators and workers across Australia and throughout the globe.
Two members of the newly-founded Macquarie University Rank-and-File Committee in Sydney, Australia explain why they established the committee.
The United Workers Union’s privileged position within the warehousing industry is based on its long record of collaboration with employers and government, suppressing wages, enforcing productivity measures, and ensuring there is no resistance to mass layoffs as the automation-driven restructuring drive continues.
According to Safe Work Australia, 69 workers were killed on the job between January 1 and June 22 this year, an average of one every 2.5 days.
With no public health measures in place, very low levels of vaccine-induced immunity, and a bubbling “variant soup,” ordinary people now confront an unending cycle of infection and reinfection.
Despite receiving 566 submissions, many from Long COVID sufferers and concerned scientists and doctors, the report minimalised the impact of this “mass disabling event.”
The first substantive policy of the new Labor government in Australia’s largest state is to prevent working people from getting tested to see if they have a potentially deadly illness.
“Hard fought gains are now being thrown away and responsibility for this rests with governments and senior health officials.”
Assange has only one option of appeal remaining within the British legal system and it could be rejected next week.
Lawyer Stephen Kenny warned: "If we don't have people telling us the truth like Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange, then we are going to be ignorant. Our democracy is at stake."
Stella Assange, wife of imprisoned Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange, spoke at a rally in Sydney yesterday morning demanding his immediate freedom.
“We need people like Julian, so we know what’s really going on in the world. Biden is trying to get a US journalist out of Russia, and he said, ‘Journalism is not a crime,’ so why hasn’t Julian been released?”
“The criminal ‘let it rip’ pandemic policies of governments—invariably enforced by the labour and trade union bureaucracies—have exposed the brutality of capitalism, and its readiness to sacrifice lives for corporate profit and private wealth accumulation.”
“The same contradictions and crisis of world capitalism are also propelling the working class into struggle, providing the basis for the building of an international anti-war movement.”
A mass network of interconnected rank-and-file committees can and must serve as the foundation for the fight for the abolition of capitalism and the establishment of a workers’ government based on a socialist program.
The ongoing persecution of Julian Assange is bound up with imperialist war, escalating online censorship and a broader turn to authoritarianism.
The SEP held an important meeting Sunday afternoon entitled: “After the NSW Elections—How to fight AUKUS, War & Austerity!”
The Liberal disaster in the seat of Aston increases the reliance of the capitalist class on the Labor Party, which is currently in office across the country, except for the small island state of Tasmania.
One worker said: “I think it’s a good idea to have an international movement for the working class against war and for democratic rights, for workers to unite, it makes sense.”
Among those who spoke out were victims of last year’s floods in Lismore, a regional city, where thousands of residents are still living in substandard accommodation more than a year after the floods.
In a blatant act of political censorship, the Socialist Equality Party has been deregistered. Nevertheless, the SEP will stand candidates in the federal election, if and when it is called, and conduct the broadest possible campaign for a genuine socialist alternative.
The working class must have a political voice, which the ruling class through its latest legislation is seeking to stifle. The opposition to the dictates of big business and its political servants needs to be guided by a socialist program that puts the social needs of working people—above all their health and lives—ahead of the private profits of the wealthy few. The SEP alone fights for this perspective.
Our party fights:
● For a scientific program to eradicate the coronavirus pandemic against the criminal, “herd immunity” policies of the ruling elite.
● For an end to militarism and war.
● Against all forms of nationalism and racism and for the unity of the international working-class.
● For the social rights of the working class, including quality, free education and healthcare for all, and a decent, full-time job with permanent conditions for those able to work.
● For a workers’ government and socialism, that is a society in which the working-class democratically controls the wealth that it produces, not the banks and the billionaires.
Fill out this form to apply to join the SEP as an electoral member. The membership fee is $5 (waged) or $2 (unwaged/student).
The program of the Socialist Equality Party is of a principled, not a conjunctural and pragmatic, character. It is based on an analysis of the crisis of world capitalism and an assimilation of the strategic revolutionary experiences of the working class and the international socialist movement.
The Historical and International Foundations of the Socialist Equality Party was adopted by the Founding Congress of the SEP in Sydney in 2010. It traces the historical events and strategic experiences of the working class and Marxist movement spanning more than a century.
Membership in the Socialist Equality Party is based on agreement with its Statement of Principles. The principles of the SEP incorporate the essential experiences of the revolutionary upheavals of the twentieth century and the corresponding struggle waged by Marxists for the program of world socialist revolution.
The lectures, now all available online, reviewed some of the fundamental lessons of the protracted struggle by the Trotskyist movement for socialist internationalism.
Crisp was a founding member of the Socialist Labour League, the forerunner of the SEP, in 1972, and has played a leading role in the Trotskyist movement in Australia for more than four decades. She was elected National Secretary at the Fifth National Congress of the SEP in 2020.
Max was elected to the position of assistant national secretary at the 2020 SEP National Congress. He writes regularly for the WSWS on issues facing asylum seekers and their inhumane treatment at the hands of Australian governments. He completed a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Newcastle, majoring in Aboriginal Studies.
Authorised by Cheryl Crisp for the Socialist Equality Party, Suite 906, 185 Elizabeth Street, Sydney, NSW, 2000.
