Tag Archives: Communism

Migrant Workers and Other Leftists March in Sydney for Socialistic China

7 October 2019, Sydney: The “Stand With Red China” demonstration held on the NSW Labour Day public holiday hailed the 70th Anniversary of the 1949 Chinese Revolution and condemned the pro-colonial, anti-communist protests in Hong Kong.

Migrant Workers and Other Leftists
March in Sydney for Socialistic China

7 October 2019: Left-wing supporters of socialistic China marched through the centre of Sydney today to “Stand With Red China.” The demonstration held on the Labour Day holiday hailed the 70th anniversary of the founding of the socialistic Peoples Republic of China (PRC). Noting that, “A Strong Socialistic China is Good for Working Class People in Australia and the World” the call-out for the action urged to “Condemn Hong Kong’s Pro-Colonial Rich Kid Rioters.”    

Today’s rally pushed back in the face of an intense Cold War anti-communist, China-bashing drive by the Australian ruling class and their media. Australia’s entire ruling class media – from that owned by the right-wing Murdoch family tycoons to that owned by billionaire Channel 7 owner, Kerry Stokes, to the ABC and SBS – owned and controlled as they are by the Australian rich people’s regime – have been running daily news articles attacking Red China whether it be via insinuations about computer hacking, lying claims of human rights abuses or even blaming the Belt and Road Initiative promoted by China for declining tiger populations! Australia’s big business and government-owned media have, of course, also strongly backed the anti-communist, anti-PRC riots in Hong Kong. So has right wing prime minister Scott Morrison along with the rest of his government, with the ALP and the Greens taking the same stance. Today, Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, again spoke out fervently on the side of the right wing opposition in Hong Kong, saying that she is “very concerned” by the methods used by the Hong Kong authorities to protect the city from the most violent anti-PRC forces and demanding that the Hong Kong government approved by Beijing “address the genuine concerns” of the rioters. Yesterday, hard right Liberal MP, Tim Wilson, even marched with the anti-PRC forces in Hong Kong itself. Previously a director of the extreme conservative, Institute of Public Affairs, which later spoke out for the “rights” of vile racist media commentator, Andrew Bolt, Wilson had during the Occupy Melbourne protests called for water cannon to be used against protesters:

“Walked past Occupy Melbourne protest, all people who think freedom of speech = freedom 2 b heard, time wasters … send in the water cannons.”

New Matilda, 26 April 2015, https://newmatilda.com/2015/04/26/12-times-conservative-commentators-were-more-outrageous-scott-mcintyre-and-kept-their/

But of course, pro-colonial, anti-communist protests are the type of “freedom of speech” that people like Tim Wilson and the Australian government really love!

Members of the Hong Kong, anti-China opposition carry American flags and call for Donald Trump’s re-election at a protest rally in Hong Kong. The anti-PRC opposition are a right-wing, procolonial, movement.
With the traffic within the street, it’d be terribly onerous for you to be a cheapest levitra safe and effective driver. The MGF reacts in skeletal muscles but icks.org levitra uk doesn’t pass through the blood stream. If erections troubles are sign of poor lifestyle habits, then make changes canada viagra sales in your routine, accordingly. It is mostly used for premature ejaculation problems and had to viagra the pill go through trauma.

Yet in the face of this anti-Red China tide, around 60 people participated in today’s pro-PRC march and others joined in on the spot at the final rallying point. The majority of demonstrators were mobilised to the action by the Australian Chinese Workers Association and by Trotskyist Platform. However, there were many leftists participating today from a range of backgrounds, including several people who are not part of any particular left-wing group.

The “Stand With Red China” demonstration in Sydney held today on the Labour Day public holiday.

The Australian Chinese Workers Association contingent – mostly working class women – carried the red, five star flag of the PRC and had placards in Chinese reading: “Australian Chinese Workers Association Congratulates the Peoples Republic of China on the Celebrations of the 70th Anniversary of its Founding.” Trotskyist Platform supporters carried many placards including ones that stated: “Defend Socialistic China Against Intimidation by Capitalist Powers. Down with the Capitalist Australian State’s Military Build Up That Targets Red China!  U.S., Australian Militaries: Stay Out of the South China Sea!” and “Defend Socialistic China Against Imperialism! Resist Meddling in Hong Kong By Colonial Powers!” Our banner, which headed the march, read: “WORKING CLASS PEOPLE IN AUSTRALIA & THE WORLD: STAND WITH SOCIALISTIC CHINA!”, while calling to, “DEFEAT HONG KONG’S PRO-COLONIAL, ANTI-COMMUNIST MOVEMENT!

At a couple of points during the demonstration, a few anti-communists, riding in an expensive looking black van decked in “Hong Kong independence” slogans, made a pre-planned attempt to use a sound system to suppress the voice of the pro-Red China demonstrators. However, prompt action by alert, pro-PRC socialist activists forced them to retreat.

Throughout the march, demonstrators enthusiastically chanted, “P-R-C, Is Fighting Poverty!” (see: https://youtu.be/7RxhU2ZhPDQ), “Public Housing for You and Me, Just Like in the PRC” and “One RED China” (see: https://youtu.be/erNt9jIjZd8). We also chanted and sung, “One, Two, Three, Four, Socialism is What We’re For; Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Defend the Chinese Workers State.”

Pro-PRC activists listen intently as Trotskyist Platform chairwoman Sarah Fitzenmeyer delivers her speech at today’s action commemorating the 70th anniversary of the founding of socialistic China.

One of the main speakers at the event was Trotskyist Platform chairwoman, Sarah Fitzenmeyer. Here are some of the points that she made in her speech:

“Seventy years ago a massive revolution by the toiling masses of China won them a momentous victory. The 1949 Revolution created a workers state, the Peoples Republic of China, a workers state that has achieved a miracle in the alleviation of poverty, a feat unmatched in size and speed in all of known human history….

Yet this inspirational socialistic rule in China is under grave threat. Ever since the 1949 Revolution, some of the overthrown landlords and capitalists and all the imperialist powers have worked together to try and destroy this workers state. Under this pressure, in the late 1970s, the Chinese government began market reforms that allowed a degree of capitalist intrusion. Although this was in some cases beneficial, the reforms have led to an increase in inequality. Dangerously, there are now capitalists in China who demand more and more rights to exploit. However, the Chinese working class masses are resisting them.

The masses worked so hard to achieve liberation in 1949 and to build a socialistic society and they certainly are not about to give any of this up now. Through the peoples’ efforts, China remains a socialistic state where public ownership continues to be the backbone of her economy. Today all of China’s major banks, her major infrastructure developers, her oil and gas sectors, the bulk of her steel and cement industry, her aircraft, ship and train manufacturers, her ports, shipping lines and airlines, most of her mines and even key consumer manufacturing sectors are publicly owned.   

But the capitalist powers’ Cold War against socialistic China is getting more intense every day. The U.S. and Australian militaries are sending warships thousands of kilometres from their shores to the South China Sea in a desperate attempt to provoke China. Then there is Trump’s trade war. And let’s not forget the propaganda war. Every day brings a new hyped up anti-China story in Australia’s mainstream media. This is not simply a case of Australia’s rulers following their U.S. counterparts as the capitalist ruling classes in both countries share precisely the same goal of undermining, in every way they can, socialistic rule. Let’s not forget that the Australian regime banned Huawei even before the U.S. did. Recently, a high-level Chinese embassy delegation correctly identified Australia’s rulers as pioneers of the global anti-China campaign.

It was through combined military, economic and political pressure that the imperialist powers destroyed the former Soviet workers states. Let us make sure they are never able to do this to the inspirational workers state of socialistic China. If capitalist restoration were to take place in China it would reverse most of the huge strides made in poverty alleviation. Over the last 15 years, China has had by far the world’s fastest growing wages. They have been rising by on average some 10 to 15% per year. But if capitalist counterrevolution were to occur, China would be turned into one giant sweatshop for the mass exploitation of workers. That would allow greedy bosses to then drive down the conditions of workers here too. In contrast, if socialistic rule in China is able to grow stronger and stronger that will be good for the working class and leftists here. We can point to China’s drive to build public housing to motivate the struggle for a massive increase in public housing here. We can point to the public ownership of banks in China to strengthen our own campaign for the nationalisation of the banks where profits would be used for all rather than for the filthy coffers of the very few. We will be able to point to the successes of socialistic rule in China to motivate the struggle for socialist revolution here. That is why Trotskyist Platform calls for the working class and oppressed of Australia and the world to mobilise now so we can defend the Chinese workers state.

We say: U.S. and Australian militaries get out of the South China Sea! Stop the Australian regime’s military build-up against China! We also stand by those Chinese international students who are being so vilified by the Australian media and government alike for bravely speaking out in support of the PRC. We say the “right to free speech” must include the right to support socialistic countries like the Peoples Republic of China. 

The imperialists’ latest favourite anti-Red China force is the anti-communist movement in China’s Hong Kong. The whole Australian mainstream media is backing this violent movement. So is Donald Trump and Scott Morrison. So you know this is not a progressive movement! The pro-colonial rioters in Hong Kong carry the old colonial flag of Britain. They say they are for democracy. Yet in 1967, the British colonial regime that they hail massacred and killed around 30 Hong Kong trade unionists and leftists when they rebelled against the horrors of colonial rule. And then today’s pro-colonial rioters have the hide to complain about supposed police brutality in today’s Hong Kong….

So who are these rioters in Hong Kong? They represent the interests of the upper class and upper middle class who fear that if socialistic influence from China is brought into Hong Kong they will be forced to share their wealth with the working class. Hong Kong is one of the world’s most unequal societies. And these rich kid rioters want to keep it that way! They are being backed and funded by billionaire tycoons like Jimmy Lai, a right-wing media mogul who is very much like Rupert Murdoch and his media company is helping fuel the riots….

Unfortunately, however, some people from the not so rich sections of the middle class also back the opposition movement. That’s because China and the Hong Kong government have agreed to keep Hong Kong capitalist and that capitalism is only leading to unaffordable housing and high prices for everything. That’s why Beijing must move to confiscate the wealth of the Jimmy Lais and other greedy tycoons and bring the means of production in Hong Kong into public ownership. That would take away the key source of backing for the rioters. Moreover, when the economy is in public hands and property speculators are brought to heel, housing can finally be made affordable, decent public housing can finally be provided for the hundreds of thousands of people living in the terrible so-called coffin homes and the long working hours of Hong Kong workers can be reduced with no loss in pay. If socialism is brought into Hong Kong it would be very popular with the masses. And even some of the middle class youth now in opposition will start to change their minds. For one China, under one socialist system!

Knowing all of this let’s now focus on what we need to do here. And what we can do here, matters a lot. The right-wing, pro-colonial rioters in Hong Kong draw a lot of their strength from the West, including lots of funding from governments, backing from the media and support on the streets from anti-communists. We need to counteract this! We must mobilise on the streets to demand: U.S., Australia and Britain stop your support and funding for anti-China groups in Hong Kong! Stop your anti-communist interference! By mobilising on the streets to oppose the anti-communist movement in Hong Kong we will give encouragement to the pro-Peoples Republic of China masses there.

Sisters and brothers, every day the anti-communist Cold War against China is getting more and more intense. The last Cold War against the Soviet Union was won by the imperialists. Let us make sure that they do not win this war as well!

… So, my comrades, my sisters and brothers, let’s work hard to defend the Chinese workers state as part of our fight for a socialist Australia and, one fine day, a beautiful kind communist world.”

STAND WITH SOCIALISTIC CHINA!

DEFEAT HONG KONG’S PRO-COLONIAL,
ANTI-COMMUNIST MOVEMENT!

WORKING CLASS PEOPLE IN AUSTRALIA & THE WORLD:
STAND WITH
SOCIALISTIC CHINA!

30 September 2019: Tomorrow marks the seventieth anniversary of the biggest revolution in human history. In 1949, hundreds of millions of exploited rural workers, poor peasants and urban workers rose up under the leadership of Mao Zedong’s Communist Party of China (CPC) to free themselves from the tyranny of China’s capitalists and landlords and from the imperialist overlords that were crushing China’s people. The revolution not only liberated the country from Western imperialist subjugation but brought the agricultural land, banks, mines and key industries under public ownership. The resulting socialistic system of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) greatly improved the lives of China’s long suffering masses. Before the founding of the PRC, China had been one of the most backward countries in the world. Tens upon tens of millions of people perished in the famines and floods that struck the country some seven to ten times in the fifty years prior to 1949. Average life expectancy was under 35 years. In a true miracle in social progress, by the time that China began its market reforms in 1978 – marking the end of the Mao era – the life expectancy of the most populous country in the world had been practically doubled to over 67 years (despite a blip during the disastrous though well intentioned plan to rapidly industrialize China during the late 1950s’ Great Leap Forward). Today, under continued socialistic rule, China’s life expectancy is just a few years from catching up to the richest countries – having reached 77 years. By another measure of people’s health, Healthy Life Expectancy – the years that a person can expect to live in good health – the UN’s World Health Organization Monitoring Health for the SDGs report (see Annex 2, Part 1 https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/324835/9789241565707-eng.pdf ) shows that China’s level has now even overtaken that of the United States.

Those who have gained most from the 1949 Anti-Capitalist Revolution have been Chinese women. Prior to the Revolution, a large proportion of Chinese women had their feet bound and were subjected to forced marriage, while married women were secluded in their homes and fields by bullying husbands and mothers-in-law. Through 70 years of socialistic rule, the position of Chinese women has not only advanced far past comparable countries that remained under capitalist rule – like India and Indonesia – but has arguably overtaken that of the most developed countries. In 2017, women made up 52.4 % of all public servants newly-recruited by China’s central government. Women also make up 52.5% of students in China’s higher education.

To be sure, while the masses in China now have social and economic power, the political administration of the country is monopolised by a somewhat privileged, bureaucratic layer. The guerilla war nature of the 1949 Revolution meant that it is a narrow layer of CPC leaders who are in political control of the country. Nevertheless, these leaders, whatever their individual intentions, still have to administer the country on behalf of the masses. Moreover, the pressure working class people in China can exert upon government policy is far greater than the influence that the toiling classes have in so-called “democratic” capitalist countries like Australia, India, the Philippines and the U.S. However, the ruling bureaucracy in China, while developing the socialistic economy within the country, does little to support the working class struggle for socialism within the currently capitalist countries. Instead, CPC leaders try – in vain – to soften the clash between the capitalist powers and socialistic China in the futile hope of achieving “amicable co-existence with imperialism.” In the late 1970s, under the incessant pressure of the capitalist world and the reality of capitalist control of the most developed economies, the then Deng Xiaoping-led CPC brought in market reforms that allowed a degree of capitalist intrusion. Although the resulting collaboration with capitalist firms from developed countries was in some cases beneficial in that it helped China to learn new technologies, the reforms also led to an increase in inequality and the dangerous growth of capitalist forces. Today China has a private capitalist sector and even some  billionaires (although the proportion of such billionaires to China’s huge overall population is quite small relative to the U.S. and Australia). However, unlike in the capitalist countries, it is not the tycoons that run China and China is not run for their sake. Put another way, while Australian governments kowtow to and are scared to cross the likes of billionaires Andrew Forrest, Anthony Pratt, Kerry Stokes, the Murdoch family and Gina Rinehart, in Red China it is completely the other way around. Noted capitalists in China, like China’s richest man Jack Ma, are scared of the PRC state and many say that he only retired from his company at a very young age earlier this month because of the pressure of the PRC’s push to increase control over private firms (https://www.voanews.com/east-asia-pacific/have-retired-jack-ma-alibaba- steered-away-china-communist-partys-clutches). Indeed, many a greedy capitalist tycoon has been jailed or even executed in China and many more have had their ill-gotten assets confiscated. The PRC remains a workers state – albeit an endangered one where the small capitalist class there is constantly lobbying for greater “freedoms” and “rights” which, once the mystifying idealism of these terms is decoded, means the unrestricted right to exploit workers that business owners enjoy in capitalist countries and that they currently also have the “right” to in the Hong Kong region of China. The continuing socialistic nature of the PRC is shown by the fact that all of her biggest ten companies remain under public ownership as well as some 85% of her top hundred firms.

That the PRC remains a workers state is apparent when one contrasts her attitude to the poor to that of the capitalist Australian regime. Here, the government of Scott Morrison cannot think of more ways to attack the rights of people on low incomes. After previous governments, with bipartisan support, rolled out schemes to subject, firstly people in NT Aboriginal communities, and then people in three other heavily Aboriginal areas to “compulsory income management” where unemployed people lose control of how they can spend large proportions of their meagre welfare payments, the conservative government now wants to put 80% of the payments of all welfare recipients under such a regime. To further stigmatise the poor, the same government is also trying to introduce mandatory drug testing for all welfare recipients. For their part, Liberal and Labor state governments alike continue to sell off public housing making renting for low income people still more unaffordable. Meanwhile, the mainstream media regularly run documentaries that insult and blame for their plight unemployed workers as well as tenants in public housing. By contrast, it would be completely unheard of for PRC state media to run documentaries mocking the poor or blaming them for their own position. Instead, PRC mainstream media very frequently run highly sympathetic stories about the poor that explain how their plight is caused by factors beyond their control. Meanwhile, PRC leaders, like president Xi Jinping, go out of their way to meet and often visit the homes of low income people on just about every regional trip that they make as well as during key public holiday periods like Chinese New Year. A cynic could call that simply good politicking. Perhaps, yet it shows the direction that the political winds blow in the PRC that Xi and Co. feel the necessity to even do this. Here, Morrison and Co. don’t think that they even need to pretend to respect, let alone listen to the concerns of those most in need. Just who Australian politicians do want and feel they need to listen to was seen in Morrison’s recent trip to the U.S. During his extravagant state dinner with U.S. president Trump, there rubbing shoulders with Morrison were most of Australia’s most prominent and richest tycoons including Anthony Pratt (Australia’s richest person), Gina Rinehart (Australia’s second richest billionaire), Kerry Stokes (owner of Channel 7), Andrew Forrest and Lachlan Murdoch (son of Rupert). We can tell you that if a Chinese leader were to fraternise with tycoons like that over a lavish dinner there would certainly be a national outcry and they would likely be purged from office! More important than the optics is that the PRC government continues to massively increase the amount of public housing for her low income people. From 2008 to 2017 alone, the PRC provided 64 million additional public housing dwellings in urban areas! As a result, while the proportion of people with access to public housing in Australia’s urban areas has fallen to just one in every thirty households, in the PRC’s urban areas around one in four people now are living in one of its various forms of public housing. Therefore, even though China’s per capita income is still six times less than resource rich Australia’s, walk through any Chinese city and you will see a far lower proportion of homeless people than you see sleeping the streets of Sydney. Most importantly, while Morrison searches for more ways to cut people off welfare payments, the main focus of the PRC over the last several years – one that has dominated her political life – has been a drive to lift every person in the country out of extreme poverty by the end of 2020. And she is well on track to achieve this! Over just the last six years, the PRC has lifted over 82 million people out of extreme poverty.

THE GRAVE THREATS FACING RED CHINA

Despite the terrific social progress made over the last 70 years of socialistic rule, the PRC workers state is under great danger. Ever since China’s 1949 Revolution, some of the overthrown landlords and capitalists – many of whom fled to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Western countries to plot their comeback – and all  the imperialist powers have worked together to try and destroy the PRC workers state. Within a year after the formation of the PRC, the U.S., British and Australian imperialists and their South Korean allies invaded Red China’s neighbour and socialistic ally, North Korea, to try and crush the workers state there and threaten the PRC. The following year, the U.S. came within a whisker of unleashing nuclear weapons against the north-eastern parts of China after PRC troops heroically entered the Korean War in defence of their socialistic ally. Then, for more than two decades after the 1949 Revolution, China was subjected to sanctions and diplomatic isolation by most of the most powerful countries in the world.

The PRC’s diplomatic isolation only ended – and trade and investment exchanges with the richer countries started – after revolutionary leader Mao sold part of his communist soul in the early 1970s and agreed to join with the U.S. in its drive against the then socialistic USSR. The capitalist powers were willing to go easy on the PRC for a period while they worked on destroying the most powerful workers state at the time, the USSR. By lining up with imperialism against the USSR and her socialistic Cuban and Vietnamese allies in key hot spots of the Cold War – including in Angola, Afghanistan, Cambodia and China’s own border with Vietnam – the PRC leaders made some contribution to the counterrevolutionary destruction of the USSR. Apart from being downright treacherous to the cause of socialism, this policy pursued by Mao and Deng alike was in the end a failure even in terms of its stated intention: to reduce imperialist hostility to China. With the USSR out of the way, China quickly became the main strategic target of imperialism. And with the capitalist powers no longer having to worry about having to simultaneously squeeze both the PRC and the giant USSR at the same time, the pressure that they have been able to exert on the PRC is all the greater.

Today, the U.S. is building up its forces in the Western Pacific against Red China. It is sending its navy thousands upon thousands of kilometres from its own shores to provocatively sail through China-claimed waters in the South China Sea – not far from China’s mainland. The British and Australian ruling classes are assisting in all this. Australia is undergoing a rapid military buildup aimed against the PRC and her North Korean ally. To the same end, Australia also hosts 2,500 U.S. troops in Darwin. One should understand that the Australian rulers are joining the war drive against China not simply because they are “following the U.S.” Australia’s capitalist ruling class share the same reasons for wanting to destroy socialistic rule in China as their American counterparts. For one, these capitalist rulers understand that they can grab even more profits from turning China into a huge sweatshop of exploited labour than they can by selling exports to her. Secondly, by providing infrastructure to other developing countries on generous terms and by engaging in mutually beneficial relationships with them, the PRC is undermining the ability of both U.S. and Australian imperialism to super-exploit their former colonies and current neo-colonies – like in Australia’s case PNG, East Timor, Fiji, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands. Perhaps most importantly, capitalist powers the world over know that the continued successes of socialistic rule in the world’s most populous country can encourage the masses in other developing countries to strive for socialism; and in the long term could inspire the exploited working classes in their own countries to topple them from power.

It is not only through exerting military pressure that the capitalist powers seek to undermine socialistic rule in China. They constantly badger China to privatize her socialistic state-owned enterprises and favour her capitalist private sector. One of the features of Trump’s trade war against China is that he has demanded that the PRC stop supporting her state-owned enterprises. Apart from being an implicit recognition that these socialistic enterprises are the key to China’s economic success, this push by the Washington regime is also in some part a conscious attempt to weaken socialistic rule in China. Meanwhile, all the capitalist powers and their media are waging an intensifying propaganda war against the PRC. Over the last few months, not a day can go by without the Australian mainstream media having a “new” story attacking Red China. This can range from hyped up accusations of Chinese “interference” in Australian politics  to claims of Chinese cyber-hacking to completely bogus reports of China detaining large numbers of Uyghur people in Xinjiang to totally distorted claims about the PRC “taking way the sovereignty” of other developing countries.

Perhaps the most dangerous of the methods that the capitalist powers use against socialistic China is their backing of various anti-communist forces within – or in exile from – China. Their latest favourite anti-Red China force is the anti-PRC movement in China’s Hong Kong region. The last several months has seen large protests in Hong Kong against PRC influence in the region. The movement is very violent and a hard core of masked “protesters” have brutally assaulted pro-PRC Hong Kong residents, vandalised subway stations and shops and attacked police officers with firebombs, sticks and other weapons. Hong Kong’s economy has nosedived.

The Hong Kong anti-PRC forces are openly pro-colonial. They carry not only British and American flags but the old Union Jack flag of the British colonial administration of Hong Kong . They are even holding U.S.- flag waving rallies appealing to the hard right, racist U.S. president Donald Trump to openly intervene even more into Hong Kong. Indeed, the U.S. and other capitalist powers are already fervently backing and supporting the pro-colonial movement. The U.S. government’s notorious National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the body that helps to organise U.S. interference operations abroad – for example, backing anti-communist Cuban groups and components of the right-wing Venezuelan opposition – openly funds Hong Kong anti-PRC groups. The NED’s own website shows that in just 2018 alone, the body – which was set up to carry out partially in the open some of the functions that the CIA used to do completely covertly – gave $90,000 to the Hong Kong Justice Center and $155,000 and $200,000 to the U.S.-based groups Solidarity Center and the National Democratic Institute for their work in Hong Kong. Yet this is only the out in the open funding! Evidence has emerged that the NED is also funding six of the key groups in the Civil Human Rights Front – the outfit that organised the first mass protests.

The U.S. also maintains a massive consulate in Hong Kong with a staff of 1,000 people – many of whom are devoted to advising and directing the protests and riots. On August 6, there was a huge scandal in Hong Kong after some media there showed photographs of Julie Eadeh, chief of the US consulate’s political unit, meeting Hong Kong anti-PRC leaders Martin Lee and Anson Chan and then later in the day meeting the best known figure in the anti-communist movement, Joshua Wong. Yet it is not only through such covert actions and funding that the Western powers have buttressed the anti-PRC movement. Just six days ago, Trump used a high profile speech at the UN to attack China over Hong Kong, effectively throwing his weight behind the anti-PRC rioters. This racist bigot who locks up Central American refugee children in horrific conditions at the U.S. border, who authorized even more fearsome bombs to be used in U.S. operations in Afghanistan and the Middle East and who ordered the U.S. military to desist from calling off bombing raids in these theatres of war even when the chances of “accidentally” killing civilians is very high, demanded that the PRC honor its commitment to “Hong Kong’s freedom, legal system, and democratic ways of life.” The next day, the US House of Representatives’ committee on foreign affairs and its Senate equivalent approved a bipartisan bill that will pave the way for U.S. sanctions on Hong Kong if the U.S. determines that Hong Kong is not autonomous enough – in other words, sanctions will be imposed if the PRC moves to bring socialist influence into Hong Kong or if the pro-Beijing Hong Kong government stands up to the pro-colonial rioters. Tellingly, the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act” stipulates – in a clear reference to some of the Hong Kong media’s  exposure of the chief of the  US consulate’s political unit meeting with Hong Kong anti-PRC leaders – that the US State Department should knock back visa applications of Hong Kong journalists working in the territory’s [rather few] pro- Beijing media organisations should they too harshly criticise in a targeted way U.S. diplomatic personnel and Hong Kong “democracy activists.” This is a clear attempt by these supposed believers in “democracy” and “free speech” to silence the voices of pro-PRC journalists.

Six weeks earlier, right-wing Australian prime minister Morrison made a, thinly veiled, statement in support of the right-wing, pro-colonial forces in Hong Kong, provoking a strong rebuke from China’s ambassador to Australia, Cheng Jingye. In comments similar in content to the ones Trump would make at the UN later, Morrison ostentatiously lectured Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam to “listen carefully” to the anti-PRC opposition, by which he means, back down to their demands! Labor’s foreign affairs spokeswoman, Penny Wong,  echoed this stance. It is striking how Western capitalist governments  and politicians are quick to attack the pro-Beijing Hong Kong authorities for allegedly “heavy-handed” repression when they have been happy to accept far harsher repression elsewhere. While the Hong Kong government has thus far not imposed a curfew or even stopped people from holding anti-government protests despite the extreme violence of the anti-PRC rioters, the capitalist Indian government is in the midst of a two month-long crackdown against its oppressed Kashmiri population which has not only involved hundreds of thousands of Indian troops occupying Kashmir and detaining thousands of opposition activists for no particular actions but has seen the Indian regime impose a harsh curfew and the cutting off of all telephone, mobile phone and internet communications. Yet, of course, there has been no condemnation of the pro-Western, Indian government by any U.S. or Australian leader.

Also throwing their weight behind the anti-China movement in Hong Kong has been the entire mainstream media in Australia and other Western countries. Junking even the pretense of being objective and neutral in their reporting, these media outlets have given blanket coverage to the anti-PRC mobilisations while giving very little or absolutely no reports of the, sometimes hundreds of thousands strong, pro-PRC rallies in Hong Kong. Anti-PRC politicians and activists are given large amounts of air time while the voices of those who support the PRC are rarely heard. Meanwhile, alongside showing Hong Kong police actions out of context to make them appear brutal, the Australian media edit out footage of the cruelest acts of violence by the Hong Kong rioters whom they lionise as “pro-democracy” activists. By contrast when trade unionists from the CFMEU or other unions defend their picket lines here or merely swear at greedy bosses, the Australian media don’t hesitate to call them “thugs.” And when anti-fascists activists defend themselves and multi-racial communities from extreme far-right activists, the Australian media label them as “violent” or “aggressive.” Can you imagine the hysterical denunciations that Australia’s big business and government-owned media would unleash if trade unionists or anti-racists here started doing what the Hong Kong rioters are doing today: like kidnapping and torturing journalists, bashing people with opposing views and beating police officers with sticks?

CAPITALISM VERSUS SOCIALISM,
THE CAPITALIST CLASS VERSUS THE WORKING CLASS

So what is this anti-China movement in Hong Kong that is so energetically supported by all the capitalist powers and their media. To understand what is driving this movement we first need to step back and look at what Hong Kong is. Britain stole Hong Kong during its brutal colonial, Opium Wars against China in the mid-nineteenth century. Hong Kong prospered as a base from where British drug dealers organized their pushing of large quantities of opium into China. Furthermore, because of its great natural harbour, its advantageous location that makes it ideal to serve as a conduit connecting sea lanes from Europe, America and Australia to China and its small population, Hong Kong grew wealthy as a trade and financial centre – much like Singpaore. This was especially in the first couple of decades after China began to open up to trade and investment exchanges with the outside world in the late 1970s. As in Singapore, the wealth of this enclave is thus somewhat artificially derived in the sense that it is based on the city playing an intermediary role leaching a part of the wealth produced in the much more populous neighboring region.

As a place of laissez faire capitalism on steroids, where the big end of town faces little regulation, low taxes and almost unlimited rights to exploit and speculate, Hong Kong is also one of the most unequal societies in the world. Its average income is much higher than on the mainland but it has a greater proportion of people living in extreme poverty and cruelly inadequate housing conditions. Hong Kong workers are subjected to very long working hours and are often bullied by their bosses. On the other hand, Hong Kong has a very high proportion of billionaires – much higher than in the mainland PRC. Moreover, it also has a very large upper-middle class consisting of professionals and analysts working in the finance industry, investment, trade and real estate. As a result, one of out every seven people in Hong Kong is a millionaire. Therefore when the British finally handed Hong Kong back to China in 1997, Hong Kong’s large number of rich people were fearful that the socialistic PRC would eventually curb their wealth and power.

As part of the deal returning Hong Kong to China, Beijing, wrongly, agreed to maintain Hong Kong as a capitalist enclave for fifty years. This reassured many Hong Kong capitalists but not all. Many took their wealth and left – including to Australia. However, when earlier this year, the Hong Kong government under prodding from Beijing put forward a bill that would make it easier to extradite people suspected of serious crimes – including economic crimes – from Hong Kong to the mainland this triggered the worst fears of Hong Kong’s rich that Beijing would eventually move to curb Hong Kong’s laissez faire capitalism and compel them to hand over part of their wealth and power to Hong Kong’s working class and poor. So they erupted in rage at the proposed new law and at the threat of “interference” from Beijing.

Not surprisingly then it has been sections of Hong Kong’s capitalist class that have organised the movement. A key figure in the anti-PRC riots is Jimmy Lai Chee-ying, the billionaire tycoon who owns one of Hong Kong’s biggest media outlets, Next Media Group. The group runs the tabloid Apple Daily as well as several online news sites. Over the last few years, Jimmy Lai has donated huge amounts of money to anti-PRC political parties and NGOs. Today, his right-wing Apple Daily and his other outlets have been actively fomenting and even organising the anti-PRC riots. Even those other Hong Kong tycoons that have called for “calm” have tacitly been pressing the anti-PRC movement’s demands. Thus, Hong Kong’s richest man Li Ka-Shing, in an ambiguous statement, said that “both sides should try to put their feet in another’s shoes.” Yet while calling for harmony, Li pointedly called for Hong Kong’s Beijing-backed government to “show humanity” and show a “way out” for the protesters. Read between the lines and it is apparent that this shipping tycoon wants the Hong Kong government to accede to the rioters demands while urging the latter not to stage any actions that would provoke Beijing into sending in its forces and thus threatening Hong Kong’s capitalist system.

Even more fervent in joining the anti-PRC movement than Hong Kong tycoons have been Hong Kong’s upper-middle class. Since they have less means to pick up and move their capital than the ultra-rich and are less secure in their privileged financial position, the fanaticism of their fear of socialism is even greater than the tycoons’. And as we said, there are a lot of these upper-middle class people in the somewhat artificial region that is Hong Kong. There are over one million millionaires in the small region – which notably is about the maximum size of the protest movement.

The anti-PRC movement has been able to draw in less affluent sections of the middle class too – especially the youth. Although these latter types are much better off than Hong Kong’s working class and poor, the city is so expensive and housing is so unaffordable that young professionals and middle class university students feel squeezed. These people, unlike the tycoons and richer layers of the middle class whose agenda dominates the movement, have legitimate concerns. However, they wrongly blame Beijing for their problems. This is partly because they are swayed by Hong Kong’s largely anti-Beijing media and partly because they see the pro-Beijing government doing little to alleviate their plight. Yet the latter occurs precisely because the Hong Kong regional government and Beijing maintain Hong Kong’s capitalist system. Should Beijing actually move to bring the socialistic system into Hong Kong many of the middle class youth now opposing the PRC would benefit, including through more affordable housing and through more secure and less stressful employment. Another factor in pushing middle class youth into opposing the PRC is that in recent years Hong Kong’s economy has slowed – in good part because the rapid development of mainland Chinese ports and cities has seen Hong Kong eclipsed as a trading centre and port city. Since they know that Hong Kong’s economy has been performing worse since the handover back to Beijing, these youth look back favourably to the colonial days. Yet while Hong Kong’s ultra-rich and upper-middle class families tend to be united against Beijing, recent events in Hong Kong have split less rich middle class families along generational lines. Middle class parents who have experienced all the repression, humiliation and racism of British colonial rule are angry that their children could go to rallies carrying the British colonial flag.

Undoubtedly a small number of Hong Kong’s poor and working class have also joined the protests. With from a quarter to half a million Hong Kong residents living in horrific “coffin homes” – many so small that they are not able to even extend their legs – Hong Kong’s poor have a lot to be angry about. Yet even the Western media have had to admit that this is largely a middle class movement. When the smaller of the territory’s two union federations, the Western-backed Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions tried to call protest “general strikes” in recent months they have been notable flops, with few workers taking part other than for some relatively higher-paid workers like teachers. Moreover, it is important to understand that all pro-capitalist movements have always been able to draw in some layers of the less affluent middle class and some sections of even the working class masses. But their reactionary, pro-capitalist character is defined by their agenda and by which class is driving the protests. And it is definitely sections of the capitalist class and large parts of the upper-middle class who are driving the anti-PRC movement. Thus, when the extradition bill was first put forward it was Hong Kong’s capitalist business owners that led the charge against it. They understood that the law would allow for extradition of people for economic crimes to the mainland. Beijing wants to be able to do this to catch corrupt capitalists fleeing to Hong Kong. Yet Hong Kong capitalists know that in the mainland the right of capitalists to exploit is constrained and many end up facing repression and having their assets confiscated – often after popular pressure from China’s masses (which is often expressed through social media chat sites). A particular incident that scared them was the seizure by PRC authorities two years ago of greedy Chinese billionaire Xiao Jianhua from a Hong Kong hotel. Xiao is now in detention in the mainland facing trial. The bank that he owned, Baoshang Bank – one of the rare privately-owned banks in China – has been confiscated and brought into public ownership. All this is wonderful news for the working class masses. But it is terrifying for the capitalist exploiters. Hong Kong business bosses and their overseas counterparts conducting operations in the territory fear this could happen to them. Adding to their fears, the proposed extradition bill included an ordinance that would allow the freezing or confiscation of the suspects’ assets. Thus, virtually the entire Hong Kong capitalist class initially opposed the bill. This included even the two pro-business parties that are considered accepting of Hong Kong’s integration into China – the Business and Professionals Alliance and the Liberal Party. The Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce warned against any update to the city’s existing extradition laws. Meanwhile, the proposed new laws were openly denounced by the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong which stated that the new law would damage the city’s reputation as a “secure haven for international business.” Under this pressure, the Hong Kong government harmfully backed down a little and removed some of the economic crimes that people could be extradited for. As a result, some capitalists moderated their opposition to the laws. But others, including the American Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong continued to oppose the bill. Meanwhile, the fears of socialist influence that the extradition bill triggered amongst the upper-middle class has continued to loom large even after Carrie Lam capitulated to the rioters and withdrew the bill.

However, the most fervent sections of the protesters – and especially their imperialist backers – don’t simply want to prevent the PRC’s socialistic system coming to Hong Kong. They want to eject this system from the mainland as well. These people must be opposed. Any threat to the socialistic system in the PRC is a threat to her working class masses. Capitalist counterrevolution in China would endanger all the wonderful achievements that the PRC has made in poverty alleviation. The PRC would be returned to a place of severe exploitation, like an Indonesia, Mexico or Philippines, where bosses retrench workers at will, children live in poverty, women are downtrodden and foreign capitalist powers subjugate the people under a system of semi-colonialism. The resulting increasing in the rate of exploitation would encourage capitalist bosses everywhere, including in Australia, to further attack the wages and rights of the working class and poor. Moreover, a defeat for socialism in the world’s most populous country would embolden capitalist exploiters and demoralise the struggle for socialism around the globe. Just like the destruction of socialistic rule in the USSR and East European countries in 1989-1991, it would throw back by decades the struggle for socialism and for the cause of the working class and downtrodden. That is why the working class and oppressed of Australia and the world must mobilise to defend the PRC workers state. We must say: Down with the pro-colonial, anti-communist movement in Hong Kong! U.S., Britain, Australia get out of the South China Sea! U.S. troops out of Darwin! Stop the Australian regime’s military build-up against the PRC! No to imperialist funding for anti-PRC “NGOs”! Down with the Cold War propaganda drive against the PRC!

LET’S NOT BE NAIVE :
ANY STRUGGLE FOR A SOCIALIST TRANSFORMATION

WILL FACE MASSIVE RESISTANCE

It is unsurprising that it is the youth of the upper class and upper-middle class that have been most fervent in opposing the “threat” of socialist “interference” in Hong Kong. And this is not just because young people have more energy. Those young people who dream of a well-paying career or making it big in the capitalist world see “Communist China” as a threat to their aspirations. Their parents have already made their own wealth and if push comes to shove can more easily move it abroad. But the youth want to make their own mark on the capitalist world and socialism threatens their upwardly mobile dreams. Thus, during the socialist revolution in Russia, it was the younger members of the propertied classes that fought most energetically – and, indeed, from their standpoint bravely – to stop the workers’ revolution. This included young military officers – called Junkers – and college students. In the initial February 1917 Revolution that toppled the Tsar, college students participated in the Revolution. However once the revolution moved more clearly to the goal of establishing working class power, Russia’s privileged college students were on the side of the capitalist enemy. Similarly, today, the upper and middle class university students in Hong Kong are on the side of capitalism – this time not against an immediate impending socialist overturn but against the threat (as they see it) of one in the future. The ferocity of their rioting – including several horrific mob beatings of pro-PRC people (including a videotaped bashing of a man holding his children who was “guilty” only of singing the PRC national anthem) – reflects the desperate anger of propertied classes fearful of losing their dominant position.

One should understand that if the working class struggle grows in Australia and the possibility for socialist revolution becomes imminent, there will also be mass opposition to it – especially from capitalist and upper-middle class youth. Unfortunately, the resistance to an impending socialist overturn will not just come from the mythical 1%. The capitalist class is not just 1% of the population. To be sure the biggest of the capitalists do make up about 1% of the population. But then there are those capitalist business owners exploiting smaller numbers of workers, the managerial class enforcing the exploitation of workers at larger workplaces and the cops, prison guards, judiciary and upper bureaucrats who administer the state that keeps the capitalists in power. There are the upper middle class layers including successful self-employed businessmen, rich farmers and the higher paid of the professionals. Unlike the direct capitalist exploiters of labour and their enforcers, these privileged sections of the middle class do not have a direct interest in maintaining the capitalist system. In the long run they would actually benefit from the more rational and humane socialist system. However, it’s a tough job convincing most of them of this when they live a comfortable life under capitalism with negatively-geared, multiple investment properties! Meanwhile, just like the anti-communist movement in Hong Kong, the pro-capitalist resistance movement will be able to con a section of the less affluent portion of the middle class – people who would actually gain a great deal from socialism – and even some less politically conscious workers to their side. The exact balance of forces in a revolution, of course, cannot be predicted ahead of time – it depends on how the struggle plays out. However one can envisage a scenario where in a struggle for socialist revolution in Australia 15 million of its 25 million people support a socialist overturn, 5 to 7 million people are neutral and some 3 to 5 million people are against it. Of course, the victory of a socialist transformation or otherwise depends on not only how many people are on the opposing sides but how determined people on either side are to fight. Yet let’s not be naive: an imminent push towards socialist rule in Australia would face resistance from millions of people. And because an impending revolution would pose the question of which class rules in a far more immediate manner than the possibility of the PRC bringing socialism to Hong Kong, the opposition will likely be even more fanatical – and from their point of view even braver –than the resistance to the socialistic PRC of the Hong Kong anti-communist movement. Let’s not forget that following the Russian Revolution, the young workers state was not only opposed by the actual capitalists and landlords but also by rich peasant farmers and the technical-managerial layers working in factories and utilities.

Part of the opposition – especially from the middle class – that an impending socialist transformation would face in Australia will be largely due to racism. A strong movement for socialism can only develop by uniting the working class masses through positively standing against racial oppression. A movement with such an anti-racist agenda will, thus, necessarily face resistance from unreconstructed racist rednecks. In the current Hong Kong events a kind of racism has also played a factor in the resistance to socialistic China. Although Hong Kongers and mainlanders are both ethnically Chinese there is a strong nativist racism within Hong Kong that sees Hong Kong people as superior and more sophisticated than Mainlanders. In part, this comes from the impact of British colonialism that taught people that Westerners were superior to Asians. Associated with this, Hong Kongers as a people who lived longer under direct colonial rule were taught that they are more Western and more immersed in “Western values” than the “oriental” mainlanders. Helping to accentuate these myths is the greater wealth – at least for the middle and upper classes – of Hong Kong Chinese relative to their mainland counterparts. Right-wing media outlets like the ones run by Jimmy Lai – who is in so many ways an Hong Kong version of Rupert Murdoch – have excelled in portraying mainlanders entering Hong Kong as “locusts.” This is partly done for the usual capitalist divide and rule schemes which seek to channel the masses’ frustrations onto targets other than the capitalist exploiters themselves. However, Jimmy Lai also whips up such sentiments in order to use an Hong Kong nativist xenophobia to help drive the anti-PRC movement.

A few days ago, Jiayang Fan, a Chinese-American staff writer at The New Yorker reported that she has been subjected to vicious threats and mob racism by anti-PRC activists while covering the Hong Kong protests (Business Insider Australia website, 22 September 2019). They referred to her as a “f-ing yellow thug.” Some of these activists would indeed love to be called white supremacists … but alas they have yellow skin. Little surprise then that white supremacists from the West have been flocking to join in the Hong Kong protests. Some of the notable extreme right-wingers who have joined the protests from abroad include the leader of the violent U.S. far right group Patriot Prayer and the despicable Islamophobic and anti-African, Australian bigot, Avi Yemini.

Little wonder then that most people in the migrant and minority communities in Hong Kong are against the anti-China movement. The nativist xenophobia of the Hong Kong anti-PRC movement is also part of the reason why the overwhelming majority of people from the Chinese mainland – including international students currently residing in Australia – oppose the anti-PRC movement. However, there is another more significant reason. The Chinese masses simply like socialistic rule. Although they have plenty of gripes about corruption, petty restrictions (like on Internet access), inequality and the like – they are happy that their wages are rapidly rising, health care is increasingly covered by public insurance, infrastructure is being improved, public transport is being expanded, cities are having more green spaces and tourist facilities – and even toilets – are being improved. They are proud of the achievements of their socialistic country in poverty alleviation and in things like the roll out of the world’s best and most extensive high speed rail network

ANTI-RED CHINA AGITATION OVER HONG KONG PLAYS INTO
ANTI-COMMUNIST AND RACIST COLD WAR HYSTERIA IN AUSTRALIA

The battle between opponents and supporters of the PRC in Hong Kong has also been played out in Australia. Anti-communist international students and migrants from Hong Kong have been joined by other Asian origin anti-communists, Australian far-right activists, mainstream conservatives, Laborites and nominally “Marxist” social democrats in demonstrations in support of Hong Kong’s anti-PRC movement. These rallies have been greatly supported and built up by the Australian capitalist media and other ruling class institutions. Thus, while police here often threaten with arrest and denounce local anti-fascists when they wear face masks to hide their identity from violent Neo-Nazis, they have had no objections to Hong Kong anti-China supporters wearing intimidating-looking masks and helmets at rallies.

Bravely, many Chinese international students have responded to such anti-PRC rallies on campuses with their own pro-PRC counter-rallies. On August 17, over 3,000 people marched through the streets of Sydney in opposition to the pro-colonial rioters in Hong Kong. Despite the entire weight of the Australian media and state being on the anti-PRC side, this August 17 pro-China march was several times larger than any of the anti-PRC demonstrations held in Australia. There were some flaws in the politics of that rally that we were still in an overall way proud to enthusiastically support. The action’s main slogans were in the direction of patriotism to the Peoples Republic of China but made no appeal to the interests that the Australian working class has in defending the PRC and in standing against the opposition movement in Hong Kong. By not taking this class line, the rally could not effectively attract Australian working class people which it potentially could have if it had highlighted the socialistic character of the PRC. It is the working class and downtrodden of Australia (including Aboriginal people, lower income people from other communities subjected to racism and unemployed workers) – the people who from their own experience have most reason to distrust the line given by Australia’s capitalist politicians and big business owned media – who can and must be won to supporting Red China and its sovereignty over Hong Kong.

International students from China who have taken a pro-PRC stand have sometimes later faced threats and attacks. Despite this, the mainstream media, while fully praising those supporting the anti-communist movement in Hong Kong for “expressing their right to free speech”, have portrayed the pro-PRC students as being “undemocratic” and even accused them of “trying to suppress free speech.” More sinisterly,  in response to the brave stance taken by these students, late last month the Australian government announced the creation of a new Federal Government taskforce to look into “foreign interference” on Australian campuses – a move clearly aimed at intimidating pro-PRC Chinese students studying in Australia. The intimidation and vilification of pro-PRC students by the Australian state and media has had its desired effect. For the last month, pro-PRC Chinese students in Australia have mostly stayed away from participating in public demonstrations. We say: Stop the intimidation of pro-Red China international students! The “right to free speech” must include the right to support socialistic countries like the PRC. In the name of “defending free speech”, the Australian regime and its media are attempting to suppress the voice of those who support socialistic China.

Days after pro-PRC demonstrators outnumbered anti-China demonstrators in a heated stand-off at the University of Queensland in late July, hard right Liberal MP Andrew Hastie made a high profile rant in The Sydney Morning Herald claiming that China was threatening Australia’s “sovereignty” and “freedoms” including “in our universities.” This noted Islamophobe who has been happy to rub shoulders with extreme white supremacists at rallies supporting the provocative far-right push for special refugee status for rich, white South African farmers, had the hide to compare Red China’s rise to that of Nazi Germany.

Hastie’s tirade shows how the campaign to support the anti-PRC forces in Hong Kong and to suppress the voices of those who oppose that movement is feeding into broader anti-China hysteria. Earlier this year we wrote an article that described an emerging Cold War anti-communist witch-hunt in Australia that was mixing with White Australia, anti-Chinese racism. In a way that article has become somewhat out dated. For there is nothing “emerging” about this witch-hunt now. It is roaring away at full throttle. Earlier this month, it emerged that Monash Caulfield’s student union had effectively barred international students from nominating for student elections in a bid to suppress the voice of PRC students.

How deep the Cold War, anti-China witch-hunt has become has been seen in the recent campaign by the mainstream media and Labour Party against Hong Kong born, federal Liberal MP Gladys Liu over her alleged links to “Chinese government interference organisations.” Now there is nothing we like about the politics of Gladys Liu who is a supporter of the anti-PRC movement in Hong Kong, a homophobe and a member of the anti-working class Liberal Party. Yet she is being attacked for the wrong reasons and we defend her from this Cold War persecution. It is outrageous that a person should be threatened with removal from office just because she once was a member of associations with loose links to the PRC. These associations are, like the organisations of many other ethnic communities in Australia, just social organisations including people with a diverse range of political views. True, the leaders of these organisations are fêted by Beijing and in this way China seeks to win some favour with the local Chinese community. But so what? This is really just the public relations activities that all countries engage in. Certainly all the members of these organisations do not have any commitment to promoting the views of the PRC government.

We have little concern for Gladys Liu herself. But if a right-wing politician can be targeted for being “linked” to Red China what is going to happen to working This is mandatory because generico levitra on line here the medicine needs some time to think about the type of card that would sum up your baby shower party. Prozac – Prozac is an antidepressant in a group of drugs called cialis price online selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). The ceasarian section method is believed to make infants more susceptible to health problems in viagra pill price the future. Key ingredients in Mast Mood oil include http://cute-n-tiny.com/cute-animals/happy-thanksgiving-2/ buy viagra without prescription Ashwagandha, Jaiphal, Buleylu oil, Samudra Phal etc. class socialists who really do defend socialistic China? If the current witch-hunt continues, people are soon going to be targeted too for advocating “Communist China-like policies” – if they advocate things like increased public housing, nationalisation of the banks and targeted poverty alleviation schemes. Moreover, our key point is that people should have the right to support socialistic China and people of Chinese background should have the right to build and join organizations sympathetic to the PRC. After all, the Communist Party of China (CPC) is currently the most popular political organisation in that country with over 90 million members. It is natural that many immigrants from China and international students from there would also be supporters of the CPC. They should have as much right to voice their opinions as anyone else. Moreover, supporting socialistic China is what is in the interests of the overwhelming majority of Australia’s population – that is, of the working class and most middle class people.

The fact is that the PRC leadership makes no effort to “interfere” in the direction of Australian politics. Even the specific claims of “interference” labelled against China have little to do with Australia’s internal policy direction. When one examines the claims closely, it is apparent that the alleged Chinese “interference” is confined to efforts to mitigate Australia’s hostility to China or to prevent Australia being used as a base for anti-communist Chinese exile groups to launch political attacks on the PRC.

Having said the above, socialistic China actually has a duty to try to “influence” politics in Australia and other capitalist countries. Not in the covert way that the U.S., Australia and other imperialist countries are working to, for example, interfere in Hong Kong and Venezuela. Instead, the PRC should seek to advance the struggle for socialism worldwide by openly proclaiming the advantages of the socialist system and by solidarising with working class and oppressed people’s movements in capitalist countries, including Australia. Let’s not forget that soon after the 1917 Russian Revolution, Lenin, Trotsky and the other leaders of the young Soviet workers state established the Communist International for this very purpose.

The truth is that, in the end, China will only be free to carry on its socialistic course unhindered if the masses in the capitalist world mobilise to, firstly, hold back their own rulers from squeezing China; and eventually to overthrow their own capitalist exploiters. Beijing’s current policy of mutual non-interference in the affairs of other countries has been a failure. The CPC government genuinely tries not to interfere in the internal affairs of the capitalist powers. However, as we see today in the massive interference in Hong Kong by the imperialist powers, the capitalist rulers in the West do everything possible to undermine the PRC.

TO PROTECT “ONE CHINA”
SOCIALISM MUST BE BROUGHT TO HONG KONG

As a result of the continued capitalist domination there, Hong Kong really does have a lot of socio-economic problems. There are the awful coffin homes, unaffordable housing, a slowing economy, massive inequality, cruelly long working hours and terrible conditions for the over 300,000 largely Indonesian and Filipino domestic maids residing there. Yet the Hong Kong opposition movement make no socio-economic demands whatsoever. This highlights their anti-working class character – they are not interested in solving the plight of Hong Kong’s poor and exploited. Their five demands meanwhile are fashioned to appear “fair” but actually would serve to increase the grip on society of Hong Kong’s wealthy. Part of their demands are against supposed police “brutality.” However, compared to police in capitalist countries like Australia, the Hong Kong police have thus far been downright timid. Imagine how many people Australian cops – who are notorious for having murdered or otherwise caused the death of dozens of Aboriginal people over the last four decades – would have killed if they had been subjected to what the Hong Kong rioters have done to police there for four whole moths: thrown firebombs at them, beat them with sticks, threatened their children and spouses and stabbed off-duty police.

As they complain about “police brutality” in today’s Hong Kong, the anti-PRC movement hold aloft the old British colonial flag of Hong Kong and hark back to the colonial days. Yet it was the British colonial forces in Hong Kong that committed truly murderous repression. In 1967, in response to mass strikes and protests by workers and other anti-colonial leftists in Hong Kong, British colonial police launched commando raids on union offices and other leftist strongholds and on several occasions unleashed sub- machine gun fire against the activists. In the end police shot dead, or beat to death, some 30 workers and other leftists.

One of the main demands of the anti-PRC movement is for universal suffrage and parliamentary “democracy.” Yet, as in Australia, the reality of one person one vote in a society where the wealth and power is so unequally divided results only in the tyranny of the tycoons. It is the rich who disproportionately have the money to fund political parties, pay for political advertising and hire lobbyists. And it is the tycoons who own and control the media. The reality in Australia is that the most influential tycoons like Anthony Pratt or Gina Rinehart – with their direct line to the politicians and their massive political donations – each have far more influence on the direction of the country than, say, all the 400,000 people on the meagre Newstart Allowance put together! In Hong Kong where inequality is even greater, any formal parliamentary “democracy” would only reinforce still further the domination of society by the rich. Certainly the brutally exploited and often abused foreign maids in Hong Kong, many of whom are forced to sleep in corridors near the toilets and in laundries, would have little say in a Western-style “democracy.” As we have pointed out in placards at pro-PRC assemblies over Hong Kong, if the rich kid rioters in Hong Kong really care about democracy they could start by treating their domestic maids a lot better.

In the current political set up where Beijing has agreed to maintain capitalist rule over Hong Kong, domestic maids and other working class people don’t have any say either. However, the possibility of greater socialist influence of the PRC – that the pro-colonials’ call for parliamentary “democracy” is designed to impede – does give a path for greater rights for the long suffering working class masses of Hong Kong.

The democracy that working class people need is not the sham of a parliamentary “democracy” but a workers democracy based on elected workers councils that also draw in other sections of the poor. These councils, or soviets, would not be open to members of the exploiting class in order to stop them using their wealth and connections to dominate the councils. By having the working class masses organised together as a class in such councils they are able to better feel their collective strength and interests and, thereby, resist the political influence of the properties classes. However, there are two pre-conditions to such a soviet democracy exercising real power. Firstly, the state machine that these workers councils administer must be a workers state – i.e. a state built and replenished to serve working class interests. Now, because the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army base in Hong Kong is the ultimate military power in the region this has fashioned a change in the character of the Hong Kong police from the days of British colonialism. Some of the most pro-colonial cops have abandoned the force, not wanting to be subordinate to a Communist power. On the other hand, some people sympathetic to Red China have been enthusiastic to join. Moreover, every time the police are called to act against pro-colonial violence like we are seeing today, pro-colonial forces would drop off the force and be unwilling to join it while pro-PRC elements would be keen to enlist. Yet the transformation of the force is likely incomplete, not least because the property system it is enforcing in Hong Kong is still a capitalist property system. Meanwhile, the other elements of the state machinery in Hong Kong are even more based on the old colonial-capitalist machinery. Hong Kong’s judiciary remains anti-communist as shown by the way judges have been giving the right-wing rioters such lean “punishments” or often none at all. Meanwhile, even the non-repressive components of the state apparatus are still tied to the capitalist class. Hong Kong schools still teach the old pro-colonial, anti-communist curriculum. As for Hong Kong state media, its character is shown by the fact that it has been ostentatiously supporting the anti-PRC movement. That is why pro- PRC activists in Hong Kong have recently protested against the anti-China bias of Hong Kong media and against the incredible leniency that judges have shown to the pro-colonial rioters.

The second pre-condition for a workers democracy that exercises real power is that the power of the exploiting class is broken so that the working class begins to have the real economic power without which any political power can only be a fiction. To be sure, the bureaucratic leadership in Beijing, although based on a socialistic system, is not keen on workers democracy as that could undermine its somewhat privileged, middle class social position. Nevertheless, even if Beijing were to bring the socialistic system to Hong Kong in its bureaucratically deformed form that would still be a massive step forward for Hong Kong’s masses. Today, such a move has become an absolute necessity not only to improve the lives of the masses but to even prevent Hong Kong’s separation or partial distancing from China. For Hong Kong capitalist tycoons and their upper middle class allies are using their enormous economic strength to fund and direct separatist activities. The power of the Jimmy Lais, the Li-Kashings and the other capitalists of Hong Kong must be broken! Their ports, media outlets, real estate property, banks and telecom firms must be stripped from their hands and brought into public ownership. This would finally enable Hong Kong’s overworked wage earners to get shorter working hours with no loss in pay and would provide the resources needed to build the public housing necessary to relieve the housing situation of those currently “living” in coffin homes. In other words, such a move toward socialism in Hong Kong would be enormously popular amongst the Hong Kong masses.

We are not naive and know that if Beijing moves to bring the socialistic system to Hong Kong, the propertied classes will resist with even greater ferocity than they are now. However, currently, we have the worst of both worlds in Hong Kong. The capitalists and their upper middle class allies feel threatened by the prospect of socialism and so they are in revolt, all the while still having the economic clout to make such a revolt powerful. On the other hand, Hong Kong’s working class masses have not seen any benefits from being brought under the umbrella of a socialistic state and so are not mobilising energetically to defend the PRC. Meanwhile, those not so rich sections of the middle class who could be won to the side of socialism if the potential benefits of socialistic rule were made clear are, instead, being harnessed by the anti-communist forces.

However, Beijing is reluctant to move against the capitalist class in Hong Kong because it is obsessed with not antagonising the Western imperialist powers. Moreover, having allowed the emergence of a capitalist class within the mainland, the risk averse CPC leaders don’t want to upset stability by taking actions in Hong Kong that could frighten these capitalists into opposition. Therefore, it must be the most class conscious workers and leftists who must lead the charge for a socialist Hong Kong. In doing so they may finally pull Beijing along to do what it should. For starters, to highlight the benefits of socialistic rule, genuine leftists in Hong Kong should organise demonstrations calling for those policies and laws in the mainland that would be most beneficial to and most popular with the Hong Kong masses to be implemented there. For one, the PRC’s 2008 labour law, which has far greater protections for workers than Hong Kong laws, should be called for. Secondly, the policies that allow better conditions for domestic maids in the mainland – where they are mostly workers with their own homes rather than live in servants – should be advocated. Thirdly, pro-PRC activists should call for the right to abortion on demand, which exists in the mainland, to be brought to Hong Kong where women’s basic democratic right to abortion is greatly curtailed. Fourthly, and perhaps most crucially, leftists must push for the PRC’s “houses are for living in not speculation” policy which restricts the purchases of multiple homes by any individual to be brought into Hong Kong. Such a policy would open up immediate accommodation opportunities for those currently living in “coffin” homes, drive down the price of housing and start to challenge the power of the property tycoons that so dominate the territory

Meanwhile, pro-PRC forces should start mobilising on the streets to defend public property from the anti-communist rioters. The largest trade union federation in Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions (HKFTU), is pro-PRC. So pro-PRC activist should agitate for unions affiliated to the HKFTU to start building such actions – defensive actions that would be quite popular as many Hong Kong people are getting sick of the random attacks of the rich-kid rioters. From there, contingents should begin to target the business bases of Jimmy Lai and other notable anti-PRC tycoons. The aim would be to eventually occupy Lai’s Apple Daily’s production base and stage an HKFTU union seizure of control of this newspaper. Meanwhile, the real estate owned by Lai and other anti-PRC tycoons should be occupied and handed over to current residents of “coffin” homes. As it becomes clearer to all that the question of PRC influence over Hong Kong versus “independence” is a question of working class interests versus capitalist interests, more working class people will be won over to the pro-PRC cause and the forces can eventually become available to demand the complete confiscation of the means of production of all the big capitalists.

If the socialistic system were to be brought to Hong Kong it would have great significance beyond the territory. It would encourage those forces fighting most consistently to maintain socialistic rule on the mainland; while demoralising the capitalists within the mainland demanding ever greater “rights” and the right-wing of the CPC bureaucracy who are only too happy to hand over to them such concessions. Meanwhile, given that no part of the world has had the socialistic system based on working class state power brought to it in over 40 years, the bringing of a system based on public ownership and proletarian rule to Hong Kong would greatly encourage the international struggle for socialist revolution. So let’s fight for one Red China – that is, for one country under one socialist system!

MOBILISE HERE IN AUSTRALIA TO DEFEND THE PRC WORKERS STATE AND OPPOSE THE ANTI-COMMUNIST FORCES IN HONG KONG

However, the fate of Hong Kong will not only be determined by contending forces there. What happens in Australia and other Western countries also matters a great deal. A primary source of the strength of the anti-PRC forces in Hong Kong is their backing from imperialist governments and NGOs. They are greatly encouraged by demonstrations abroad that support them. So we need to mobilise to oppose support to the Hong Kong anti-communist forces from the Australian government and local NGOs. We need to build actions condemning the Hong Kong pro-colonial movement so as to boost the morale of pro-PRC activists in Hong Kong.

Trotskyist Platform (TP) was proud to have joined the large August 17 pro-PRC march in Sydney. Among the many slogans that we have carried at this and other pro-PRC actions include: “A Strong Socialistic China is Good for Australian Working Class People. Australian Workers: Defend the PRC Workers State!”, “Defend Socialistic China Against Imperialism! Resist Meddling in Hong Kong by Colonial Powers”, “Hong Kong Rioters = Rich Kid Allies or Dupes of Right-Wing Hong Kong Media Billionaire Jimmy Lai – Hong Kong’s Rupert Murdoch” and “Western-Style Democracy = Total Control By the Rich. Increase Socialist Influence of PRC to Improve Lives of Hong Kong Working Class.”

One other significant left group in Australia that has not joined the anti-PRC crusade over Hong Kong is the Communist Party of Australia (CPA). The CPA has rightly criticised the pro-imperialist character of the Hong Kong opposition movement and opposed the U.S.-Australia war drive against China. However, they have often, in their press, ducked the key issue of whether the PRC is a workers state or not – indicating that there are some people in the party who either believe that the PRC has gone capitalist or are unsure on the issue. Probably for the same reasons, the CPA, while rightly involved in actions in solidarity with socialistic Cuba, has thus far not participated on the ground in the various pro-PRC actions that have taken place recently.  Of course, leftists in Australia must stand by Cuba. However, the PRC is the socialistic country that is most targeted by imperialism and in particular by our own imperialist ruling class at home. Thus, it is somewhat easy to be active supporting Cuba while not being active defending the main target of the new anti-communist Cold War – the PRC. Let us never forget that a key reason that the former Soviet workers state ultimately succumbed to incessant imperialist pressure is that leftists in the imperialist countries – including those nominally sympathetic to the USSR – did not mobilise actual actions that squarely solidarised with the Soviet Union. This emboldened capitalist restorationist forces within the Soviet Union, while leaving genuine communists in the USSR feeling isolated and demoralised and thus less willing to fight to defend their workers state. Let us make sure the same thing never ever happens to the PRC!

Other than for TP and the CPA, all other significant left groups in Australia have lined up behind the anti-communist opposition in Hong Kong. The left groups in Australia that have been most active in supporting the anti-communist movement in Hong Kong are Socialist Alliance (SA), Solidarity and Socialist Alternative (SAlt). The latter two joined an August 30 anti-Red China rally at Sydney University where present were not only pro-imperialist Hong Kong students but other anti-communists. One of the featured speakers at the rally was prominent anti-communist, Dana Pham. A rabid opponent of women’s right to abortion, Pham is so anti-communist that she opposes even social democracy because she says that it leads to communism. So this is the sort of politics that Socialist Alternative and Solidarity are in a united front with! Now, Pham openly self-identifies as the child of former capitalists in Vietnam who were dispossessed by the heroic Vietnamese anti-capitalist revolution. Indeed, the demonstrations in Australia in support of the Hong Kong anti-communist movement is a magnet for members – and their unreconstructed descendants – of a number of different exploiting classes who are bitter that communists confiscated (or threaten to confiscate) their ill-gotten wealth and brought it into common social ownership. Many participating are, like Pham, either members of the overthrown former capitalist/ landlord ruling class of Vietnam or their children. Hence, the anti-PRC rallies have been shot through with the flags of the deposed former South Vietnamese regime. Also prominent at the anti-Red China actions have been the flags favoured by supporters of the deposed former feudal ruling class of Tibet. After Chinese and Tibetan communists united to topple that class from power in 1959 and liberate brutally subjugated Tibetan serfs, many of the former feudal elite fled into exile. Due to fervent support from the CIA and the capitalist powers some of the descendants of these former serf owners cling on to a dream of one day driving out socialist rule from Tibet and regaining their families’ former glory. Hence they rally in solidarity with their fellow “victims” of socialism. Then there are the capitalists and property owning upper-middle class types who are angry that they have had to leave Hong Kong when it was returned to China in order to avoid the risk of having their wealth redistributed to the masses. Of course, there are also some unreconstructed descendants of the former capitalist-landlord rulers of China who are furious at being toppled by the 1949 Revolution. Then there are people associated with the still ruling capitalist exploiting class in Taiwan.

All these people have a clear class reason – or at least perceived reason – for opposing socialism and for joining the local actions supporting the Hong Kong anti-communist movement. But what the hell are nominally socialist groups doing there! In joining these demonstrations, these left groups actually undermine some of the better work that they do on other issues where they are at least on the right side of the fence. For example, SA have been active in opposing the pro-imperialist, National Endowment for Democracy (NED)-backed mass protests in Venezuela. Yet if the quite similar, NED-backed pro-imperialist protests in Hong Kong that they are supporting were to achieve victories it can only encourage the pro-imperialist forces in Venezuela. Similarly, SAlt have built actions in solidarity with the oppressed Palestinian people. Yet they back a movement in Hong Kong that flies U.S. flags, presents the Trump regime as a potential saviour and hails the U.S. system, all of which can only undermine opposition to the U.S. imperialist state that is the key backer of Israel’s brutal oppression of Palestinian people.

Something that we can give credit to SAlt over is their spearheading of a protest last month against the hard right CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) meeting in Sydney that was hosted by Andrew Cooper, the leader of the Australian far-right group, Liberty Works. TP joined SAlt in this protest. Yet at the start of this month, this same CPAC held a conference in Hong Kong that was joined by that same Andrew Cooper to support the same anti-Red China movement that SAlt also supports! The CPAC Hong Kong conference drew as its featured speaker, leading Hong Kong “independence” activist Andy Chan, the leader of the staunchly anti-PRC, Hong Kong National Party.

Indeed, the Australian actions in solidarity with the anti-communist movement in Hong Kong have been joined by not only hard conservatives but by some more extreme far-right figures. They have also been shot through with the xenophobic nativist anti-mainland Chinese racism that has typified the movement in Hong Kong itself. At one Sydney rally in Martin Place, anti-PRC activists issued a leaflet dog whistling to anti-Chinese racism by calling for restrictions on migration from China. SAlt itself have implicitly recognised the problem because they pulled out of one anti-PRC rally at the University of Queensland because it so openly pandered to anti-Chinese racism. Yet, despite their efforts to distance themselves from anti-Chinese racism, they and Solidarity and SA – all of whom are involved in legitimate anti-racist causes – nevertheless back a movement that oozes nativist anti-mainland Chinese racism and whose feeding into the anti-China hysteria in this country can only help to incite still more anti-Chinese violence on Australia’s streets. Indeed, the intersection of racism, the anti-PRC movement in Hong Kong and the anti-PRC left was played out at a Melbourne anti-Red China rally earlier this month. Joining the Hong Kong anti-communists were not only the Victorian Socialists – a coalition grouping together SAlt, SA and non-aligned leftists – but also extreme far-right racist, Avi Yemini. Spotting Yemini, a Victorian Socialist activist tries to do the right thing and warns a couple of women participants at the rally that Yemini is talking to that they should not talk to him because he is an extreme racist, a fascist and Nazi. Yet the two pro-Hong Kong anti-communists are not too concerned. Nearby is another participant draped in the Hong Kong colonial flag. When another two Victorian socialists come over to the stand off, the man draped in the colonial flag sides with Yemini and tells him that he will never trust socialists because socialism leads to communism and that he and other Hong Kong people instead like Trump and all Western countries. One could say that those at the demonstration may have been unaware of just how rabidly racist that Yemini is, yet they were quite prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt and seemed to be much happier to embrace far right racists than nominal socialists. One can feel sorry for the Victorian Socialists present but their party really set them up! No real socialist should be anywhere near such anti-communist, anti-PRC rallies.

Even if it were hypothetically possible to purge the anti-PRC movement of all far-right influence and all open racism it would merely end up being a cleaned-up counterrevolutionary movement. The fundamental contradiction still exists for the socialist groups supporting it: that supporting a movement that hails the capitalist regimes in the U.S., Britain and Australia, lauds the “democracy” for the rich that exists in these countries and glorifies Western (i.e. capitalist and imperialist) values can only buttress support for the Western capitalist regimes and, thus, undermine the struggle for socialism that these groups nominally stand for.

Those leftists who have supported the Hong Kong anti-PRC opposition must urgently take a step back and consider the following points. Firstly, when does Donald Trump, Scott Morrison, CPAC, the NED, Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Stokes ever support a movement that is actually progressive? What kind of movement appeals to Donald Trump, glorifies “Western values,” carries the U.S. and British flag and harks back to colonialism? We can give some answers to that question: the 2015-2016 Islamophobic and white supremacist Reclaim Australia marches, marches by extreme anti-Palestinian activists in Israel, CPAC conferences and the recent mass anti-abortion protests in NSW. Needlessly to say, all these mobilisations are totally reactionary. Certainly protests by the oppressed Palestinian people and people of Kashmir are not hailing Trump and glorifying Western values, let alone flying the U.S. flag.

RESIST THE POLITICAL PRESSURE AND THE
ANTI-COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA DRIVE

Even some of groups that claim to be more “Marxist Leninist” than the likes of SAlt, SA and Solidarity have jumped onto the anti-PRC bandwagon. Thus, the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist) even while admitting that “US imperialism has directed and influenced some of the key players in the current disturbances” in Hong Kong then still leans on the side of the anti-communist movement by asserting that, “that does not mean we should support the repression of genuine protestors by the Hong Kong police, or support the Chinese government.” Meanwhile Australia’s newest left group, the Australia Communist Party (ACP), has also climbed onto the anti-PRC train. The ACP recently broke away from the CPA and it had not been clear what the actual political differences were. Now one major divergence is apparent: the ACP has moved a big step to the Right by declaring that China is now “capitalist.” This provides the rationale for the ACP to join with the Cliffite groups – SAlt and Solidarity – and SA in the anti-PRC crusade. Of course the actual capitalists in Hong Kong don’t seem to have noticed that the PRC is “capitalist”, which is why they are terrified of being subjected to PRC laws and are scared of any encroaching PRC influence!

An additional point should be made about those avowed “Marxist-Leninists,” like the ACP, who refuse to defend the PRC but are proudly pro-USSR. That is, it is rather easy to be pro-USSR today, more than 27 years after the USSR was destroyed by capitalist counterrevolution and with the Cold War against it well and truly ended. However, at the time of the 1980s Cold War against the USSR there was massive political pressure to find a reason to junk defence of the USSR – and there were many real shortcomings in the workers state that were used by opportunists to abandon defence of the USSR (the Cliffite groups simply called it “state capitalist”). The real test of where a newer group would have stood during the Cold War against the USSR is where it stands today in the midst of the Cold War taking place against socialistic China right now. Any left group that under pressure manufactures a reason to avoid defending the PRC today would surely have failed to defend the USSR when it actually existed.

With the Cold War against the socialistic PRC intensifying every day and much of the left falling over themselves to avoid defending the PRC, we call on all pro-PRC leftists and all our supporters and friends to stand rock solid in defence of Red China – despite all its deformities and harmful concessions to capitalism. During the Cold War against the USSR too, most of the Left found a way to be on the same side as the counterrevolutionary forces that opposed the USSR. Much earlier, during the Civil War that followed the 1917 Russian Revolution – when the Soviet workers state was still led by 100% genuine communists like Lenin and Trotsky – all of the Left of that time, other than the true communists, also stood opposed to the Soviet workers state at key moments in the struggle for its survival. And that’s the point! Those who, today, cannot defend the PRC workers state would not even defend an embattled workers state when it is under a truly revolutionary, internationalist leadership. But we vow to stand firm. By linking defence of the PRC workers state with the struggle against capitalist exploitation, racism and women’s oppression in this country, genuine communists will be able to show to the most politically advanced workers and youth that having the world’s most populous country remain under at least some sort of socialistic rule enhances the struggle for liberation of the working class and oppressed.

For as Russian Revolutionary leader, Leon Trotsky insisted at the start of World War II when many leftists were abandoning defence of the USSR:

The workers’ state must be taken as it has emerged from the merciless laboratory of history and not as it is imagined by a “socialist” professor,  reflectively exploring his nose with his finger.  It is the duty of revolutionists to defend every conquest of the working class even though it may be distorted by the pressure of hostile forces. Those who cannot defend old positions will never conquer new ones.

Balance Sheet of the Finnish Events, Leon Trotsky, April 1940


The Transition from Socialist Revolution to Communism

We call ourselves Communists. What is a Communist? Communist is a Latin word. Communis is the Latin for “common”. Communist society is a society in which all things – the land, the factories – are owned in common and the people work in common. That is communism. – V.I. Lenin, The Tasks of the Youth Leagues

The Transition from Socialist Revolution to Communism. On the Tasks of the Workers State in the Transition to Equality and Stateless Society

“Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge” Famous Russian Civil War poster. “Whites” was the name given to the capitalist-landlord forces that sought to overthrow the young Soviet workers state. By the great Soviet designer/artist El Lissitsky, this poster was made in the Byelorussian town of Vitebsk and flyposted on its streets in 1920 at the time of the threat of invasion by the forces of bourgeois and landlord Poland. A fusion of Bolshevism’s new communist politics and Kasimir Malevich’s equally new art movement of Suprematism, it became an almost mythical symbol in the revolutionary struggle, representing as it does the Reds, surrounded by light, stabbing the heart out of the old feudalist and capitalist world surrounded by darkness.
“Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge” Famous Russian Civil War poster. “Whites” was the name given to the capitalist-landlord forces that sought to overthrow the young Soviet workers state. By the great Soviet designer/artist El Lissitsky, this poster was made in the Byelorussian town of Vitebsk and flyposted on its streets in 1920 at the time of the threat of invasion by the forces of bourgeois and landlord Poland. A fusion of Bolshevism’s new communist politics and Kasimir Malevich’s equally new art movement of Suprematism, it became an almost mythical symbol in the revolutionary struggle, representing as it does the Reds, surrounded by light, stabbing the heart out of the old feudalist and capitalist world surrounded by darkness.

Greetings Comrades. In our socialist struggle we must prepare for the future struggle and the victory of our working class. The question of the state immediately arises and is of fundamental importance in determining our strategy. So what is the state? Marxist Leninists assert that, in essence, the state is an apparatus of repression serving the interests of whichever class it is that dominates – that is, rules over – society. This power – this state machine – that arises out of the ruling class’ need to oppress their rival class places itself above society and alienates itself more and more from it. [28]

Under capitalist rule, the ruling capitalist class has built up its mighty capitalist state machine – which at its core consists of the police, courts, prisons, legal institutions, army and other bureaucratic institutions – to preserve their class rule over the working class via oppressive means. Therefore, in order to even begin the task of moving towards an egalitarian communist society, the first step for the working class is to overthrow this oppressive capitalist state. If we are to then help guide humanity to communism, we as Marxist Leninists believe it is a fundamental strategic necessity to establish a workers’ state after this overthrow of capitalism.

But what is communism? Communist society is one where the toiling classes are completely liberated from the yoke of capital, where there is full equality, no classes and, thus, no need for an oppressive state at all. The capitalist system of poverty, unemployment, wars, racism, sexism and homophobia will be no more. People will receive according to their need and give according to their ability. Economic, productive and creative achievement would be at its utmost, fullest potential. There will be no government/ state to manage/administer the affairs of the community as the individuals that compose the masses will manage their own community affairs with a self-determined and community-motivated spirit and culture.

Most groups in the Marxist and anarchist Left tend to share this vision of a future communist society. However, there is a controversy between the different tendencies of the left about how we actually get to communism.

The three main left wing tendencies are the social democrats, the anarchists and the communists (Marxist Leninists). The social democrats, even those that truly believe in fighting for socialism, act on the premise that they can reform capitalism into socialism without overturning the current capitalist state structure. The social democrats deny needing to overthrow the current capitalist state.

In Australia the left wing of social democracy is made up of nominally far-left groups like Socialist Alliance, the Communist Party of Australia, Solidarity and Socialist Alternative. These groups claim adherence to Marxism and Leninism (and even sometimes claim to be revolutionary) but in their daily activities and stances on current political issues tend to promote illusions in the current capitalist state and, specifically, the illusion that pressure can be maintained upon the institutions of the capitalist state in order to successfully force them to play a more progressive role.

In contrast to the social democrats, the best of the anarchists of the Anarcho-Communist and Anarcho-Syndicalist perspective just like Marxist Leninists understand the need to overthrow the capitalist state to open the road to communism. Over the last few years in Sydney, Australia, Trotskyist Platform has been engaged in various united front campaigns with certain militant class- conscious anarchists (who too are quite varied). These campaigns have been various on the street struggles such as campaigns against racism and for public housing rights. We have found that some of these anarchists have been very dedicated to oppressed people’s struggles and often have been very courageous. Some of the most pro-working class and determined of the anarchists have been in the vanguard of organising important anti-racist actions such as the recent anti-fascist action in Cronulla on the 10th anniversary of the horrific white supremacist riot there. Notably, both communists and the best of the anarchists share ideals of a stateless, classless, egalitarian society; we have the same ideological determination to oppose class and racial oppression, capitalism, poverty, unemployment and homelessness; we share the same hatred of the bourgeois exploiters, of the capitalist state institutions and of the far-right enemies of the working class. However, on the practical and strategic questions of how we achieve revolution and then defend it, Leninists and even the most left-wing and pro-working class of the anarchists fundamentally differ.

In the fight for the revolution Leninists insist that we need to establish a revolutionary workers’ party to bring revolutionary consciousness to the masses and lead the revolutionary struggle to a successful conclusion. Anarchists reject the idea of the workers party. Leninists also insist that after the revolution we require a workers’ state which, in the interests of the working class, will defend the revolution and facilitate the progress to communism. However, the anarchists outright reject the need for a workers’ state or a party to lead the transition from a workers’ revolution to communism. They, unfortunately and quite falsely, believe it is possible to skip to a stateless society immediately after the overturn of capitalist rule.

A Young Revolutionary Society

 

“Women Workers, Take Up Your Rifles” declares a poster from the early days of the Russian Civil War, circa 1918, calling upon working class women to join the fight against the increasingly foreign-armed enemies of the workers’ and peasants’ revolution in Russia.
“Women Workers, Take Up Your Rifles” declares a poster from the early days of the Russian Civil War, circa 1918, calling upon working class women to join the fight against the increasingly foreign-armed enemies of the workers’ and peasants’ revolution in Russia.

After the workers’ revolution, the working class will now be the new authority and power. The capitalist state– that machine designed to keep the masses down and the rich in power – will have been thoroughly dismantled and the exploiters heavily defeated. It will be the birth of a new world. But is this the end of the struggle? Do we just lay down our guard and declare that communism has been achieved? Or will we – somewhat more realistically – say that, though it is still distant, communism will eventually and inevitably be achieved without the need for a new workers’ state to ensure its progress? Many anarchists do believe this to be the case. Furthermore, can we actually wipe out the power of the capitalists – built up over many centuries – in one go? Especially when, after the socialist revolution, the capitalist rulers still in power around the world would fight tooth and nail to help their deposed capitalist brethren destroy the newly established authority of the revolution? Can we abolish the hundreds of years of capitalist thinking and cultural conditioning overnight? To all these questions, Leninists say “No” and we will explain why below.

Economic Control

The biggest triumph of the workers’ revolution will be the seizure of workplaces, factories, infrastructure, housing and land from the control of the capitalists. Indeed, this is both the beginning and the end of the revolution as more and more of the economy – starting with, most importantly, its commanding heights – becomes collectivised. We must make sure that the means of production – the engine house of any society – are run by the workers and the workers’ councils.

However, this task of seizing the means of production will be resisted not only by the capitalists but also by some petit bourgeois and reactionary layers (which could include small businessmen, supervisors, managers and some of the highly paid technical workers as well as former cops, spies and military officers who would have spent their whole adult life defending capitalist rule) and even some ordinary workers who are still close to the bosses. Therefore, the task of collectivisation cannot simply be performed by the self-activity of the entire people (even the entire non-capitalist people). It will need to be performed by the defence organs of the revolutionary workers – that is, by a workers’ state.

Dealing with the Capitalist Class and Counter Revolution

After the October 1917 workers’ revolution in Russia, the deposed capitalists and world capitalist powers joined together to organise a bloody civil war to attempt to overthrow the new socialist-based system. Right: Officers from Western imperialist powers meet with representatives of counter-revolutionary Russian leader Alexander Kolchak.
After the October 1917 workers’ revolution in Russia, the deposed capitalists and world capitalist powers joined together to organise a bloody civil war to attempt to overthrow the new socialist-based system. Right: Officers from Western imperialist powers meet with representatives of counter-revolutionary Russian leader Alexander Kolchak.

 

March 1920. Troops from the counter-revolutionary Russian White Army march forward.
March 1920. Troops from the counter-revolutionary Russian White Army march forward.

We must be on high alert after the workers’ revolution for the former exploiters will still have plenty of money, the networks, the connections, the knowledge and the expertise to inflict harm upon the fledgling, socialist society. We can have no doubt about it: these vestiges of the former ruling capitalist class will agitate for a counter-revolution.

It is exactly for this reason that, immediately after the revolution and defeat of the reactionaries, it is paramount that we are ready to defend the revolution. Precisely because they cannot exploit the working class like they used to, the layer of extremely wealthy bourgeoisie, though bruised and dispossessed of a large part of their wealth, will be itching for counter-revolution. Because the bourgeoisie internationally are very well connected the threat may very well come from abroad. Back at home, the more right wing of the middle classes, wedded as they are to the very idea of private property, as well as many of the former henchmen of the capitalists – including both the armed personnel of the former capitalist state’s police and military organs and the capitalists’ former workplace enforcers (i.e. higher up managers and foremen) – will also be seeking ways to undermine the revolution at every turn. This is why the working class must build a workers’ state to defend the revolution and suppress a resurgent and desperate capitalist class along with all of its reactionary allies.

Red Army women snipers during the Soviet Union’s struggle to defeat capitalist Nazi Germany’s invasion during World War II. It is completely unrealistic that a victorious workers’ revolution will be able to immediately build a socialist society without constructing a workers’ state to defend the toiling masses’ conquests against the deposed capitalists seeking to restore their rule and against international capitalist powers determined to destroy any example of a socialist society.
Red Army women snipers during the Soviet Union’s struggle to defeat capitalist Nazi Germany’s invasion during World War II. It is completely unrealistic that a victorious workers’ revolution will be able to immediately build a socialist society without constructing a workers’ state to defend the toiling masses’ conquests against the deposed capitalists seeking to restore their rule and against international capitalist powers determined to destroy any example of a socialist society.

From the time that they overturned capitalist rule in the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Soviet working class had to mobilise the forces of armed power to defend their liberation. In this picture, founder of the Soviet Red Army, Leon Trotsky, motivates troops in 1918 during the bloody Civil War against insurgent armies attempting to restore capitalist power.
From the time that they overturned capitalist rule in the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Soviet working class had to mobilise the forces of armed power to defend their liberation.
In this picture, founder of the Soviet Red Army, Leon Trotsky, motivates troops in 1918 during the bloody Civil War against insurgent armies attempting to restore capitalist power.

The very idea of a socialist or workers’ state often comes as a shock to many left-liberals, pacifists and anarchists. Understandably, the word “state” has negative connotations in the context of feudal and capitalist societies. The anarchists are right to regard the state in this present capitalist society as an oppressive bureaucracy and authority that brutally crushes the First Nations people, attacks striking and picketing workers and sponsors troops to fight ruthless capitalist wars abroad. It is absolutely natural that a proletarian or oppressed or exploited person has a healthy hatred of the state and authority in today’s capitalist society. However, the future workers’ state will embody the living, fighting force of the formerly oppressed and exploited masses and will, inherently, act in a way that is diametrically opposed to the actions of a state set up to serve a rich, capitalist and exploiting ruling class.

We ask the anarchists or the left-liberals: which class will be administering the workers’ state? For whose benefit will the workers’ state operate? The proletarian majority or the bourgeois minority? In fact, the socialist workers’ state will be nothing like the current capitalist state that we know all too well. In place of arresting picketers and strikers, harassing homeless people, kicking out single mothers who are behind on their rent or oppressing minorities the workers’ state will, instead, crush racists and ban hate speech, massively increase public housing, further advance the seizure of empty dwellings owned by the wealthy so that they can be used to house the homeless and needy, organise the economy to ensure full employment and, most importantly, continue socialising and collectivising the means of production. In other words, the working class will be dictating to the overthrown capitalists and their allies via the power of the workers’ state. We do not recoil from this word: the workers’ state will, indeed, be a dictatorship of the proletariat. It will be the liberator of the toiling and oppressed classes and become the primary means of defending the working class from counter-revolution, the conspiracies of the bourgeoisie and all the influence that they can still muster both at home and overseas. Perhaps most importantly of all, it will also serve to facilitate the masses’ march towards communism.

 

1966: A Vietnamese communist woman fighter marches a captured American airman through the jungle during the Vietnam war.
1966: A Vietnamese communist woman fighter marches a captured American airman through the jungle during the Vietnam war.

2014: Women soldiers in the army of the Vietnamese workers state in training. The founding personnel, traditions and culture of the Vietnamese workers state’s organs were, like those of the other workers states in China, Cuba, North Korea and Laos, formed during the heroic liberation struggle against capitalism and imperialism. An important part of these new traditions and culture included placing women’s role in society at a much higher level than where it had been during pre-revolutionary times.
2014: Women soldiers in the army of the Vietnamese workers state in training. The founding personnel, traditions and culture of the Vietnamese workers state’s organs were, like those of the other workers states in China, Cuba, North Korea and Laos, formed during the heroic liberation struggle against capitalism and imperialism. An important part of these new traditions and culture included placing women’s role in society at a much higher level than where it had been during pre-revolutionary times.

For World Socialist Revolution

When a workers’ revolution is victorious in one country, attention must soon turn to fellow workers in other lands who may not be as fortunate. They will still be suffering under the capitalist yoke or undergoing the struggle to overturn capitalism. We should, therefore, ensure that we support other socialist revolutions around the globe. The very act of defending the revolution at home will be viewed by the international bourgeoisie as an act of aggression against world capitalism and quite rightly so! Hand in hand with defence – in fact, its very corollary – is the possibility of the workers’ state engaging in strategic offensive campaigns.

When supporting international revolution, we will need to demonstrate the utmost respect for the plight and the national aspirations of peoples abroad in order not to frighten the workers of these other nations – especially if they are already living under colonial or neo-colonial oppression – into thinking that we are yet another exploitative or oppressive force. Our main means of solidarity support to struggles overseas will be propaganda and an ideological internationalist perspective. But we must not discount direct military support of international revolutions via volunteer and professional armies where required to assist the liberation of fellow working class people when they are in the midst of direct revolutionary combat with their capitalist enemies. We need a workers’ army and a workers’ state not only for the immediate defence of the revolution at home but also to assist revolutions abroad. This is not only in line with our communist ideals of internationalism but, also, essential in guaranteeing the defence of the revolution at home.

The Middle Class Masses: Friends or Foes?

Fighting to support socialist revolutions abroad can be complicated. And the fight to stop the inevitable counter-revolutionary efforts of the overthrown capitalists will be a difficult task. Nevertheless, the methods and strategies required for these tasks are quite clear cut. A much more complicated and nuanced task will be integrating the far more numerous petit bourgeoisie – the so-called middle classes – into the new socialist society. What Marxists refer to as the petit (or petty) bourgeoise is that class of the population who are generally neither exploiters of labour nor wage workers directly exploited by capitalist business owners. Included in this intermediate class are self- employed plumbers, electricians, gardeners, farmers, artists and craftspeople and self-employed grocery, small restaurant, repair shop and hairdresser owners as well as doctors, dentists, accountants and other consultants of various types with their own private practice. Their income may range from that of the very poor to that of the very comfortably well-off. Although not enduring direct exploitation of their labour by capitalists, some of these petit bourgeois layers, to a greater or lesser extent, suffer under the capitalist system – from bullying by the banks, from brutal competition with big monopolies, from the greed of big landlords and the wild economic swings and chaos of the capitalist “free market.” On the other hand, their means of deriving an income induces many petit bourgeois people to have a capitalistic and individualistic mentality. Many dream of turning their small, self-employed businesses into bigger businesses that hire and fire exploited labour. That is, they dream of becoming capitalists. Hence, the petit bourgeoisie, both as a class and as individuals, can swing wildly between the two poles of supporting the working class and supporting capitalism. Historically, the proletariat in significant part arose from the dispossessed members of this class who – out of the pure needs of survival – gathered around the lathe and anvil, the loom and production line of modern industry to form a new, proud and powerful class – the proletariat – whose destiny is, indeed, to usher in communism. [29] During the struggle against capitalist rule, the Marxist strategy is to seek to win over as many of the petit bourgeois to the side of the working class and the struggle for workers’ revolution as possible. We will, in particular, appeal to the poorest and most oppressed sections of the petit bourgeoisie while ensuring that their capitalistic and individualistic tendencies do not infect the revolutionary workers or divert them from their ultimate goal of a society based on common ownership of the means of production.

After the socialist revolution, the ruling working class will seek to maintain the support of those sections of the petit bourgeoisie that did support or, at least, accept the revolution. On the other hand, there will also be some sections of the petit bourgeoisie who will fanatically oppose the revolution, all because of their devotion to private enterprise and their personal closeness to – and even fawning worship of – the big time capitalists. Therefore, after the workers’ revolution, the counter-revolutionary efforts of these middle class layers will need to be stopped. Furthermore, to the extent that they remain self-employed people engaged in private enterprise and not employees of socialist public enterprises, even many of those petit bourgeois people who accept and even support the revolution will still be infused with a selfish, hustler-type mentality.

This outlook, though essential to surviving the cut and thrust of the daily dog eat dog environment of a capitalist economy, becomes outright dangerous to the unity of a collective economy run for everyone’s mutual benefit in a society where trust between and kindness towards one’s fellow workers is of paramount and vital importance. The petit bourgeoisie’s support for the revolution needs to be nurtured and any positive qualities individual members of this intermediary class may possess should be harnessed for the good of the new socialist society. But any tendency towards harmful profiteering, hoarding and speculating from petty bourgeois business people will need to be put under the watchful eye of the revolutionary society and, if necessary, firmly stopped in its tracks. If not checked in time, such dubious economic activity will inevitably corrode the socialist economic sector.

The socialist revolution itself will win many petit bourgeois individuals to a more collectivist, community-minded outlook and later so will the emerging socialist culture of the new revolutionary society. However, as long as those who were petit bourgeois before the revolution remain self-employed business owners afterwards, their economic reality will still push many of them back towards an individualistic, hustler-type view of the world and social relations. This problem is all the more significant because, while the workers’ revolution will forcibly seize and collectivise the means of production owned by the big capitalists, it will not forcibly collectivise the business owned by petit bourgeois self-employed people and may not even forcibly nationalise all the business owned by the smallest of the capitalists. This is not for any moral reason or principle – far from it. Rather it is to avoid a massive revolt that could threaten the hard- won revolution. Unlike the relatively few big capitalists, the smallest-scale capitalist exploiters together with the petit bourgeoise make up a relatively large proportion of the population – in Australia a bit less than 25% of the entire workforce. [30] Therefore, a young revolutionary society will consist of not only masses of revolutionary workers and a tiny number of overthrown big capitalists as well as a small number of their former state and workplace henchmen but also a large number of petit bourgeois individuals, some sympathetic, some hostile to the revolution but most still infected with an attachment to private profiteering and all the social backwardness that this brings (though there will, of course, be some petit bourgeois people who will be able to completely turn their backs on their old outlook and the best of these will even become valuable members of the revolutionary workers’ party).

This existence of a large petit bourgeois layer in a young revolutionary workers’ society was a major difficulty that the Soviet Union faced in the first decades after the October 1917 Russian Revolution. At the time of the 1917 Revolution, Russia was a backward, mainly agricultural society which, thus, had a relatively small proportion of wage workers and a larger number of self-employed peasant farmers. The peasants were, in fact, largely sympathetic to the workers–led revolution because it freed them from the burden of having to pay a large proportion of their income/produce as rent to greedy big landowners. However, at the same time, the relatively better off peasants in particular had a strong attachment to private ownership of productive land and were infused with a profiteering, individualistic outlook.

Ultimately, the petit bourgeoise can only be fully integrated into a socialist society through their gradual evolution into proud employees of socially-owned enterprises – that is, by turning them into proletarians. This will be achieved through a variety of pathways. The society will offer incentives to small self-employed producers – like cheaper credit and free equipment – to amalgamate into bigger and bigger cooperatives and eventually into large scale collectives. In other cases, large, efficient state-owned enterprises will compete with the petit bourgeois small producers while at the same time offering good wages and guaranteed and generous leave entitlements (something that many of the struggling petit bourgeois shopkeepers currently do without) to entice individual producers into becoming employees of these enterprises. The publicly owned enterprises may also offer special incentives for self- employed rivals to sell off their equipment to the public enterprises, abandon their businesses and become well-paid employees of a socialist enterprise instead.

In dealing with small-scale capitalist exploiters of labour – as opposed to those who are strictly petit bourgeois and use no hired labour at all – the revolutionary workers’ society will have to use other means at its disposal to make it ultimately more profitable for these people to abandon their businesses and, hopefully, themselves move into well-paid jobs in the socialist sector instead. Today, these small-scale capitalists often exploit their workers with even more ruthlessness than the large scale capitalist monopolies do. After the revolution they will be forced to improve the wages and conditions of their employees and this would gradually drive down their profits. In part, the wages and conditions of their workers would be improved via workers’ state law and regulations. More importantly, their employees would, as the collectivised economic sector develops, be able to find jobs with much better pay and conditions in the socialist sector. This last factor will force the small-scale capitalists to either improve their workers’ own conditions or, as is inevitable in the long-run, be themselves swept up in the tide towards the socialist economy.

Although the above carrot and stick measures would entice many petit bourgeois people to happily move into the socialist economic sector, some would be mildly or deeply resentful at being economically compelled to move away from self-ownership of their businesses. Similarly, some amongst the petit bourgeoisie, while being grateful to the revolution for freeing them from the tyranny of capitalist banks, monopolies and big landlords would be unhappy at moves to curb any profiteering/hoarding/speculative practices on their part. Therefore, all these tasks related to guiding the petit bourgeoisie with a firm but sympathetic hand cannot simply be carried out by the self-activity of the entire population as the petit bourgeoisie, themselves, compose a significant proportion of that population. The job of guiding the petit bourgeoisie will, thus, need to be carried out by a state dominated by the active working class. To be sure, a workers’ state would gradually draw in more and more of the petit bourgeois masses into the administration of the state. However, the petit bourgeois class would not have the same representation in the soviet councils as the working class, not until the petit bourgeois individuals, as they are gradually integrated into the collectivised socialist economy, themselves become active constituents of the proletarian ruling class.

 

Proletarian Democracy

Meeting in Petrograd of the Third All Russia Congress of the Soviets in January 1918 – two and a half months after the Russian Revolution. The Soviet Congress was the highest body of the workers state. It consisted of delegates of workers – and also peasants and soldiers – elected by local grassroots soviets in which the active masses exercised direct political power. The early years after the Russian Revolution saw the workers state administered through this system based on proletarian democracy. Although the system of soviet democracy was strangled by the subsequent bureaucratic degeneration of the USSR, the USSR remained a workers state until it was destroyed by capitalist counterrevolution in 1991-92.
Meeting in Petrograd of the Third All Russia Congress of the Soviets in January 1918 – two and a half months after the Russian Revolution. The Soviet Congress was the highest body of the workers state. It consisted of delegates of workers – and also peasants and soldiers – elected by local grassroots soviets in which the active masses exercised direct political power. The early years after the Russian Revolution saw the workers state administered through this system based on proletarian democracy. Although the system of soviet democracy was strangled by the subsequent bureaucratic degeneration of the USSR, the USSR remained a workers state until it was destroyed by capitalist counterrevolution in 1991-92.

The proletarian state will be a million times more progressive than the previous capitalist state where only the exploiting few were really represented and the vast majority were simply ruled over. For the first time there will be a state serving the interests of the majority – working class people – not the interests of a tiny few exploiters. Since it will be a state serving the majority of people, a workers’ state will be far less alienated from society as a whole than a capitalist state is.

The revolutionary workers will be directly administering their state via workers’ soviets – which in Australia, Aboriginal workers and Aboriginal activists are destined to play a prominent role in from the get go. These soviets will from the time of their formation prior to the revolution, include not only workers but the most downtrodden layers of the non-worker masses – including the unemployed and low-income single mothers. Over time, the soviets will draw in wider layers of the masses (such as students, pensioners and certain layers of the petty bourgeoisie who have been won over to communist ideals). These workers’ councils or soviets – bodies of organised workers elected democratically – will be the primary voices determining the tasks of the workers’ state. In a workers’ state, with the key productive centres of capitalism having been taken over by the working masses, the industries and lands that were once run at the behest and for the profit of the rich bourgeoisie will now be under the control of the proletariat and will serve the interests of all of the formerly oppressed sections of society. This is, in essence, the nature of proletarian democracy. For communists, our democracy is about engaging the masses in direct participation of political administration starting from the workplaces. This is not so much a “grassroots” approach as an entire branch, trunk and roots engagement of the working people in the running of their society. This is in complete contradiction to the way capitalist “democracy” works in a capitalist state where every few years a handful of officials, predictably drawn from the same bourgeois political class, are elected to administer the state and regulate the capitalist economy and whose number one job it is to grease the wheels of capital – a truth that is at best ignored and at worst deceitfully covered up by the social democrats.

Combating Capitalist Ideology

One of the biggest problems facing a newly formed socialist society and its goal of successfully operating a system based on proletarian democracy is that we begin our long, happy march towards communism handicapped by a certain cultural deficit. For centuries the masses have been subjected to capitalist modes of thinking: a middle class type of profiteering, hoarding, speculating and exploiting mentality. In addition, backward, reactionary and divisive religious and nationalist ideologies flourish in competitive man-vs-man capitalist societies. These backward ideologies are also consciously promoted by the exploiters to divide and divert the masses from proletarian consciousness. After hundreds of years of feudalist and capitalist thinking pervading our culture, philosophy and even our language itself, one of the major tasks of the new socialist society will be to culturally uplift society. The vanguard of the victorious working class will need to gradually nurture and promote a collectivist spirit and internationalist perspective. For, although the consciousness of the masses would have necessarily surged forward during the revolution (or else there would have been no revolution to speak of!) there will, indeed, still be many people stuck in a very backward mindset.

 

August 2008, Beijing: Plainclothes Chinese police drag away the leader of the American-based Christian Defence Coalition, Reverend Patrick Mahoney, as he leads a rally of American bigots opposed to abortion rights in China. After arresting the hardline right-wing activists, the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) police let them go. Good job, PRC workers state police – but maybe next time let these scum rot in jail for a while! The Christian Defence Coalition is an ultra-right wing Christian fundamentalist group specialising in extreme anti-abortion activities, homophobia and opposition to contraception. Mahoney had previously been a co-founder of the militant, anti-abortion group, Operation Rescue, whose members were involved in several terrorist attacks on women seeking abortion in the U.S. and doctors providing the service.
August 2008, Beijing: Plainclothes Chinese police drag away the leader of the American-based Christian Defence Coalition, Reverend Patrick Mahoney, as he leads a rally of American bigots opposed to abortion rights in China. After arresting the hardline right-wing activists, the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) police let them go. Good job, PRC workers state police – but maybe next time let these scum rot in jail for a while! The Christian Defence Coalition is an ultra-right wing Christian fundamentalist group specialising in extreme anti-abortion activities, homophobia and opposition to contraception. Mahoney had previously been a co-founder of the militant, anti-abortion group, Operation Rescue, whose members were involved in several terrorist attacks on women seeking abortion in the U.S. and doctors providing the service.

Groups like Operation Rescue and the Christian Democratic Coalition either openly celebrated the murder of abortion-providing doctor, George Tiller, or otherwise disgustingly conducted activities to brand Dr Tiller as a mass murderer on his own funeral day. The brave doctor was shot dead in May 2009 in Kansas, U.S.A by a Christian terrorist linked to Operation Rescue. Already facing the intense military, economic and political pressure of the capitalist powers, the socialistic PRC does not need to have to put up with intrusion from the ultra-right wing of imperialism represented by the likes of the Christian Democratic Coalition and Operation Rescue.
Groups like Operation Rescue and the Christian Democratic Coalition either openly celebrated the murder of abortion-providing doctor, George Tiller, or otherwise disgustingly conducted activities to brand Dr Tiller as a mass murderer on his own funeral day. The brave doctor was shot dead in May 2009 in Kansas, U.S.A by a Christian terrorist linked to Operation Rescue.
Already facing the intense military, economic and political pressure of the capitalist powers, the socialistic PRC does not need to have to put up with intrusion from the ultra-right wing of imperialism represented by the likes of the Christian Democratic Coalition and Operation Rescue.

Through the fundamental process of the socialisation of the land and industries in the new society and with more and more people engaged in truly productive and rewarding collective labour, a new communist culture will, of course, naturally begin to form in its embryonic state amongst the masses. In this way, an economic system based on collective ownership and production for the common good becomes the very springboard for creating a new communist society.

However, we quickly come to a chicken or egg type of conundrum as the successful operation of collectivised industries itself requires the existence of a collectivised spirit amongst the workers. If we had a small team operating in a collectivised enterprise and individualistic ways persisted in the workplace then this would greatly undermine operational productivity, efficiency and workplace cohesion. Therefore, the new society will need to consciously promote and propagate a collectivist spirit in the masses.

With significant layers still infected with the old capitalist ways of thinking, the population as a whole (and not even the entire non- capitalist population) will not be able to automatically carry out this important job of instilling in themselves and in society in general an effective, genuine and steadfast communist spirit. It will take a state under the control of the conscious layers of the working masses – that is, the revolutionary workers and especially the millions who actively participated in the revolution – to bring all the masses up to communist consciousness. By conducting education within the workplace and schools and through guiding the production of a progressive media and cultural space, the workers’ state will be able to encourage the masses to turn away from the ages old and cynical, individualistic dog eat dog mentality toward a friendly, sisterly and brotherly collectivist spirit that is truly fit for a communist future.

Role of the Party

Bringing the masses to communist consciousness cannot be done without a revolutionary workers’ party. For, although the workers state will be directly administered by workers’ councils of millions upon millions of revolutionary workers, all these workers will necessarily have differing levels of consciousness. We need a party that is based upon the most politically energetic and forward thinking layers of the working class. This party will be the source and inspiration for the pursuit of truth and knowledge without which the working class masses who are administering their state will be truly rudderless. Such a party – composed of the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat – will have the job of guiding the workers and bringing the masses to the most correct theoretical understanding.

After the revolution, the task of the party is to partake in revolutionary cultural education of the masses, unify the working class in industries to further economic building and organise the masses to both defend the revolution at home and carry on the fight for socialism internationally. The party must also build a communist consensus and carry out education and discussion around the new socialist society, all the while overcoming individualistic mentality in production.

The Problem of Production During the Transition Period

Others can result in the device stopping cialis tadalafil to function completely. cheap viagra for women Sadly, restarting or reloading applications may not do their phone repair magic. So men who are suffering with erectile dysfunction can order viagra cheap just take the pill and forget about it, and enjoy sex whenever they want throughout the weekend. Interrupting Binge Eating- If the answer is no, pull out your favorite journal or notebook cheap no prescription cialis and begin to write instead of eat. As well as defending the revolution and fighting to spread it internationally, guiding the petit bourgeoisie and combating capitalist ideology, a key challenge for the new society will be the need to increase production.

February 2015: NSW Police raid homeless residents camping under a viaduct in Sydney’s Wentworth Park. Police cruelly confiscated most of the homeless people’s posessions – including tents. In capitalist Australia, the police and other state organs target the most impoverished and exploited layers of the population as well as discriminated against ethnic groups. Aboriginal people in capitalist Australia are incarcerated at a rate that’s 13 times that of non-Aboriginal people, while Vietnamese and Afghan-origin people also suffer high rates of imprisonment. In contrast, the Chinese workers state’s institutions are toughest on the very rich. Chinese rich lists published by the Hurun magazine are often referred to in China as “fat pig killing lists” for those who appear on the list become targets of outrage from a population and media that hate the greedy tycoons – often prompting the Chinese authorities to investigate these capitalist exploiters. Attempting to downplay the frequent jailing of
February 2015: NSW Police raid homeless residents camping under a viaduct in Sydney’s Wentworth Park. Police cruelly confiscated most of the homeless people’s posessions – including tents. In capitalist Australia, the police and other state organs target the most impoverished and exploited layers of the population as well as discriminated against ethnic groups. Aboriginal people in capitalist Australia are incarcerated at a rate that’s 13 times that of non-Aboriginal people, while Vietnamese and Afghan-origin people also suffer high rates of imprisonment. In contrast, the Chinese workers state’s institutions are toughest on the very rich. Chinese rich lists published by the Hurun magazine are often referred to in China as “fat pig killing lists” for those who appear on the list become targets of outrage from a population and media that hate the greedy tycoons – often prompting the Chinese authorities to investigate these capitalist exploiters. Attempting to downplay the frequent jailing of capitalists soon after they feature in its magazine, Hurun has claimed that “only” 35 of the 3,000 people who have appeared on its rich lists over the last 17 years have been jailed or executed. Yet even this figure represents a rate that is nearly ten times that of the rest of the population. An independent academic study actually found that 17% of the “entrpreneurs” who appeared on China’s rich lists between 1999 and 2007 have been either jailed, investigated or executed, even though China’s overall rate of imprisonment rate is 40% lower than Australia’s and nearly six times lower than the U.S.

Higher production assists in reducing scarcity and petty human-vs-human squabbles. As long as such squabbles exist, the unity required for a communist society cannot be built. Higher economic development also increases the wellbeing, luxury, and convenience of the masses. Crucially, it also helps in securing our revolution. If still existing capitalist countries outperform the socialist state this may lead them to being able to militarily or economically undermine the revolution.

Wentworth Park 2Will the masses rise to the productive tasks required to improve the lives of the community in the new revolutionary society? Under capitalism it is typically only the technical and middle class layers who are motivated to be innovative in production as they hope this will help them climb up the capitalist ladder. For working class people under capitalism the main driving force that makes people productive in their jobs is the fear of sackings by the greedy capitalists which will leave them without a means of survival. How will the masses be motivated to be productive in a socialist society where they are guaranteed jobs and a decent livelihood?

Some people will be motivated to produce purely out of a sense of responsibility to serve the community. These will be people with a socialist ideological and working class consciousness. However, others without this same level of consciousness will require some level of material incentives to spur production. Practical examples of such incentives include extra wages for individuals who work longer hours and higher wages for people to join particular skilled professions where there may be staffing shortages due to work being, for example, more dangerous or because there are currently too few trained professionals in that particular field.

So, in this transition period between workers’ revolution and communism, there will be some inequality between different workers. Of course, this inequality is nothing like under capitalism where the main inequality is not between different workers but between all the workers and the capitalist exploiters of workers. Nevertheless, some people in the new, revolutionary society will object to even a limited degree of inequality for, after all, the revolution was made partly in the name of equality. Therefore, it will take a state – a workers’ state run by the revolutionary workers – to administer and control this unfortunate albeit socially necessary and transitory inequality.

May 2015: Billionaire real estate mogul, Wáng Ming-húa, is arrested by Chinese police for killing giant panda for their fur. In a massive raid, over three hundred members of the Peoples Armed Police raided the property mogul’s home looking for evidence.
May 2015: Billionaire real estate mogul, Wáng Ming-húa, is arrested by Chinese police for killing giant panda for their fur. In a massive raid, over three hundred members of the Peoples Armed Police raided the property mogul’s home looking for evidence.

We should, however, not be naïve. Even transitory inequality can be dangerous to a revolutionary society. For one, it could give the better paid workers a taste of privilege and thereby encourage in them capitalist restorationist tendencies. It is also potentially corrupting for the workers’ state to be defending inequality at all. Therefore, the party must play a key role in explaining to the masses the complex tasks of production in the post-revolutionary society and the vigilance required to be on guard against capitalist restoration. The workers’ party must also make extra efforts to unify the masses to ensure that the inevitable degree of division that economic inequality between workers brings is minimised as much as is possible. Furthermore, the more inequality there is in this transitory period, the more the workers’ state must be vigilant to crush signs of any capitalist restorationist tendencies.

November 2015: Xu Xiang, a billionaire owner of an investment firm, dubbed by the Western media as “China’s Warren Buffet” is arrested by Red China’s police for economic crimes. Chinese police blocked a 35 kilometre bridge for half an hour to facilitate the operation against the greedy hedge fund/private equity operator.
November 2015: Xu Xiang, a billionaire owner of an investment firm, dubbed by the Western media as “China’s Warren Buffet” is arrested by Red China’s police for economic crimes. Chinese police blocked a 35 kilometre bridge for half an hour to facilitate the operation against the greedy hedge fund/private equity operator.

As the socialist system enables more and more of the masses to upgrade their skills, and with workers now knowing that their labour and innovative ideas will be used for their own good as well as their comrades’ (rather than under capitalism where all their efforts only serve to help their capitalist exploiters get even richer) work itself will become more rewarding and pleasurable. Soon a more advanced communist society will start to remove individualistic tendencies and replace them with a communist motivated spirit where workers are proud that their labour is used to serve the community.

This then helps pave the way for the workers’ state itself to wither away as society marches towards communism.

Withering Away of the Workers State

Humanity will awaken to a new future after the socialist revolution.

The backwardness of society that has existed for over a thousand years will start to be radically challenged. But the progress to communism is not an instant task. Communism and the stateless society will need to be facilitated by the workers’ state and workers’ democratic authority.

What will be the conditions that facilitate the workers’ state to actually wither away (because there ceases to be a need for one) and a fully communist society – where there is no state – to emerge?

Firstly, not only must the resistance of the overthrown capitalists be totally defeated to the extent that they no longer attempt to undermine the revolutionary society but there must also be no threat from capitalist restorationist forces from abroad. This, in turn, presupposes that capitalist rule has been overthrown in all the richest and most powerful countries of the world.

Secondly, class differences will need to be eradicated and full equality based on abundance for all will need to be achieved to the extent that we can have the realisation of the ideal: “From each according to her ability, to each according to her need”. Achieving this ideal implies that there is growing collective wealth and that resources are so well allocated that the full productive and creative potential of individuals can be harnessed. When class differences and scarcity are eradicated then the state can wither away because there is no longer a class that needs to be suppressed.

To fully reach the stage of communism, the inequality that exists between workers in the manual work and the technical realm must also be overcome. In capitalist society, the manual workers often get lower pay and have less opportunities but with socialist rule and development, this inequality and isolation will be gradually removed through massively expanding training and education opportunities for the masses. Everyone will then, in communism, become a highly skilled technical or artistic worker while each and every worker will also do an equal share of the more monotonous and tiring tasks (the number of which will continue to be drastically reduced due to advancing technological and scientific innovations which, under communism, will benefit all workers).

Another essential requirement for reaching communism will be that the old bourgeois traditions be fully eliminated. This will allow Communism to be realised where individuals that compose the masses manage their own community affairs with a self-determined community motivated spirit and culture without the need for a guiding workers’ state.

Social democrats and other ignorant apologists for the capitalists don’t realise that the capitalist state is an oppressive and freedom-killing institution. The workers’ state is the opposite. It does, in fact, calls for its own dissolution but only at that point in time when it has succeeded in helping rid society of backward capitalist traditions and in engaging all the masses in the administration of society to such an extent there is no one left to administer. The role of the councils and the community bodies will then pass over from the administration of people to the administration of things.

This will be the ultimate stage of communist society. It is a future worth fighting for. Workers of the world unite!

November 2011, Workers at the Baida poultry plant in Laverton, Victoria on the picket line during a two-week long strike for job security and against bullying bosses.
November 2011, Workers at the Baida poultry plant in Laverton, Victoria on the picket line during a two-week long strike for job security and against bullying bosses.

Baida workers at a picnic to celebrate their victorious struggle. Even today, when workers are in collective struggle, petty rivalries and jealousies and the racial and sexual divisions and oppressions created by capitalist society are to a degree mitigated. This points to how a future communist society will allow all people to live in very warm and happy friendship with each other in a society without oppression or exploitation – and, hence, no need for a state.
Baida workers at a picnic to celebrate their victorious struggle. Even today, when workers are in collective struggle, petty rivalries and jealousies and the racial and sexual divisions and oppressions created by capitalist society are to a degree mitigated. This points to how a future communist society will allow all people to live in very warm and happy friendship with each other in a society without oppression or exploitation – and, hence, no need for a state.

Footnotes:

28.

Lenin writes in The State:

But there was a time when there was no state, when general ties, the community itself, discipline and the ordering of work were maintained by force of custom and tradition, by the authority or the respect enjoyed by the elders of the clan or by women—who in those times not only frequently enjoyed a status equal to that of men, but not infrequently enjoyed an even higher status—and when there was no special category of persons who were specialists in ruling. History shows that the state as a special apparatus for coercing people arose wherever and whenever there appeared a division of society into classes, that is, a division into groups of people some of which were permanently in a position to appropriate the labour of others, where some people exploited others.

“And this division of society into classes must always be clearly borne in mind as a fundamental fact of history. The development of all human societies for thousands of years, in all countries without exception, reveals a general conformity to law, a regularity and consistency; so that at first we had a society without classes—the original patriarchal, primitive society, in which there were no aristocrats; then we had a society based on slavery—a slaveowning society. The whole of modern, civilised Europe has passed through this stage—slavery ruled supreme two thousand years ago. The vast majority of peoples of the other parts of the world also passed through this stage. Traces of slavery survive to this day among the less developed peoples; you will find the institution of slavery in Africa, for example, at the present time. The division into slaveowners and slaves was the first important class division. The former group not only owned all the means of production—the land and the implements, however poor and primitive they may have been in those times—but also owned people. This group was known as slave-owners, while those who laboured and supplied labour for others were known as slaves.

This form was followed in history by another—feudalism. In the great majority of countries slavery in the course of its development evolved into serfdom. The fundamental division of society was now into feudal lords and peasant serfs. The form of relations between people changed. The slave- owners had regarded the slaves as their property; the law had confirmed this view and regarded the slave as a chattel completely owned by the slave-owner. As far as the peasant serf was concerned, class oppression and dependence remained, but it was not considered that the feudal lord owned the peasants as chattels, but that he was only entitled to their labour, to the obligatory performance of certain services. In practice, as you know, serfdom, especially in Russia where it survived longest of all and assumed the crudest forms, in no way differed from slavery.

Further, with the development of trade, the appearance of the world market and the development of moneycirculation, anewclassarosewithin feudal society—the capitalist class. Fromthe commodity, the exchange of commodities and the rise of the power of money, there derived the power of capital. During the eighteenth century, or rather, from the end of the eighteenth century and during the nineteenth century, revolutions took place all over the world. Feudalism was abolished in all the countries of Western Europe. Russia was the last country in which this took place. In 1861 a radical change took place in Russia as well; as a consequence of this one form of society was replaced by another—feudalism was replaced by capitalism, under which division into classes remained, as well as various traces and remnants of serfdom, but fundamentally the division into classes assumed a different form.

The owners of capital, the owners of the land and the owners of the factories in all capitalist countries constituted and still constitute an insignificant minority of the population who have complete command of the labour of the whole people, and, consequently, command, oppress and exploit the whole mass of labourers, the majority of whom are proletarians, wage-workers, who procure their livelihood in the process of production only by the sale of their own worker’s hands, their labour-power. With the transition to capitalism, the peasants, who had been disunited and downtrodden in feudal times, were converted partly (the majority) into proletarians, and partly (the minority) into wealthy peasants who themselves hired labourers and who constituted a rural bourgeoisie.

This fundamental fact—the transition of society from primitive forms of slavery to serfdom and finally to capitalism—you must always bear in mind, for only by remembering this fundamental fact, only by examining all political doctrines placed in this fundamental scheme, will you be able properly to appraise these doctrines and understand what they refer to; for each of these great periods in the history of mankind, slave-owning, feudal and capitalist, embraces scores and hundreds of centuries and presents such a mass of political forms, such a variety of political doctrines, opinions and revolutions, that this extreme diversity and immense variety (especially in connection with the political, philosophical and other doctrines of bourgeois scholars and politicians) can be understood only by firmly holding, as to a guiding thread, to this division of society into classes, this change in the forms of class rule, and from this standpoint examining all social questions— economic, political, spiritual, religious, etc.

From The State: A Lecture Delivered at the Sverdlov University. Lecture written by V.I Lenin & delivered on 11 July 1919. First published: Pravda No. 15, 18 January 1929. Source: Lenin’s Collected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1972 Volume 29, pages 470-488. Translated: George Hanna. Copyleft: V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1919/jul/11.htm

29.

The proletariat originally arose from many Some were freed serfs. Others were journeymen and apprentices – an oppressed class of artisans oppressed by the guild masters – who went into the new manufacturing and industrial enterprises in search of better pay and often simply employment as the new industries were then undercutting the guilds. Later the guild masters – who were a small-scale exploiting class – found that they too had to join the proletariat as their operations were ruined by competition from the more efficient large industries. Of course, there were classic petit bourgeois who became proletarians – tradesmen, shopkeepers, peasants. Some who joined were also former members of the landowning nobility. With the breakdown of feudalism and the bourgeois revolution these nobles no longer had serfs and peasants to provide for them and ended up having to work as exploited workers to make a living.

There are many national variations to this. In the South of the U.S.A, for example, a good part of the proletariat were/ are liberated former black slaves. In Australia, the proletariat has a particularly diverse background. Ironically, until they were granted equal pay as white workers, Aboriginal workers – that is, members of an egalitarian so-called “hunter-gatherer” society who were brutally denied access to the land that they had for millennia occupied (not “owned” as the concept of ownership was foreign to their society) – were the backbone of the rural proletariat working as stockmen, shearers, pickers, cotton chippers etc. This rural proletariat was supplemented by “Kanaks,” people from places like Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, PNG and New Caledonia who were kidnapped (“blackbirded”) by Australian slave hunters and brought to work as indentured plantation workers in Australia – especially in the sugar plantations of Queensland. Later these workers became “free” labour. Then there were the ex-convicts who became workers – that is, we can say ex-members of the lumpenproletariat. There were, of course, petit bourgeoise who were driven into the proletariat class – for example, gold prospectors once the gold rush was over. Australia’s working class – especially the industrial proletariat – is disproportionately made up of migrants and their descendants – that is, of European and later Middle Eastern migrants arriving after WWII and then coloured migrants after the formal relaxation of the White Australia Party. All these migrants came from different backgrounds. Some were workers in their original countries, others were farmers and shopkeepers. Some were former members of the exploiting class. These included people fleeing countries where the former ruling bourgeois faction has been deposed by a rival bourgeois faction – such as in Iran and Iraq. It also includes former members of the landlord and capitalist class running away from anti-capitalist revolutions in places like China, Laos and Vietnam. Former members of the deposed exploiting class in Vietnam and their henchmen are heavily concentrated as workers in the manufacturing and warehouse sectors of Sydney and Melbourne. Then there are the many henchmen of the capitalists who after WWII fled – from the Baltic states, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, Russia and Croatia – the victorious Red Army or the Yugoslav Revolution. The highest ranked of these anti-communists got well-paid positions assisting ASIO but most ended up becoming ordinary workers. So there we have the Australian working class’ diverse class background: former members of an egalitarian hunter-gatherer society, former “blackbirded” slaves, petit bourgeois farmers and gold prospectors, lumpen proletarian ex-convicts, overthrown capitalist exploiters and their die-hard anti-communist henchmen fleeing socialistic revolutions.

The latter includes, in the case of some of the East European and Baltic migrant workers, former members of outright fascist armies and police forces. All this underscores that there is nothing per se morally more worthy about an individual proletarian over an individual petit-bourgeois person. That is hardly the point. The point is that by its relationship to the relations of production the proletariat as a whole uniquely has the power, interest and potential consciousness to lead the struggle against capitalism and for socialism. Furthermore, the proletariat’s position in the relations of production and its means of deriving an income give it the opportunity to break free from attachment to private property and to develop a consciousness of solidarity with fellow toilers regardless of which class the proletarian or her/his ancestors may have derived from. Ironically, to see this question from a standpoint that puts the overall struggle for the liberation of humanity at the forefront rather than an individual judgemental type analysis itself requires a proletarian outlook as opposed to the individualistic bourgeois/petty bourgeois analysis that our whole upbringing in capitalist society conditions us to examine political questions with (in a similar way that our conditioning in capitalist society drives us to, when we analyse political events, excessively focus on the personalities and policies of individual political leaders/activists rather than the conflicts between classes and the struggles/contradictions between sections of classes).

30.

In checking the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) figures there are grey areas in how the figures are presented and also some grey areas about where to classify certain people. Nevertheless, it is apparent that the petit bourgeois make up from 15% to 23% of the Australian workforce. (The small-scale capitalist exploiters make up 3% to 4% of the workforce.) Comrades may find how these figures can be calculated interesting: Firstly, looking at the petit bourgeois, from http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/ProductsbyTopic/A8CAED8E5F9FB2E1CA257F1F00044E8C?OpenDocument (accessed 21 March 2016), it is apparent that there are 307,100 + 951,800 self-employed people, i.e. 1,258,900 self-employed people.

Additionally. some of the people who are employees are still part of the petit-bourgeois. Unfortunately and rather strangely, the ABS when breaking down occupations lumps in employees and owner-managers of incorporated enterprises into one group rather than listing them separately. But looking at the ABS spreadsheet for the breakdown of occupations in incorporated enterprises, we find that there are 584,000 people working as business, human resource and marketing professionals. Due to the closeness of many of these employees to the bosses and the nature of their work which, rather than the production of goods and services, often involves strategizing on helping the bosses maximise profits, many should be classed as petit-bourgeois rather than proletarian. Of course, not all these employees would fit such a description – lower level employees collating market research data should be counted as part of the proletariat. So we can at a very rough guess count 60% of these employees as petit bourgeois. But given that there are, additionally, professionals in other occupation types that we are not counting as petit bourgeois who should be, then if we take all these 584,000 as petit bourgeois then that would make up for all these others. These would include highly skilled professionals working in the public sector who, because society compels the government to provide certain basic services, the government is compelled to pay high salaries in order to ensure that the services are provided. Therefore, these people are not denied the fruits of their labour – but neither are they bourgeois exploiters. In this category would include town planners, senior civil engineers working for state and local government, staff specialist doctors at hospitals etc.

So, in total, taking 584,000 of those among the employees and owner-managers of incorporated enterprises as petit bourgeois we now have to deal with the issue of double counting since some of these may have already been included in the 307,100 people working as self-employed owners of incorporated enterprises. Therefore, we should scale this number by the ratio of the people in the employees and incorporated enterprises category who are not self employed divided by the total number of people in the employees and incorporated enterprises category. This ratio is 97%, i.e. (9,585,100 + 499,900)/(9,585,100 + 806,600). That means our estimate for the number of employees that should be added to the petit bourgeois category is 97% x 584,100 = 566,577.

Another group of people given in the ABS breakdown of occupations for people listed as being either employees or owner-managers of incorporated enterprises that should be classed as petit bourgeois is a proportion of the 1,257,800 people listed as managers. Most of the managers should be classed in the category of henchmen/enforcers of the capitalists. However, some of the people classed as managers are really leading hands without the power to fire or to deny workers leave and others are managers of things rather than people. We can estimate that say 25% of people listed as managers fall in this category. So, therefore, the number of managers who can be counted as petit bourgeois is 25% x 1,257,800 = 314,450. Now, some of these people may already have been counted in the self-employed category and we would expect the proportion of managers to be higher than the 3% (i.e, 100% – 3%) average for people in the employees or owner-managers of incorporated enterprises category. So we assume that 20% are double counted, i.e, 80% of the 314,450 managers (i.e. 251,560) considered petit bourgeois rather than bourgeois henchmen should be added to the petit bourgeois category.

There is one other group that should, perhaps, be added to the petit bourgeois category. This comes about due to a certain grey area among a small percentage of the people who are small scale employers. Most of the people employing one to four people are in fact small scale capitalist exploiters who derive their income from a combination of business conducted that’s based on their own labour as well as that of their workers. These include restaurant/ café owners hiring chefs/service staff, plumbers and electricians with their own business hiring a couple of (always terribly paid) apprentices, auto repair shop owners with a couple of hired workers etc. In all these cases, the hired workers contribute much to directly producing the goods or services that are being sold. The bosses deny the workers the full fruit of their labour (and when this is not the case it is not because the boss does not intend to but because there is not enough business for the boss to get full use out of the workers). Additionally, these bosses often treat their workers arrogantly and rudely. However, there is also a category of small-scale employers where the hired workers are not directly engaged in producing the goods/services being sold. These would include architects, dentists, doctors, accountants and solicitors with their own private practice and hiring an office manager/receptionist or two. Unlike, say, with the café owner hiring a service worker, in this case making the receptionist work longer hours for the same pay will not necessarily increase the owner’s profits. The profits and often high income of the business owner depends largely on the architect/doctor etc being able to get away with charging the client/patient high fees. So, in this sense, these type of business owners are petit-bourgeois rather than small-scale capitalists. On the other hand the work that the receptionist/office manager performs is crucial to the successful operation of the business and the often massive disparity in income between the business-owning professional and the receptionist/office manager shows that there is some degree of the worker being denied the fruits of their labour and thus not being adequately paid. So these business-owning professionals are really in a grey area between being petit bourgeois and being small-scale capitalist exploiters. However, many of them are probably closer to being petit bourgeois than small scale capitalists so for classification purposes could probably be classed as petit bourgeois.

So now for our numbers, we need to estimate what percentage of all the small-scale employers are business owning professionals hiring only one or two office staff (who are the only people working in the business in addition to themselves and possibly other professionals in a partnership). A guess would be 25%. We then need to know the total number of people owning businesses with only a very small number of hired workers. This page from the ABS – http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/8165.0 (accessed 21 March 2016) – indicates that 27% of all businesses have one to four employees (note: ignore the total number of businesses from this page as many business owners own more than one business). So, knowing that there are 806,900 + 1,191,200 = 1,998,100 business owners and assuming that this 27% ratio applies roughly to business owners in addition to applying to the total number of businesses, the number of business owners hiring from one to four employees is 27% x 1,998,100 = 539,487. Then, taking our estimate of 25% as the percentage of these business owners who are in a grey area where they probably should be categorised more as petit-bourgeois than small-scale capitalists, the number of these petit-bourgeois business owners = 25% x 539,487 = 134,872.

Therefore the total number of petit bourgeois = 1,258,900 + 566,577 + 251,560 + 134,872 = 2,211,909. This represents a 2,211,909/11,583,900 ratio, i.e. 19% of the workforce.

As for the small-scale capitalist exploiters, they would make up the remaining 75% of the bosses hiring between one to four workers who cannot be classed as petit bourgeois, i.e. they number 75% x 539, 487 = 404,615. That is, they make up 404,651/11,583,900 ratio, i.e. 3.5% of the workforce.

Now the medium and large scale capitalist business owners would be the total number of business owners minus those that have no employees less those that employ from one to four workers. That would be 1,998,100 – 1,258,900 – 539,487 = 199,713. This is 199,713/11,583,900 ratio, i.e. 1.7% of the workforce. Many managers are also substantial shareholders of businesses where they are not necessarily the main owners. However, it is hard to estimate this. It is easier to simply lump in the big and medium bourgeois and their henchmen as one.

So the managers who could be counted as bourgeois henchmen or straight bourgeois are those who cannot be counted as simply petit bourgeois, i.e. we have estimated that 25% can be counted as petit bourgeois so 75% of the managers can be estimated to be bourgeois or bourgeois henchmen. Thus, 75% x 1,257,800 = 943,350. As many of these managers, however, already have been counted as owner managers – at an estimate 30% – so 70% of the mangers not considered petit bourgeois should be added to the bourgeois class and its henchmen, i.e. 70% x 943,500 = 660,450.

Now an additional group of henchmen are cops, prison guards, secret police, volunteer army soldiers, private security, prosecutors, judges and magistrates. Judges, magistrates and prosecutors together make up a very small number. So a good estimate of the total for this category of henchmen is given under the listing in the ABS spreadsheet for “Protective Service Workers,” of which there are 140,300.

Therefore, the total for the big and medium size capitalists and their armed and unarmed henchmen/enforcers is 199,713 + 660,450 + 140,300 = 1,000,463. This is a ratio of 1,000,463/11,583,900 = approx. 8.5% of the workforce.

So, in summary the estimates are: big and medium size capitalist exploiters and their henchmen form 8.5% of the workforce, small-size capitalist exploiters 3.5%, petit bourgeois 19%; proletariat and semi-proletariat (including the better paid highly skilled/educated workers) make up the rest, which is 69% of the workforce.

To put it in easy to remember terms: in Australia roughly seven in ten people in the workforce are the proletariat/ semi-proletariat, one in five are the petit-bourgeois and one in eight are the capitalist exploiters and their henchmen/ enforcers.