democracy - Red Flag

10 1 SEPTEMBER 2013Newspaper of Socialist Alternativewww.redflag.org.auREDFLAGNo US attack on Syria!Lee SustarEvidence of a horrific chemical weaponsattack by the Syrian regimeagainst civilians has revived liberalcalls for “humanitarian” interventionby the US military – despite the USarmed forces’ own recent record ofmass death and destruction in Iraq,Afghanistan and beyond.For example, WashingtonPost columnist Eugene Robinsonwrote that President Barack Obamashould “punish Syrian dictator Basharal-Assad’s homicidal regime with amilitary strike” because “any governmentor group that employs chemicalweapons must be made to suffer realconsequences. Obama should upholdthis principle by destroying some ofAssad’s military assets with cruisemissiles.” “[S]omebody,” says Robinson,“has to be the world’s policeman.”The New York Times editorialboard cautioned against an open-endedintervention, but said that becauseObama had made the use of chemicalweapons a “red line” that wouldtrigger a US response, the presidentnow had to “follow through”. In otherwords, the credibility of the US empireis now on the line, so a militarystrike is unavoidable, according tothe Times.But the threatened US militaryattack on Syria is motivated solelyby Washington’s imperial aims in theMiddle East, not by any desire to savecivilians from further repression by abrutal regime. The US objective is tocontain and roll back the democraticrevolutions of the Arab Spring, a projectit shares with allies Israel, SaudiArabia, the Gulf State monarchiesand, now, the Egyptian military thathas reasserted its power.Certainly the US hasn’t beenstirred to consider military action bythe fact that Syrians are dying in largenumbers. An estimated 100,000 haveperished since the revolution againstthe Assad regime began in March 2011– the overwhelming majority of themcivilians killed at the hands of Assad’sforces.At least 1,000 people have died inthe Ghouta region from the chemicalweapons attack. Yet it wasn’t the horrorof the weapons that caused Washingtonto prepare military action. Asthe Foreign Policy website reportedAugust 26, “[A] generation ago, America’smilitary and intelligence communitiesknew about and did nothing tostop a series of nerve gas attacks farmore devastating than anything Syriahas seen” – when Iraq, led by then-USally Saddam Hussein, used such weaponsagainst Iran in the 1980-88 GulfWar.The US, still struggling to recoverfrom its failed occupations in Iraq andAfghanistan, is highly reluctant to putforces on the ground in Syria. But politiciansand military leaders appear tohave reached a consensus on a limitedattack, possibly with Tomahawkmissiles fired from warships and submarines.US policymakers are not only worriedabout al-Qaeda-linked jihadiststaking power. They’re also concernedthat the revolutionary movement,the Local Coordination Committees(LCC), will bring to power a populardemocratic government in the wakeof Assad.As Joseph Daher of the SyrianRevolutionary Left Current pointsout, the LCCs are the wellspring of therevolutionary movement and havechallenged the Islamists’ repressionand attempts to impose sharia law onareas they control. “Our choice shouldnot be to choose between on one sidethe USA and Saudi Arabia, and on theother side Iran and Russia. Our choiceis revolutionary masses struggling fortheir emancipation,” Daher said.US policy, therefore, is contradictory.It tolerated Gulf state Qatar’ssupport for Islamist fighters evenwhile declaring the Syrian rebelgroup Jabhat al-Nusra to be a “terrorist”organisation. Washington hasalso insisted that Islamists take aback seat in the latest version of themainstream Syrian opposition, theNational Coalition of Syrian Revolutionaryand Opposition Forces. TheUS and its ally Turkey, moreover, haveblocked heavy weapons from reachingthe fragmented opposition.The bottom line is that the USA US-led military strike will not only add tothe killing, but will play into the hands ofthe regime as it uses nationalist appeals tojustify still more barbaric repression.would like to contain the civil war inSyria, hoping for an outcome acceptablein Washington – like an ex-generaltaking power who can preserve asmuch as possible of the existing state.The mass killing in Ghouta was soawful that it forced the debate on Syriato a head. The warheads filled withsarin gas were targeted not at rebelfighters, but women and children intheir beds. Their lungs filled with fluid,suffocating them. Hundreds moresuffered severe and crippling injuries.Anyone with a sense of justice will beincensed by such a calculated effort toterrorise a vulnerable civilian population.Now Western politicians are cynicallytrying to turn this horror to theirpolitical advantage. British PrimeMinister David Cameron and FrenchPresident Francois Hollande are joiningObama in preparing the groundfor military intervention.Secretary of State John Kerryplayed to the outrage over theuse of chemical weapons when hedenounced the Syrian regime: “As afather, I can’t get the image out of myhead of a father who held up his deadchild, wailing,” he said.But Kerry lacks credibility when itcomes to speaking out against the savageryof the Assad regime. As chair ofthe Senate Foreign Relations Committee,he made outreach to Syria a personalproject, in the name of encouragingAssad’s pro-market economicreforms. Even after the regime movedto repress pro-democracy protests inearly 2011, Kerry continued to praiseAssad as a reformer.Key to Assad’s staying power is hisability to whip up fears among ethnicand religious minorities that theywill be slaughtered if Sunni Islamistgroups come to power – as well as hisclaim to be the defender of the Syriannation against foreign powers.A US-led military strike will notonly add to the killing, but will playinto the hands of the regime as it usesnationalist appeals to justify still morebarbaric repression. Already, the USand its ally Turkey are trying to bringSyrian Kurds into the embrace of thepro-US regime in Iraqi Kurdistan. USintervention will only aggravate ethnicand sectarian violence, as it did inIraq, which is suffering through theworst sectarian violence since 2008.While Western imperialist powersand their regional allies might like tosee Assad go, they are willing to toleratehis rule for now in order to foreclosethe possibility of revolutionarychange in Syria. As the RevolutionaryLeft Current put it in a statement afterthe Ghouta attack: “Our revolutionhas no sincere ally, except for the revolutionsof the peoples of the regionand the world and the militants whowork to free themselves from obscurantist,oppressive and exploitativeregimes.”

REDFLAG1 SEPTEMBER 2013Newspaper of Socialist Alternativewww.redflag.org.au11The reality of law and order hysteriaYusef Salaam was one of those wrongfully convicted.Louise O’Shea“I’m always behind. Those years thatit took from me, I lost a lot. And evennow at the age of 36 when I should befully in a career, have a house, a car,maybe married, I don’t have any ofthat. I don’t know how to regain any ofthat stuff anymore. So I’m just here.”– Raymond Santana, one of theCentral Park FiveThe impact of the wrongful convictionand jailing of five teenage boysfor a 1989 rape cannot be quantified.The 41 years they collectively servedin prison cannot be given back tothem. The devastation their familiesexperienced, the breakdown of relationshipsand the grief, cannot bereversed. The emotional trauma andabuse at the hands of the criminalinjustice system, politicians and massmedia can never be fully compensatedfor.But a documentary by filmmakersKen Burns, Sarah Burns and DavidMcMahon at least gives them, alongwith the rest of the world, the truth.The Central Park Five documentsin heart-wrenching detail how fiveBlack and Hispanic teenage boys,all of whom lived in the Schomburghousing project in Harlem, were inApril 1989 rounded up by police, coercedinto making false confessions,convicted on rape and attempted murdercharges and sent to jail for a crimethey did not commit.Their actual crime, like so many ofthose who make up the over 2.25 million-strongprison population in theUnited States, was being young, Blackand working class.New York in 1989 was a city dividedby what New York Times reporter JimDwyer calls in the film “a social moat”.The economic downturn of the late1980s, the arrival of crack cocaine andthe associated crime on New York’sstreets, and the onset of the AIDS epidemichad created mass social anxietyabout the decaying fabric of society.The term “underclass” had justbeen coined to describe the growingnumbers of youth, mostly Black andLatino, at the margins. Gentrificationdriven by a super wealthy professionalclass continued unabatedjust blocks away. Central Park, thelocation of the rape and assault thefive were wrongly accused of, was thesymbolic space that brought thesedisparate elements together.“The park,” as academic and authorKristin Bumiller puts it in herbook In An Abusive State “is the focusfor the clash over the ownership ofpublic space between a woman whorepresents the hopes of a new professionalclass and teenage boys whorepresent young lives wasted by theforces of racism and poverty.”So while 3,254 rapes took place inNew York in 1989, the rape of a young,white, professional woman jogging inCentral Park on 19 April 1989 became,according to then Mayor Ed Koch, the“crime of the century”. For GovernorCuomo, it was “the ultimate shriek ofalarm”.The law enforcement apparatus,political establishment and mass mediasaw in the Central Park Joggercase an opportunity, as Bumiller describes,to “stimulate the passions ofmass audiences while reassuring thisaudience of the state’s capacity to respondto the threat”.The mass media played its part ingenerating a lynch-mob mentality bysplashing headlines like “Teen WolfPack Beats and Rapes Wall St Execon Jogging Path”, “The Jogger and theWolf Pack. An Outrage and a Prayer”,“None Of Us Is Safe” and “FiendishCrime of Negro Brutes”.The victim, on the other hand wasportrayed, as Joan Didion describedat the time, as “New York’s ideal sister,daughter, Bacharach bride: a youngwoman of conventional middle classprivilege and promise whose situationwas such that many people tended tooverlook the fact that the state’s caseagainst the accused as not invulnerable.”The case unleashed not only racisthysteria against the five, but a law andorder frenzy. This culminated in theextension of policing to schools, thenotorious stop-and-frisk laws whichtargeted Black and Latino youthsand a range of other measures whichstrengthened the repressive apparatusof the NYPD. It set the scene forthe “Giuliani era” of zero tolerance ofThe case unleashednot only racisthysteria, but a lawand order frenzy.This culminated inthe notorious stopand-frisklaws whichtargeted Black andLatino youths.crime, including heavy penalties andprosecutions for petty offences suchas graffiti, turnstile jumping and cannabispossession.Adding to the hysteria surroundingthe case, millionaire tycoon DonaldTrump took out full page ads infour New York newspapers callingfor the teenagers, all of whom were 16years old or younger, to be executedand for the death penalty to be reinstatedin New York – which it was twoyears later.In the immediate aftermath, theNYPD’s main concern was gettingcharges laid quickly. For them, findingthe perpetrator within days of therape was, as Dwyer says, “a home runfrom a law enforcement standpoint”.The guilt or otherwise of the fiveteenagers charged was a secondaryconsideration.This was the tragic confluence ofevents that saw Yusef Salaam, KoreyWise, Kevin Richardson, RaymondSantana and Antron McCray chargedwith rape and attempted murder. Theboys had been messing around witha group of twenty or so other boys inthe park on the night of the attack,and were apprehended for “disturbingthe peace” as part of routine harassmentby police.When news of the discovery of thejogger’s body arrived at the precinctthe teenagers were still in custody,and the police decided they had theperpetrators. They then proceededto coerce confessions from the boysthroughout the night and into thefollowing day. The description in thefilm of how this was done should turnany viewer into a lifelong hater of thepolice.It is fairly widely acknowledgedtoday that the treatment of the CentralPark Five represents a gross miscarriageof justice, despite their exonerationreceiving shamefully littlepublicity (especially when comparedto the circus surrounding their conviction).As tragic as the Central Park Five’sstory is, their eventual exonerationmay make them some of the luckyones. Statistics from the InnocenceProject indicate that coerced confessionswere involved in a quarter ofall cases of wrongful conviction. Thecontinuing racism and inequality ofthe criminal injustice system meansthat innocent people will continue tobe victimised, and for most the crimescommitted against them by the statewill never be publicly acknowledged.As the coercive apparatus of stateseverywhere are strengthened as partof neoliberalism and anti-crime hysteria,The Central Park Five is a timelyreminder about the consequencesof such developments. It is essentialviewing.

12 1 SEPTEMBER 2013Newspaper of Socialist Alternativewww.redflag.org.auREDFLAGSole parents hit hard by cutsSteph PriceTurning eight doesn’t usually meanmuch. If you’re lucky, it might beworth an extra half an hour of televisionat night. Maybe it’s when you’refirst allowed to walk to the milk baron your own. Nothing special, it usedto be just another stop on the slowmarch towards counting your age indouble digits.The Australian government hasset about fixing all that. No longeran also-ran in the birthday stakes,turning eight is now life-changing forthousands of children and their parents.Since January this year, the federalLabor government has cut off parentingpayments to an estimated 84,000sole parents because their youngestor only child has turned eight.Tens of thousands more whoseyoungest or only child hasn’t yetturned eight are now racing againsta clock they can’t beat. “I’ve got a fewyears left, but as soon as she turnseight, then I don’t know”, says a singlemother, looking at her three-year-old,who’s running in circles around usboth as we talk. Another with a sevenyear-oldson describes feeling “as if acloud of doom is approaching”.Sole parents forced off parentingpayments have been redefined as “jobseekers” and told they can apply forNewstart allowance, better known asthe dole.Under the changes, a sole parenton Newstart will receive anywherebetween $75 and $110 a week less thanif they had remained on the parentingpayment. But a shrinking basicincome is just part of the picture.Many sole parent families will losethe health care card that gives themaccess to discounts on medicationand utilities. Most will no longer beeligible for the education supplementthat was available to help single parentswith some of the costs associatedwith study and training.Though they are by definitionworking as the primary carer for theirchildren, single parents on Newstartwill also have to juggle parental responsibilitieswith the laborious anddegrading run-around that Centrelinkcalls “participation requirements”.The magnitude of the cuts andtheir disproportionate impact on theliving standards of women and theirchildren have been widely attacked.Around 90 percent of people impactedby the changes are women.“There aresingle people who don’t have childrenthat can’t afford to pay rent on Newstart.How on earth is someone whoneeds that extra bedroom or two goingto survive? Rents have skyrocketed,and it’s no longer as simple as movingout further … people are scrimpingand cutting back and cutting back butthere’s no future for people who aredoing that, there’s no hope”, said KerryDavies, spokesperson for the Councilfor Single Mothers and their Children,speaking at a recent rally against thechanges.In Victoria, latest figures showthat eviction rates are spiking in manyof Melbourne’s outer suburbs. Formany sole parents, there is nowherefurther out to go. One woman postingto an online forum said she felt fortunateto have found a small countryblock where she can camp with herchildren until she can pay down someof her bills.Minister for families Jenny Macklinhas told single mothers to pulltheir socks up, get a job and “showtheir children a strong work ethic”.Most women hit by the changes werealready in paid work. The governmentwell knows this.The government also knows thatpoverty is cutting deeper and deeperinto the lives of sole parent families.Its own much maligned Social Inclusionoffice points to Melbourne University’slatest “Household, Incomeand Labour Dynamics in Australia”survey, which reports that the numberof one parent families in povertyhas jumped by 15 percent in the lastdecade.Labor has calculated that the livesof sole parents and their children areworth about $728 million in savings tothe budget bottom line over the nextfour years. This is much less than thegovernment has budgeted to spend on“income management” since it was introduced.The hypocrisy of Honi Soit censorshipThe editors of Honi Soit, Sydney University’s student paper,recently ran a front cover featuring photographs of 18 vulvas.Each of the vulvas belongs to a different Sydney University student,all of whom volunteered.Shortly before publication, the editors were warned that,were they to print and distribute the paper, they would likelybe guilty of publishing “indecent material”, an offence underNSW criminal law. They were ordered to censor the “indecent”images by printing a black bar over each photograph.However, this proved an insuffi cient safeguard for decency.The humble black bar failed to obscure enough of eachvulva. All 4,000 copies of the paper were quickly pulled fromdistribution and locked away until they could have their frontcovers guillotined off.The editors report that some 200 papers were put to theguillotine before a compromise was reached with lawyers actingfor the Students Representative Council. The paper wasreturned to circulation in sealed plastic packets and labelledwith a R 18+ rating, the same restrictions that apply to the distributionof pornography. Mariana Podesta-Diverio, one of theeditors of Honi Soit, here explains why they chose to publish.The events surroundinglast week’s VaginaSoit controversy serveas a reminder that sexism isrife in contemporary society;women’s bodies are stilllooked upon with contemptand scrutiny. Although theintent of the editors (the projectwas driven autonomouslyby the female editors) wasto publish the vulvas withoutcensoring them, the possiblelegal repercussions of publishing– God forbid – a bodypart belonging to half of thepopulation forced us to putbars over the vulvas.The project’s participantswere accused of beingeverything from “bourgeoisindividualists” to “privilegedlittle white fucker(s)”. Neitherof these accusations is true.Women’s oppression isoften an intersectional issue– meaning that their oppressionis compounded by racialand economic inequalities.The “privileged little whitefucker(s)” line particularlystung me, as I am a Hispanicwoman with working classroots and was one of the subjectson the cover.The reaction to Honi Soit’spublication of censored vulvaselicited the usual diatribeof sexist reactions from conservatives(“You clowns justlet the champ know whenyou’re doing a male genitaliacover”; “men’s bodies arestigmatised, too!”). Of course,the intent of the cover wasnot to depict genitalia in anattempt to sensationalise orsexualise the female body. Infact, that was the very pointthat we were trying to make– most of the time when wesee vulvas, they’re either in ahighly sexualised context orthey are being scrutinised tofit into socially constructedideals of beauty, which areomnipotent in a capitalist societywhere women’s unpaidlabour is routinely exploited.Hopefully Vagina Soit hasat least made a dent in thesexist status quo of our society.The fight for the liberationof all oppressed social groups,however, is far from over.

REDFLAG 13FEATUREThe limitsof capitalistdemocracyThe federal election has revealed just how limited our democracy is. In this issue’sfeature, Sandra Bloodworth looks at the history of the struggle for democracy, andthe way in which capitalism limits meaningful democratic control of our society.The meaning of democracy is contested.On one hand, it was invoked byGeorge Bush and then Barack Obamato justify wars in the Middle East andAfghanistan. Every fascist party inEurope today either has democracy inits name or as part of its rhetoric.On the other hand, striking workers,movements from the student andworker rebellions of the 1960s to theanti-capitalist protests at the turnof this century, to the Occupy Movementof 2011, have taken democracyto include the right to organise, theright to protest, free speech and equalcivil rights irrespective of class, race,gender or sexuality. And they have exposedthe severe limits of representativegovernment as a vehicle for thedefence of any of those rights.The history ofdemocracyCapitalism emerged from revolutionarystruggles against the oldfeudal order. In the English Civil Warof the 1600s, the US War of Independenceand the French Revolution, thenew capitalist class that aspired torule employed the language of democracyand universal rights to mobilisethe masses to fight beside them.But in every revolution, the capitalistclass moved, as soon as theythought they could get away with it,to constrain the rights of the massesand entrench their own power andprivileges. In 1660, one parliamentarianin London was explicit in hisjustification of the reinstatement ofCharles II as head of state: “The governmentof a king though tyrannicalis far better than the usurping tyrannyof many plebeians.”In the US War of Independence,while they mobilised the masses todefeat the British, the capitalists employedmore radical rhetoric thantheir predecessors. Just as the Frenchwould raise the banner of “Liberty,Equality, Fraternity”, the US foundingfathers talked of the “rights of man”.The Declaration of Independence pronouncedthat governments derived“their just powers from the consent ofthe governed”.But the capitalist elite faced thequestion of how to consolidate theirrule. The masses expected to be includedin the outcome of the revolutionthey had backed – and they werearmed. And so, as New Zealand historianBrian Roper put it in his book TheHistory of Democracy, “[T]he framersof the Constitution embarked on thefirst experiment in designing a set ofpolitical institutions that would bothembody and at the same time curtailpopular power.”Selection by voting, as JamesMadison, one of the authors of theUS Constitution, put it, it would “refineand enlarge the public views, bypassing them through the mediumof a chosen body of citizens”. Intensecompetition for a few governmentseats supposedly ensures a body ofthe most talented.The actual agenda was to ensurethe rich would retain power commensuratewith their economic privilege.Madison was completely transparent,arguing that the protection of the“rights of property” was to be “the firstobject of government”. A pure participatorydemocracy like the Atheniandemocracy of antiquity, in which peoplein government positions were selectedby lot, would be fatally flawedbecause they are “spectacles of turbulenceand contention [which] haveever been found incompatible with …the rights of property”. The ideologicaljustification for this was articulatedby Alexander Hamilton, a lawyerand banker who helped to bringabout the Constitutional Convention,attended it and then was influential ingetting the Constitution ratified:“[A]s riches increase and accumulatein few hands … virtue will be …considered as only a graceful appendageof wealth … the advantage of characterbelongs to the wealthy. Theirvices are probably more favourable tothe prosperity of the state … and partakeless of moral depravity [than thepoor].”One of the key US institutionswhich enabled representation butno control was the Supreme Court.A layer of law professionals grew upwhich ensured that “private propertybecame truly sacred, inviolate fromstate and anarchism alike”. However,this separation of powers is notunique to the US. It is a feature of howcapitalists rule.The struggle foruniversal suffrageThe settlement after the EnglishRevolution was not seriously disrupteduntil the “Great” Reform Bill of 1832,which granted the franchise to thenew middle class emerging in the industrialrevolution, bringing the proportionof adult males able to vote toabout 18 per cent.On another note, dozens of Ludditesand others – including Glasgowweavers in 1820 and the famousTolpuddle Martyrs who formed a unionin 1834 – were transported to NewSouth Wales and Van Diemen’s Land.Five hundred agricultural labourerswere transported in 1830 in responseto the Swing riots, famous for theirarson and machine breaking acrossthe rural south of England. They werenot over until 1848, by which time theChartist movement had become thefirst working class movement for universalsuffrage. Between 1839 and 1847,

14REDFLAGFEATURE: The limits of capitalist democracyNo electedgovernmentactually controlswhat happensat the point ofproduction. Wedo not vote forunemployment,what kind ofcars to produce,which companieswill collapse in afinancial crisis.Part of a mural celebrating the Chartist movement in Newport, Wales. There is currently a campaign by local residents to prevent thecouncil demolishing the mural to make way for developers.102 Chartists also sailed to Australiaas convicts.The Chartist movement regularlymobilised hundreds of thousands demandingsuffrage for all males over21, payment of MPs and other reformsthat would enable working class mento enter the political arena as neverbefore. It reflected the growing recognitionthat the poverty and exploitationthe vast majority suffered couldnot be ameliorated by trade unionsand protest alone. Governments,made up of representatives of the richand privileged, sided with the exploitersat every turn.In this great movement we seethe emergence of what has becomethe alternative to capitalist democracy.Marx and Engels were inspiredby this and other workers’ strugglesand came to see this very struggle asthe means by which society could befounded on a new basis. Mass organisationsmushroomed, inspired bythe idea of a stand by the vast massesagainst the tiny layer of rulers. Thissense of a common identity led to anunprecedented sympathy of Britishworkers for Irish immigrants, whosesuffering was now recognised as partof the general oppression of workers.Some of the most determined and respectedleaders were black, in spite ofthe dominant racism invoked to justifyslavery not long ended.Even though the Charter calledonly for male suffrage, many leadingmale Chartists wrote pamphlets andarticles calling for workers to supportfemale suffrage. One, in his pamphletRights of Women, written in jail, criticisedthe men of the movement fortoo little attention to women’s politicaland social rights. Hundredsof thousands of women organisedand attended meetings. According toDorothy Thompson, a historian ofthe movement, “[B]y the early 1840s[women’s suffrage] seems to have beenone of the main reforms which mostChartists expected to follow from thegaining of the Charter.”However, the vote would not beextended beyond a tiny layer of menuntil 1867, and even in the reform actof 1884 only two of every three mengot the vote. Women would not get thevote until 1928. It would be more thana century before most male workers,women, blacks and Indigenous peoplein other capitalist countries wouldwin the vote. The southern states ofthe US were eventually forced by thefederal government, after the massivecivil rights movement, to allow AfricanAmericans to participate as votingcitizens in 1965.In Australia, invaded and colonisedwith the hard labour of convicts,many political and trade unionactivists, South Australia granted universalmale suffrage in 1856, the firstgovernment in the world to do so. Federally,Australia was the first countryto introduce universal suffrage for thenon-Indigenous population, in 1903,but all limitations on Indigenous people’sright to vote were not removeduntil the 1960s.It is no coincidence that universalsuffrage became a reality in a string ofEuropean countries between 1918 and1920, when revolutionary sentimentsspread like wildfire after the 1917 RussianRevolution and the horrendousexperience of the World War.Capitalism anddemocracyThere are social scientists who arguethat capitalism necessarily bringsdemocracy. The truth is, capitalismcreates the conditions in which representativedemocracy is possible butnot inevitable. Under feudalism, thepeasants produced their basic necessitieson the land, and the landed aristocracyrelied on brute force to seizeenough for their own consumption.Capitalism, by contrast, has separatedworkers from any control over themeans of producing wealth.Separated from any control overwhat will be produced or how, workersconfront employers seeminglyas equal citizens. Marx pointed outin Capital that they are “free” to taketheir labour power to the market,forced only by “the dull compulsionof economic facts” to work for capitalists.The reality of exploitation andthe resultant unequal power hiddenby this transaction is what forcesworkers to unite in trade unions.No elected government actuallycontrols what happens at the pointof production. We do not vote for unemployment,what kind of cars to produce,which companies will collapse ina financial crisis. In other words, whilegovernment legislation can purport toexert controls, the fundamental decisionsthat determine the lives of millionsare taken in the boardrooms andon CEOs’ yachts.Fritz Thyssen, one of the capitalistswho bankrolled Hitler, explainedwhy capitalists can live with representativedemocracy:“An industrialist is always inclinedto consider politics a kind of secondstring to his bow … In a well orderedcountry, where the administration issound, where taxes are reasonable,and the police well organised, he canafford to abstain from politics and devotehimself entirely to business.”It is this separation of economicsand politics that provides the contextfor representative democracy thatensures the continuation of rule byan exploiting minority. But even limiteddemocracy is not inevitable. Stateforce hovers behind the facade of democracy,often used simply to intimidateand warn.A system of recurring crises and

REDFLAG 15war, capitalism cannot always maintainthe facade, and the state can beused to maim, jail and even kill thosewho refuse to accept the barbaritiesof capitalism. Capitalists have turnedto fascism or military dictatorshipin times of crisis – Hitler’s Germany,Mussolini’s Italy, Spain and Portugalfrom the late 1930s until the 1970s,Pinochet in Chile 1973, the Greek colonels’junta 1967-74, Suharto’s regimein Indonesia after 1965 – when theyjudged it necessary. These regimeswere hailed as saviours of civilisationwhen they inflicted mass slaughteron their populations – until of coursethe West went to war with Hitler. PaulKeating, the ALP elder statesman andformer prime minister, wrote that Suharto’smassacre of possibly a millionwas one of the best things to happenin Australia’s “neighbourhood” becauseit brought “stability”.The present crisis has producedmass unemployment at levels notseen since the 1930s Great Depressionin countries across Europe. Attacks onworkers in even the US, the most powerfulimperialist state, have forced carworkers to take cuts to their wages ofup to a third. As a result, new methodsof limiting democracy have come intoplay.In November 2011, George Papandreou,the Greek prime minister, proposeda referendum on a “rescue package”– a brutal austerity programmenegotiated with the European CentralBank (ECB) and IMF. The whole ofEuropean respectable society reactedwith absolute fury. The very idea!Giving people a vote on managing theeconomic crisis! Within days Papandreouwas replaced by the unelectedLucas Papademos. The media callthis former governor of the Bank ofGreece and vice-president of the ECBfrom 2002 to 2010 a “technocrat”.Then, as the Italian debt crisismounted, Silvio Berlusconi resignedand was replaced by another unelected“technocrat”, Mario Monti – actuallya European commissioner andan international adviser to GoldmanSachs and Coca-Cola. He was appointed“senator for life” and a week latersworn in as prime minister at thehead of a “national unity government”of bankers and businessmen.In the situation of extreme economiccrisis, the democratic “right” ofthe people to elect their governmentwas simply “suspended” to imposesavage austerity, which governmentssubject to the pressure of actually gettingelected might baulk at adopting.In Australia four decades of neoliberalismlaid the basis for an increasingnegation of democracy. Socialpolicy and notions of public goodare now openly determined entirelyby reference to what they imply forthe Treasury. Increasingly, governmentaltasks have been devolved tounelected institutions.Workers’democracyThe history of parliamentary democracymakes it clear that if masspoverty, war and oppression are to beeradicated, if the environment is to besaved, an alternative form of democracyis absolutely necessary. The historyof workers’ struggles illuminateswhat this alternative looks like.In 1871 the workers of Paris roseup, took control of the city and replacedthe old state machinery withthe Paris Commune. Marx saw thatworkers had found the answer to thequestion of how to replace capitalismand its systems of power. Workershad created their own genuinely democraticorganisations – not the resultof abstract theory, but of the actionsof the revolutionaries who seized Paris.Then in 1905, when the workers ofRussia rose in revolution, the workingclass was more a force in its own right,giving us an even clearer picture.In Paris, delegates to the Communewere chosen by geographicalarea, giving middle class reformersundue influence. In Russia in 1905,workers created representative bodiesmade up of delegates from workplaces.This brought the question ofdemocratic control into the workplaceswhere society’s wealth is produced.Delegates were recallable atany time, unlike our politicians whoare secure in their fixed terms. Theywere paid the wage of a skilled workerand remained at work, where they experiencedthe consequences of theirdecisions beside those who votedfor them. Think how much more accountablethis makes delegates thanthe people we vote for but never meetface to face unless we are pounding ontheir office door to protest – and eventhen you’re unlikely to meet them.These kinds of structures – sovietsin Russia, workers’ councils inEnglish, shoras in Iran in 1979 beforethey were smashed by the Islamistclerics – have been created in manyrevolutionary workers movementssince. They bring the administrationof economic and social affairs into therepresentative bodies, a point Marxdrew out as of great significance in1871. Workers create the wealth thatcan be used to enrich the whole ofsociety. So they cannot separate politicalrule from control over the processof production the way exploiters can.And the revolutionary struggles thatproduce workers’ councils, like theChartist movement, change workers,making them “fit to rule” as Marx putit, overcoming divisions, becoming capableof building a new humane society– unlike numbering a few boxes inelections.There are those who say that societyis too complex today for workersto organise it. But alongside thegrowth of a literate, educated, skilledworking class, capitalism has developedimmense systems of communication.In Poland in 1981, workers usedthe telephone system to broadcastthrough the factories the proceedingsin meetings between their representativesand the bosses. Today it’s notdifficult to imagine workers’ councilsin workplaces linked up not just cityor nation-wide, but internationally.There would be no need for secrecy;delegates could be made accountableand replaced if they did not carry outpolicies their electors supported.Of course there would be disagreementsabout how to achieve a betterworld. But once the power of the capitalistswas broken, those discussionscould be conducted by people withcommon interests. In a class society,where exploiters live off the labour ofthe majority, the conflicting interestscannot be resolved by debate; that iswhy the capitalists rely on a repressivestate to impose their interestswhen necessary.Capitalist democracy is a compromisebetween the classes, a concessionwon generally by workers’struggles. While democratic rightshave to be defended at every turn,they should be seen only as the basison which we can fight for rule by thepeople for the people. We could hardlymake as big a mess of it as the presentmob who rule.The history ofparliamentarydemocracymakes it clearthat if masspoverty, war andoppression are tobe eradicated, analternative formof democracyis absolutelynecessary.

16 1 SEPTEMBER 2013Newspaper of Socialist Alternativewww.redflag.org.auREDFLAGThe Liberal visionfor a bosses’QueenslandPaul DMCampbell Newman’s Liberal NationalParty (LNP) has made clear its visionfor Queensland: one inspired by theneoliberal method of attacking workersand defending the interests of thebosses and their profits.Newman has slashed jobs andservices, attacked workers at everyopportunity and legislated to make itincreasingly harder for our unions tofight back. So at this half way mark,it’s worth taking stock of the story sofar.Ongoing job cutsFrom the very beginning, the LNPhas had Queensland workers in itscross hairs, with public sector workersbearing the brunt of the attacks.Although promising no forced redundancies,once elected, Newman appointedPeter Costello, former Howardtreasurer, to head an “independent”audit of the state’s finances.After the audit warned of a loomingbudget crisis, Newman declaredhe had little choice but to slash publicspending. First to go were up to 3,000temporary staff, axed together in onefell swoop on what became known as“Black Friday”, 30 June 2012.However,even permanent employees were notsafe, as the budget for the 2012-13 financialyear included 14,000 cuts ofpermanent staff from across the publicservice. To facilitate this, Newmanunilaterally removed job security provisionsin the existing EBA, which heenshrined in legislation despite unionprotests.Those public sector workers whomanaged to keep their jobs are nowsubject to “contestability”, whichNewman describes as “testing whethersomeone else can do it for less money,do the same job or an even betterjob for less money than is currentlyoccurring”.This paves the way for outsourcingto the private sector, with treasurerTim Nichols declaring, for example,that Queensland’s TAFE institutionsare at “the top” of the government’s hitlist. Contestability is also being usedto drive down wages, as is occurringin WorkCover, where 188 positions arebeing downgraded, workers having tochoose between accepting an averageof $10,000 less per year and being retrenched.Services savagedNewman also stripped fundingfrom a range of community organisationsthat provide services to someof the most disadvantaged sectionsof the population. Under the $260million Grant Funding Efficienciesprogram, savings are being made by“ceasing or reducing funding for lowerpriority projects and services”.Such “low priorities” have includedsexual health services, subjected tothe loss of 30 jobs, despite health careprofessionals warning that this willlead to “a public health catastrophe”.Although Kevin Rudd has sinceannounced, as part of the federal electioncampaign, funding to keep servicesgoing for another year, the Queenslandhealth minister has dismissedthe move, describing it as “ridiculous”.Such is the LNP’s disdain for thecommunity sector that it completelyrejected a similar $2.5 million lifelinefrom the commonwealth that wouldhave allowed the state’s Tenancy Adviceand Advocacy Service (TAAS) toremain open.As a result, the service was forcedto close its doors on 30 June, despiteincreasing demand, including froma growing number of homeless. OneBrisbane TASS office described theservice as being for many “the differencebetween having a roof overyour head and homelessness”. Clearly,those living under the constant threatof eviction, or who are already livingrough on the streets, are another “lowpriority” for the LNP.Attacking unionsNewman’s vision includes a strongstate that stamps out dissent andsupports the bosses against any fightback. Newman quickly moved to introducecumbersome balloting procedures,making it more difficult to engagein protected strike action. From1 July 2013, the LNP introduced a newcode of practice aimed at crackingdown on union activity in the buildingindustry following a heroic andsuccessful nine week strike over equalpay at the Queensland Children’s Hospitallate last year.The new code aims to prevent majorprojects being “held to ransom bymilitant unions” – in other words, preventingunions taking similar successfulaction in the future. Newman haseven taken away the official May Dayholiday, long celebrated in Queensland,as a deliberate insult to unionsand an assertion that we should recognisejust who’s boss in this state.Newman has also passed legislationrequiring unions to get members’approval before embarking oncampaigns that will cost more than$10,000. Under the guise of empoweringmembers, this measure is aimedsolely at making it more cumbersomefor unions to campaign on behalf oftheir members. Although rejected bythe Industrial Relations Commission,Newman went so far as to attempt toban the Together public sector unionfrom communicating with its membersor adversely commenting on currentEBA negotiations.Such is the arrogance of the LNPthat one MP even threatened on hisFacebook page to have organisersof a demonstration against the closureof a nursing home charged withcontempt of parliament after he washeckled when he tried to address therally. And of course Brisbane has theG20 to look forward to in November2014, when police and security powerswill be bolstered and local residentswill require passes just to access theirown homes.Newman’s government is an expressionand reinforcement of existingclass divisions within the state,Newman’s “reforms” clearly targetingworkers and the disadvantaged.With moves to continue outsourcinggovernment functions and services,including handing over control of the$1.8 billion Sunshine Coast UniversityHospital currently under constructionto private sector interests, it’s alsoclear that the LNP will continue toserve the interests of business at ourexpense.Meanwhile the LNP parliamentarianshave their snouts well and trulyin the trough, pocketing a 42 percentpay rise while crying poor and offeringpublic servants a measly 2.2 percent.The trend will continue until ourside can build a sustained fight backin our unions and on the streets.Queensland Premier Campbell Newman.Newman’s visionincludes a strongstate that stampsout dissent andsupports thebosses againstany fight back.

REDFLAG1 SEPTEMBER 2013Newspaper of Socialist Alternativewww.redflag.org.au17Bad sport and bad bloodLindsay FitzclarenceThe Essendon Football Club (EFC)“supplement scandal” has been theburning issue of the AFL 2013 season.During the long period of investigationby the AFL and the AustralianSports Anti-Doping Authority, thecorporate media have focused primarilyon the tensions, ambiguities and irregularitiesbetween the AFL, the EFCand coach James Hird.The issue has often been reducedto a very public soap opera. The widerpublic has been deprived of criticalinsights about the incorporation ofsport into the master frame of “themarket”. A deeper analysis, acknowledgingthe social roots of this problem,is required.The myopic culture ofcapitalist sportThere are five key elements to theneoliberal transformation of sport.First, the key principle in growinga market in sport is to establisha brand that will attract and holdspectators and participants. Prior toestablishing a viable competition, basic“plant” in the way of facilities andinfrastructure is also required. In thecase of football, this means appropriatestadiums and playing facilities. Inselling the brand, active involvementof mass media, with the associatedbenefits of advertising, then follows.In securing such basic infrastructure,endorsement and material supportfollow from the state, through policyand regulation.Second, hyper-competition is theultimate code. Hard-edged competitivepractices shape interactions betweencodes and, within each code, betweenclubs, inside clubs and into thehearts, minds and bodies of athletes.In the 1987 film Wall Street, the principalcharacter, Gordon Gekko, assertedthat greed is good and that it capturesthe essence of the evolutionary spirit.The architects of neoliberal capitalistsport have reworded Gekko’s axiominto the belief that “sport is greed”.Third, the brand rules. While thespectacle of tight contests and fiercecompetition is of upmost importance,the growth and security of the brand,not the sport itself, matter most. Thismeans that the context of competitionmust be carefully managed bysharing success between competitorsin order to guarantee ongoing interestin and loyalty to the brand. PolicyThe process of marketmanagement andmanipulation alsogenerates seriouscontradictions andperhaps unintendedeffects.designed to effect “equalisation” betweenclubs has been one lever usedto help manage the tension betweencompetition and tangible equity.Fourth, sporting specialists of allstripes must be mobilised to the maxand unite in the cause. These includeadministrators, coaches, medical staff,sports scientists and the media. Theyare the essential technicians behindthe quest for the “winning edge”,“competitive advantage” and the “onepercenters”.And finally, athletes’ bodies andminds must be controlled, commodifiedand, it seems, medicated.The AFL as a primeexampleThe AFL understands itself as aleading brand in sports entertainment.Its branding process reachesacross a wide range of symbols, activitiesand sub-units. Further downthe corporation are the independentclubs, which are tightly controlledunits. And further down still are theelite athletes, who are shaped as activebut docile machines and as commoditiesfor the mass market of theAFL brand.Australian Bureau of Statisticsdata offer one measure of the successof this branding process. The AFL, includingits incorporated sub-leagues,attracts more spectators than othersports. Under the two network broadcastingarrangement, including FoxFooty and Network Seven, televisionaudiences continue to grow.The AFL has actively courted stateand federal governments as well asprivate corporations to help fundcode infrastructure. Some examplesof these financial and market-drivenrelationships include “partnerships”in the Gold Coast Stadium, SydneyOlympic Park, Adelaide Oval, the redevelopmentof the Great SouthernStand at the MCG and the SCG.The AFL has enacted a range ofinitiatives designed to create “equalisation”across the clubs. Equalisationinvolves measures and controls designedto foster revenue sharing aswell as limiting the extremes of performancebetween clubs. It involvesdevices such as early draft picks forlower placed clubs and the enforcementof “salary caps” on player payments.In August 2013 a deputation of officialsfrom the AFL visited the US tostudy methods of equalisation in themajor sports of football and baseball.On return, AFL deputy chief executiveGillon McLachlan said he saweffective strategies designed to promotecompetition equalisation andthus to give all supporters hope thattheir club would be competitive. Hissummary comment is telling: “Verycapitalist endeavours support thesesocialist policies.”Here we detect vital clues aboutthe dynamics behind the Essendonsupplements scandal. Equalisation isa label for the processes designed tosecure and grow the AFL brand withinthe sport/entertainment market.The problem, as this scandal highlights,is that this process of marketmanagement and manipulation alsogenerates serious contradictions andperhaps unintended effects. Primarily,players have been used as high performanceguinea pigs. Individual clubs,within the managed market, understandthat their time in the spotlightof success, at the top of the league tablewith the chance of a premiership,is limited.In order to achieve success, clubsmust carefully harness their collectiveresources, manage their playinglist wisely and, all going to plan, capitaliseon their chance for a premiershipwhen their turn arrives. It isaround this imperative to win withina narrow opportunity that temptationsto push the envelope arise.Understood in these terms, capitalistsport is designed to generatecontradiction. Obvious examples includethe growth of illegal gamblingand the burgeoning use of drugsby athletes. In turn the health andwell-being of participants caughtup in this maelstrom of incentives,inducements and pressures are putat risk, and so is the public’s faith insport itself.The Essendon supplement scandalraises an alert about such socio-politicalcontradictions. Withinthe burgeoning framework of capitalistsport culture, supplement useis a stark example of clubs, officials,experts and obedient players strivingto find that small edge of competitiveadvantage.Neoliberalism, as a meta-ideology,fosters this ugly climate within whichsuch contradictions flourish and fester.In the end, we get good entertainmentbut bad sport and bad blood.

18 1 SEPTEMBER 2013Newspaper of Socialist Alternativewww.redflag.org.auREDFLAG

REDFLAG1 SEPTEMBER 2013Newspaper of Socialist Alternativewww.redflag.org.au19Manning and Snowden havechanged the discussionManning and Snowden have met their objectiveof initiating a serious discussion nationally andinternationally, whatever further crimes may beinflicted on them.When Edward Snowdengave his first public interviewin Hong Kong,he said his greatest fearwas the possibility that his revelationswould fall on deaf ears.Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manningand Snowden have paid a steepprice for their revelations of the warcrimes and massive violations of theBill of Rights by the US governmentagainst its own citizens and its vastcollection of electronic communicationsworldwide.Manning was sentenced to 35years in a military stockade for tellingthe truth, and Snowden has beenforced into exile, hunted down by thecriminal administration in Washington.But their sacrifice has not beenin vain. In a real sense, Manning andSnowden have met their objective ofinitiating a serious discussion of thesematters nationally and internationally,whatever further crimes may beinflicted on them.Snowden’s revelations, comingafter those of Manning, changed thecontext of Manning’s court martial.The exposure of the secret NSA programscaused many to begin to callinto question Washington’s real intentionsin prosecuting the soldier.Julian Assange said Manning’ssentence was a partial victory, in thatit was much less than the administrationwanted. The prosecutors arguedstrongly for a life sentence withoutthe possibility of parole for “aiding theenemy” – in essence, treason. Havinglost that in the atmosphere created bySnowden’s revelations, their final demandwas a sentence of 60 years.Manning’s lawyers say she will beeligible for parole in about seven moreyears, having been given credit for theover three years she has already beenheld in prison, which included somemonths of torture.Her defence now moves into a newphase. After she was sentenced, Manningissued a strong open appeal toPresident Obama for a pardon. Thatwill be pursued legally.Then Manning came out publiclythat she would now live her life as awoman, and changed her name toChelsea. She said she would seek medicaltreatments to change her physicalbody accordingly. The army immediatelyresponded that it would allowno such treatments. Now Chelsea ischallenging that in the courts. This ispart of the fight for her to receive fairand good treatment in prison in general.These campaigns will help keepher case in the public eye, and prepare,if necessary, to fight for her earlyrelease at the first opportunity forparole.Ruling class worriesThe New York Times editorialisedthat Manning’s sentence was “excessive”,while saying she deserved somepunishment. The Times’ position reflectsa division in the ruling classconcerning the Manning-Snowdenrevelations.Another indication was the closevote in the House of Representatives,which almost defunded the NSA’s programof monitoring every phone callin the US.The Times also ran a lengthy articlein its Sunday magazine of 18 Augusthow Laura Poitras, a journalistand film-maker, who worked withSnowden and Glen Greenwald to gethis revelations out to the world.Her photo was on the magazine’scover, with the headline “How LauraPoitras helped expose what the Americangovernment does in the nameof security”. The article portrayedSnowden, Poitras and Greenwald asnot only quite intelligent in how theycircumvented the US repressive apparatus,but was sympathetic to theircause. Poitras deserves more credit,and I urge readers to look up this article.Another aspect is freedom of thepress, even the capitalist press. TheJustice Department is seeking to forceNew York Times reporter James Risento testify in its case against formerCIA officer Jeffry Sterling. It allegesthat Sterling leaked classified informationto Risen, who used it to writeabout the CIA. So far Risen has resistedtestifying, but he might face contemptof court charges.The administration would like tomove against the Times and other papersfor printing some of Manning’sand Snowden’s revelations. It fears tocreate a backlash, however.Now some officials and people inCongress are seeking to put organisationslike WikiLeaks in a new categoryof “non-legitimate” journalism, and sonot protected by constitutional guaranteesof freedom of the press.Such a move would raise its ownproblems for the ruling class, forexample for reporting by social media.Would a teenager who postedSnowden’s documents be fair gamefor the spooks?It is quite likely that Julian Assangeis already under secret indictment,probably citing the EspionageAct, for publishing Manning’s materialas well as aiding Snowden.A section of the ruling classdoesn’t want to go that far in tearingup the Bill of Rights.RepercussionsAnother cause for concern in rulingclass circles has been the wideinternational repercussions of Manning’srelease of State Department cables,and the wide international net ofthe NSA’s spying.A recent release of Snowden documentsby Greenwald, reported in DerSpiegel, of new information of US spyingon Germans has created consternationin that country.Adding to Greenwald’s release ofinformation of US spying on Brazil,where he is living, was the detentionat London’s Heathrow airport ofGreenwald’s companion David Mirandafor nine hours.Miranda was on his way back toBrazil from a meeting in Berlin withLaura Poitras, who is working withGreenwald on further Snowden releases.The British political police claimedthey were acting under a law to ferretout information about terrorism.“What’s amazing is this law, calledthe Terrorism Act, gives them a rightto detain and question you about youractivities with a terrorist organisationor your possible involvement in orknowledge of a terrorism plot”, Greenwaldsaid.But the spooks didn’t raise anythingabout terrorism when theygrilled Miranda. “The only thing theywere interested in was NSA documentsand what I was doing with LauraPoitras”, Greenwald noted.The British cops then confiscatedall Miranda’s electronic documentsand equipment. A court later ruledthat his computers and records wouldhave to be returned to Miranda, butgave the police seven days first tocopy them.The Brazilian government stronglyobjected. Obviously, London didn’tdo this on its own, but in collaborationwith Washington.The British political police alsothreatened to shut down the Guardiannewspaper, its editor, Alan Rusbridger,has revealed. This was inretaliation for the paper’s publishingmaterial from Wikileaks and Greenwald.The police said they would shutdown the Guardian unless it turnedover its hard drives containing theleaked material, or destroyed the harddrives. Rusbridger decided to do thelatter, and destroyed them under thewatchful eyes of three police thugs.This might seem ridiculous since thematerial on the hard drives existselsewhere. The intent was clearly tointimidate.The credibility of the US administrationhas been damaged, both bywhat Manning and Snowden haverevealed (and there is more to come),and by the violent way it has respondedto the leaks.That this has caused consternationat the top presents new opportunitiesto expose the truth about Washington’scrimes. When the thieves fallout, we should take advantage.

20 1 SEPTEMBER 2013Newspaper of Socialist Alternativewww.redflag.org.auREDFLAGOBITUARYAmber Maxwell, a rebel and a fighterLewis TodmanThe revolutionary socialist movementlost a great fighter on Saturday,24 August.Amber Maxwell lived a difficultlife. As a transgender woman, shefound it impossible to find permanentwork or accommodation. But throughall her hardship, she put everythingshe had into the fight for socialism.Amber seemed to have boundlessenergy and enthusiasm for politics.Every week she would catch thebus from the homeless youth hostelwhere she lived to the University ofWestern Australia to help us build theorganisation, sell Red Flag, fight cutsto higher education and campaign forrefugee rights.Amber was always the one leadingimpromptu paper sales, organising extrachalking and postering for demonstrations,selling far more copies ofRed Flag than anyone else on stalls.Even when she was in her most depressedstate, she always told me thatsocialist activism and fighting for abetter world was the one thing thatmade life worth living. Rarely haveI met a comrade so determined anddedicated.Amber took her own life at the ageof 20, unable to deal with her oppressionany longer. Her death should notbe viewed as a random tragedy, but asa product of transphobia and a lackof essential services for young people.Suicide is an epidemic among LGBTIyouth. Studies in Australia show theattempted suicide rate among LGBTIpeople is between 3.5 and 14 times thatof their heterosexual counterparts.A survey in the USA found that 32percent of transgender people interviewedhad attempted suicide.It’s not hard to see why. Amberfaced discrimination at every turn.When applying for a room to rent, shewas told several times that only “realgirls” were wanted. One homelessnessservice hung up on her after informingher that they “only had room forfemales”. She was consistently rejectedwhen she applied for jobs orapprenticeships. Even when she wasable to find a hostel to live in, she sufferedfrom demeaning paternalism,including a curfew which often madeit difficult for her to come to politicalmeetings at night.Amber was killed by the systemshe despised so much. Her death is atragic reminder that institutionalisedhomophobia and transphobia costlives. As Amber herself wrote in issue4 of Red Flag, “Life as a transgender orgender diverse person is often characterisedby difficulty and discrimination.Family rejection, homelessness,depression, attempted suicide – theseare a regular part of our existence.”Amber was a well-known activistfor equal marriage rights, a fighteragainst the discrimination that killedher. She chaired the Equal Love rallieswith her typical fiery tone and couldelectrify crowds of hundreds with heranger. On every demonstration, Amberwas the first on the megaphoneand the last off.In her spare time she fanaticallyresearched Perth labour history. Shewrote some wonderful articles, includingthe one published below onthe 1910 tram strike. She would enthusiasticallyregale us with stories she’dread of unemployed workers’ protests,wildcat strikes and battles against thefascists.She especially loved the songs ofthe Industrial Workers of the World,Australia’s first serious revolutionaryorganisation, and would bust out theanti-Labor Party classic “Bump MeInto Parliament” whenever the opportunityarose.She had the most wonderfully irreverentattitude towards all authorityand her political enemies; she neverPHOTO: ALEX BAINBRIDGE.cared about offending anyone. Ambercould always be relied on to give offthe-cuffspeeches about police brutalitythe moment anyone was arrestedon a demonstration, to give the fencesat refugee detention centres a solidkick with her steel-capped boots or tostart up a controversial chant on themegaphone. She was a true revolutionary.You will be missed so much comrade.Rest in peace.When workers put the brakes on PerthAmber MaxwellPerth is often portrayed as a city withlittle interesting history. It may surprisesome people to learn that Perthwas once brought to an almost totalstandstill by a six and a half weektram strike, from July until September1910.An appeal to the arbitration courtfor a new award (setting out the wagesand conditions of employment forall workers in the industry) had led toone with very loosely defined clauses.It allowed for the slashing of workers’wages and conditions.A new roster was issued for withworkers on split shifts that potentiallyput some on call for well over14 hours a day. This was legal becausethe award specified the number ofhours to be worked but not the numberof hours “on duty”.The award specified a new minimumwage, to which the Perth TramwaysCompany promptly lowered allworkers’ wages. When the workersappealed, the presiding judge declaredthat he had “no business regulatingindustry”. Incensed, the workers votedto take action. One by one theystopped work and presented overtimeclaims to the company when theyFor the durationof the strike therewas, in effect, notram service at allin Perth.reached their specified maximumhours per fortnight. They even pulledin one freeloading scab who had up tothat point refused to join the union.For the duration of the strikethere was, in effect, no tram service atall in Perth. At a time when most peopledid not have their own vehicles,this meant that the city was broughtto a virtual standstill. Many shopsdid not open, and some of the largerdepartment stores resorted to hiringprivate cars to ferry wealthy customersin and out. The tram company,unable to find many scabs, proceededto board up trams inside the depot toprevent sabotage.There was mass public supportfor the strike. The “Letters to the editor”section of the West Australianwas full of letters urging people toboycott scab trams. The WestralianWorker (the paper of the Western AustraliaLabor Party) devoted considerablespace to coverage of the strike.Mass meetings were held on thePerth Esplanade and in places as farafield as Kalgoorlie; a lot of moneywas raised for the relief of the familiesof the striking workers. Whenthe company attempted to train somescab drivers in August, a riot brokeout, and the scabs were pelted withfruit and various other objects.When the company was finallyable to restore a limited service, policeon horseback had to escort the tramsup and down Hay Street to preventhostile crowds from attacking them.The resumed service was also disruptedby sabotage, including the cuttingof crucial power lines and the attempteddemolition of the tram depotand line with dynamite.For all this, however, the strikeunfortunately ended in defeat. Theworkers were forced back to work onthe conditions of the award that theyhad rejected at the start. The defeatalmost broke the union. The leadershipbowed out of the dispute and advisedthe men to make their own decisionsabout a return to work well overa week before they finally capitulated.A large number of non-unionworkers were also now employed onthe trams and were given seniorityover the returning strikers. An attemptto begin a second strike a shorttime later in protest against this wasquickly wound down.Despite the defeat, the strikestands as an inspiring example ofworkers’ struggle. We can take from itimportant lessons of the need for rankand file organisation and the need forworkers’ solidarity across industries.

REDFLAG1 SEPTEMBER 2013Newspaper of Socialist Alternativewww.redflag.org.au21THIS MONTH IN HISTORYLand Rights protests at ‘82Commonwealth GamesWORLD OF STRUGGLELiam Byrne26 September 1982. The streets ofBrisbane are clogged with thousands.The Commonwealth Gamesare in town, promising a bonanzafor business and the best seats in thehouse for Queensland’s corrupt politicalelite.The gangster state was headedby the infamous Joh Bjelke-Petersen,the most dictatorial ruler in Australiasince Robert Menzies.Queensland was a virtual policestate as the Commonwealth Gamesarrived, with special laws to preventembarrassing protests. Bjelke-Peterseneven declared a state of emergencyto deter any form of publicdefiance.But special laws were not enoughto block the courage and determinationof the Indigenous peopleand their supporters who defiantlymarched through Brisbane, bringingtheir struggle into internationalfocus.The Indigenous struggle hadbeen one of militant protest, particularlyover the previous decade. Theprotests were against racism, butalso for that most vital of demandsfor any form of justice for Australia’sfirst peoples, land rights: for controlof their land to be in the hands ofIndigenous people, not the miningbosses and the pastoralists.On 26 September, at least 2,000marched past the grim stares of Bjelke-Petersen’scowboy cops to maketheir demands heard. It becameknown as the largest Aboriginalrights march in Queensland’s historyand sparked a flurry of protests andmarches for the games’ duration.On 30 September a demonstrationduring the opening ceremonyresulted in 39 arrested. On 4 October,109 were dragged to police cells duringa peaceful sit-in. Two hundredand sixty were arrested three dayslater.Despite this attempt at intimidation,the courage and the pride ofthe protesters were not dented in theslightest. Against the batons and thedarkened cells of the Queenslandpolice, backed by all the legislativepower of the government, the Indigenousprotesters demonstratedthat they could not, would not, beignored.MEXICO CITY, Mexico, 21 August:Striking teachers clash with policeoutside the Congress building inMexico City. More than 70,000 teachers,mainly from the southern statesof Oaxaca and Michoacán, participatedin the strike, shutting downaround 24,000 schools at the start ofthe new school year.The focus of teachers’ anger isproposed changes to education lawsthat will subject them to stringentnew performance assessment measures.Mexican politicians, led byPresident Enrique Peña Nieto, claimsuch measures are necessary to improvethe education system. Teachersaround the world will be familiarwith the script, whereby the problemsof a system ground down bylack of funding and incompetent andoften corrupt officials are blamedsolely on teachers.The Mexican government wantsto make teachers the scapegoats fora neoliberal agenda in which investmentsin areas like education, healthand welfare appear as trifles in comparisonwith the main game of supportfor big business and the rich.Fortunately, the teachers aren’t takingit lying down.The clashes outside the Congressoccurred as up to 20,000 teachers laidsiege to the building to disrupt votingon the new laws. Following theseclashes, on 23 August, 7,000 teachersparticipated in a blockade targetingMexico City’s main international airport.In April, teachers attacked andburned government offices in thestate of Guerrero after officials thereapproved the changes.The militancy and determinationbeing shown by teachers in theirfight against neoliberal “reforms” inMexico provide an inspiring exampleand lesson for workers everywhere.Now they tell us“[US] widespread incarceration at the federal, state and local levels is bothineffective and unsustainable.” – US Attorney General Eric Holder. The US has5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of the prisoners.Vote of confidenceA “vote of confidence from the Department of Business, Innovation andSkills.” – British company Offshore Group Newcastle, when it won a £4.5million government grant last October. Since then, the company has giventhe Tories £140,000.How to become a billionaire“The five largest employers in the US, including Walmart and McDonald’s, allpay minimum wage, or close to it. They only succeed in this strategy becausethey’re massively subsidised by the government through food stamps andMedicare.” – Professor John Mason, of William Paterson University in NewJersey.Clear choice“It is my belief that the side we choose must be ready to promote theirinterests and ours when the balance shifts in their favour.” – General JohnDempsey, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, on how the US shouldinterfere in Syria.CHOCONTA, Colombia, 22 August:Small farmers and agricultural workersmarch along a highway in Choconta,around 75km north-east ofthe capital Bogota, during a generalstrike that has paralysed Colombia’srural economy for over a week.Colombia’s arch-neoliberal PresidentJuan Manuel Santos is determinedto push through policies thatwill entrench Colombia’s status as ahoney pot for multinational capital,particularly in mining and agriculture.Over the past few decades, hundredsof thousands of small farmers,miners and other rural workers havebeen forced off the land to make wayfor large scale, export-oriented industry.Those who remain are strugglingto hold on.The current strike is the culminationof growing unrest over thepast year. It has drawn in hundredsof thousands of workers – includingcoffee, coca, potato and rice farmers,alongside truck drivers, gold minersand many others. The workers haveparticipated in actions aimed at disruptingthe wider Colombian economy,mainly through blocking majortransport routes. In many places,strikers have fought off police attemptsto dismantle their blockades.The power of the movement inrural areas has inspired solidarityactions in the cities, students joiningtogether with teachers and other unionistsin providing support to thestrike.The demands of the strikers arestraightforward: the rolling back offree trade agreements and other policiesthat have benefited big businessat the cost of small farmers and ordinaryworkers, along with adequateinvestment in rural infrastructure,in education, health, housing, publicservices and roads.In the cutthroat world of multinationalcapitalism, even the mostmarginal reforms are likely to be resistedtooth and nail by those at thetop. Resolution of the issues underlyingthe strike will require escalationof the struggle in the weeks andmonths ahead.

22 1 SEPTEMBER 2013Newspaper of Socialist Alternativewww.redflag.org.auREDFLAGWhatSocialist Alternativestands for1. SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE is a revolutionaryMarxist organisation. We stand for the overthrow ofcapitalism and the construction of a world socialistsystem.2. BY SOCIALISM we mean a system in which societyis democratically controlled by the working classand the productive resources of society are channelledto abolishing class divisions. Only socialismcan rid the world of poverty and inequality, stop imperialistwars, end oppression and exploitation, savethe environment from destruction and provide theconditions for the full realisation of human creativepotential. A system under the democratic control ofthe working class is the only basis for establishinga classless, prosperous, sustainable society based onthe principle “from each according to their ability, toeach according to their need”.3. STALINISM IS not socialism. We agree with Trotsky’scharacterisation of Stalin as the “gravedigger”of the Russian Revolution. The political character ofthe regime established by the Stalinist bureaucracyin Russia most closely resembled that placed inpower in capitalist countries by victorious fascistmovements – an atomised population ruled over bya ruthless bureaucratic dictatorship masqueradingbehind social demagogy. We stand in the tradition ofthe revolutionaries who resisted Stalinism, and wefight today to reclaim the democratic, revolutionarypolitics of Marx, Engels, Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotskyand others from Stalinist distortion.4. SOCIALISM CANNOT be won by reform of thecurrent system or by taking over the existing state.Only the revolutionary overthrow of the existingorder and the smashing of the capitalist stateapparatus can defeat the capitalist class and permanentlyend its rule. A successful revolution willinvolve workers taking control of their workplaces,dismantling existing state institutions (parliaments,courts, the armed forces and police) and replacingthem with an entirely new state based on genuinelydemocratic control by the working class.5. THE EMANCIPATION of the working class mustbe the act of the working class itself. Socialismcannot come about by the actions of a minority. Thestruggle for socialism is the struggle of the greatmass of workers to control their lives and their society,what Marx called “a movement of the immensemajority in the interests of the immense majority”.6. FOR WORKERS to be won to the need for revolution,and for the working class to be coheredorganisationally and politically into a force capableof defeating the centralised might of the capitaliststate, a revolutionary party is necessary. Such anorganisation has to cohere in its ranks the decisiveelements among the most class conscious and militantworkers. Laying the basis for such a party is thekey strategic task for socialists in Australia today.Who is behind Red Flag?Socialist Alternative is the organisation behindRed Flag. We are a revolutionary socialist groupthat sees class struggle, not parliament, asthe key to changing society. We are organisedvery differently to the main political partieslike Labor and the Greens. Our members don’tjust hand out how to vote cards for candidatesin elections. We are activists wherever we are,trying to organise others, build solidarity and encourageresistance – in workplaces, on campuses,in progressive campaigns, and on the street.As well as being involved as unionists and activists,it is crucial that we build an organisationthat can combat all the lies and justifications forcapitalism that spew out of the media, the educationsystem and from the government. That’swhy we also hold meetings to discuss politicalideas, the history of the struggle, and the issuesof the day (see our upcoming events on the nextpage).The following are the principles of SocialistAlternative. They provide the foundation for theorganisation’s broader political positions andanalyses, and guide our political practice.7. IT IS NOT enough for a revolutionary party toorganise the vanguard of the class. For capitalismto be overthrown, the majority of the workingclass must be won to revolutionary action and thesocialist cause. It is not enough to simply denouncethe non-revolutionary organisations and politicalcurrents in the workers’ movement. Revolutionarieshave to engage reformist organisations via themethod of the united front in order to test the possibilityfor united action in practice and demonstrateto all workers in a non-sectarian way the superiorityof revolutionary ideas and practice. We support alldemands and movements that tend to improve theposition and self confidence of workers and of otheroppressed sections of the population.8. SOCIALISTS SUPPORT trade unions as the basicdefensive organisations of the working class. Westand for democratic, militant, class struggle unionismand reject class collaborationism. We also standfor political trade unionism – the union movementshould champion every struggle against injustice.9. CAPITALIST EXPLOITATION of the workingclass and the natural world has created a situationwhere the profit system threatens the habitabilityof the planet. We oppose attempts to halt climatechange and environmental destruction throughmeasures that place the burden on working classpeople and the poor. We demand instead fundamentalsocial and political change that directlychallenges the interests of the ruling class. The environmentalcrisis can only be solved under socialism,where the interests of people and the planet are notcounterposed.10. SOCIALISTS ARE internationalists. We rejectAustralian patriotism and nationalism and fight forinternational working class solidarity. The struggleagainst capitalism is an international struggle:socialism cannot be built in a single country.11. THE IMPERIALIST phase of capitalism hasushered in an era of military conflict that has noprecedent in human history. The core element ofimperialism is the conflict between imperial powers,or blocks of capital, which attempt by military,diplomatic and commercial means to divide andredivide the world in their own interests. In the conflictsbetween imperial powers (open or by proxy),revolutionaries do not take sides, least of all withour own ruling classes. Nor do we call for the resolutionof inter-imperialist conflict by the “peaceful”methods of international diplomacy. Instead wefight for international working class solidarity andunity, and embrace Lenin’s revolutionary call to“turn the imperialist war between nations into acivil war between classes”. In the case of wars wagedor diplomatic pressure exerted by military threat bythe imperial powers against colonies and non-imperialistnations, we oppose the imperial power anddefend the right of national self-determination.12. AUSTRALIA IS an imperialist power in its ownright. Through its own economic and militarystrength, and in alliance with US imperialism, Australiancapitalism seeks to politically and militarilydominate its region and project power more broadly.This gives revolutionaries in Australia a specialobligation to stand in solidarity with struggles ofworkers and the oppressed in our region againstAustralian imperialist intervention and control.13. WE RECOGNISE Aboriginal and Torres StraitIslander people as the first people of Australia. Weacknowledge that sovereignty was never ceded andcondemn the crimes of genocide and dispossessioncommitted by European colonists and the Australianstate. We support the struggle for land rights,sovereignty and economic and social justice forIndigenous people.14. WE OPPOSE all immigration controls andsupport open borders. We fight to free all refugeesfrom detention and for the right of asylum seekersto reach Australia. We oppose racism towardsmigrants. In particular we reject racism towardsMuslims, whose right to religious and political freedomis routinely attacked on the spurious groundsof “fighting terrorism”.15. WE OPPOSE all oppression on the basis of sex,gender or sexuality. We oppose all forms of discriminationagainst women and all forms of socialinequality between men and women. The strugglefor freedom from exploitation and freedom from allforms of oppression includes the liberation of lesbians,gay men, bisexual, transgender and intersexpeople. We fight for an end to all legal and social discriminationagainst LGBTI people and all forms ofsexist discrimination. We support full reproductivefreedom for all women.16. ALL THESE forms of oppression, and otherslike the oppression of the young, the disabled andthe elderly, are used to divide the working class andto spare capital the expense of providing for theneeds of all members of society. Combating themis an essential part of building a united workingclass struggle that can win a socialist society. Onlya socialist revolution can bring about the genuineliberation of the oppressed and the ability of everyhuman being to realise their full potential.

REDFLAG1 SEPTEMBER 2013Newspaper of Socialist Alternativewww.redflag.org.auGET INVOLVED23UPCOMING EVENTSSocialist Alternative hosts regular public meetings across Australia on history, theory andthe campaigns and struggles of today. Left wing and progressive people welcome.If you too hate the Liberals and despise the ALP, don’t despair in front of the TV.Instead, join us to discuss how to build a real opposition to the major parties and thesystem that they serve. Come along to the Socialist Alternative election night party inyour city!MelbourneSaturday 7 September 6pmSocialist Alternative election night party!AMWU building, 251 Queensberry StreetCarlton SouthPerthSaturday 7 September, 6:30pmSocialist Alternative election night party!State School Teachers Union150-152 Adelaide Terrace, East PerthAdelaideSaturday 7 September, 5pmCall James for details:0412 906 978Interested in left wing ideas? Want toknow more about the fundamentals ofMarxism and the politics of SocialistAlternative?We host a series of discussions for leftwing people to learn about the Marxistcritique of capitalism, and aboutthe socialist project to change theworld. Every week we discuss topicsincluding:• What is capitalism?• The working class and tradeunions• The capitalist state and how itworks• Revolution and socialism• Imperialism• Oppression• The Russian Revolution• Why we need a socialistorganisationSydneySaturday 7 September, 6pmSocialist Alternative election night party!The Gaelic Club, 64 Devonshire StreetSurry Hills (entry: $5)BrisbaneSaturday 7 September, 6:30pmSocialist Alternative election night party!Kurilpa Hall, 174 Boundary Street, WestEnd (entry: $5 unwaged, $8 waged)Canberra -no party but:Thursday 12 September, 6pmGeorge Orwell and the surveillance stateHayden-Allen G050 @ ANUFor more details on how you can getinvolved with Socialist Alternative, simplyvisit sa.org.au or contact us at:info@sa.org.auIntroductionto Marxismdiscussion groupsYou can join in any week. Eachsession begins with an introduction,followed by small group discussion. Itis a great way to familiarise yourselfwith the revolutionary ideas ofMarxism.Melbourne:6:30pm every Monday @ SocialistAlternative Centre, Trades Hall.Sydney:6pm every Thursday @ SocialistAlternative Centre, 246 King St(upstairs), Newtown.Perth:6.30pm every Tuesday @ CitiplaceCommunity Centre, Perth trainstation.Brisbane:6:30pm every Monday @ 136Boundary Street (upstairs), West End.A twice yearly journal covering keypolitical debates and issues from arevolutionary Marxist standpoint.To order a copy or to subscribe visitMARXISTLEFTREVIEW.ORGJOIN SOCIALISTALTERNATIVEIf you agree with what you read in “what Socialist Alternativestands for” on the opposite page, and want to get involved inhelping to build a fighting socialist organisation, why not joinus? Fill out the application form below and send toSOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE,BOX 4013, MELBOURNE UNIVERSITY,VIC 3052You can also apply to join at www.sa.org.auYES, I WANT TO JOIN SOCIALIST ALTERNATIVE!NAMEPHONEEMAILRed Flag, Issue 7, September 1 2013. ISSN: 2202-2228Published by Red Flag Press Inc.Trades Hall, 54 Victoria St, Carlton South, Vic, 3053Email: info@redflag.org.au, ph (03) 9650 3541Editors: Ben Hillier and Corey OakleyEditorial Committee: Ben Hillier, Corey Oakley, Steph Price, Jorge JorqueraProduction: Diane Fieldes, Viktoria Ivanova, Allen MyersCover design: Vinil KumarSubscriptions and publicity: Steph Price. Email subs@redflag.org.auADDRESSSomeone from your nearest branch will be in touch soon.

REDFLAGIssue7 - September 1 2013 $3 / $5 (solidarity)From asylumto AshesAustralian cricket’s nextgreat hope was on theverge of being deportedas a failed refugee. If hewasn’t good at cricket,he could be dead. Manyothers aren’t so lucky.Trevor GrantAustralian cricket’s six-year searchfor the next Shane Warne has gonethrough a conga line of promisingprospects who disappear as quicklyas they emerge. Fawad Ahmed, 31, anasylum seeker from Pakistan, is thelatest leg spinner to have this crushingburden thrust upon him. He’s noWarne, but he’s a talented bowler whowas selected in the Australian squadfor the one-day series in England inSeptember.At first glance, it’s a feel-good storyabout big-hearted Australia welcominga desperate, frightened human beingwith open arms, and who is aboutto repay his adopted country by takingprecious English wickets.As usual, the reality is more complicated.Without being lucky enoughto have the powerful lobby of CricketAustralia to plead his case, Ahmedwould now be back in Pakistan, fearingthat he would end up like a friendand fellow cricketer from his homeland– tortured, murdered and left inpieces in a bag.Pakistan-born Ahmed fled hishomeland in 2010 after receiving constantdeath threats from religious fanaticsbecause he was coaching womencricketers and promoting women’seducation and health. “They terrorisedme, they made death threats to me”, hesaid in an interview with Melbournemedia earlier this year. He spoke ofthe death of his friend, Nauman Habib.“We played together. He was agood friend of mine. They kidnappedhim. After a few days somebody foundhim in a bag in pieces.”Ahmed also told his story to theImmigration Department severaltimes but, after being initially rejectedand then failing through two stages ofappeal, he was told to prepare for deportationlast September.As he made clear, the only reasonhe managed to avoid deportation wasthe actions of officials at his districtcricket club, Melbourne University.They called on James Sutherland, aformer bowler at the club and currentCEO of Cricket Australia, whono doubt used his access to the hallsof power in Canberra to lobby forAhmed.It was a successful campaign. Thethen minister for immigration, ChrisBowen, used his ministerial discretionto grant Ahmed a protection visa latelast year. Bowen’s successor, BrendanO’Connor, fast-tracked Ahmed’s citizenshipapplication in time for him toplay for Australia in England.Cricket aside, the Ahmed case hasdone much to highlight the abilityof the government to do one thingand say another on refugee policy. AsO’Connor was welcoming Ahmed as anew citizen at a ceremony at the MCGa couple of months ago, and personallyvalidating his claim that he wasa victim of persecution, his federalcabinet colleague Bob Carr was on amedia blitz to signal a tougher policyon refugee applications. Carr claimed,among other things, that all recentasylum seekers to Australia were economicmigrants.The most recent Immigration Departmentfigures show that 91 percentof asylum seekers arriving by boat aregranted refugee status. The figure was92 percent for Pakistanis. “When itcomes to these threats on your life,you don’t have options”, Ahmed said,emphasising that economic reasons,including cricket, had nothing to dowith his flight to Australia. “I justcame here to live as a normal humanbeing, as a safe human being.”Carr has not backed off his campaignof demonisation against refugees,continuing to claim that peoplefollowing the same path as Ahmedwere getting an easy ride under a lenientassessment system, the samesystem that, but for the high-poweredintervention of the elite cricket establishment,would have sent Ahmedback to the terror from which he fled.Had a tougher approach on refugeeassessments been in place a year ago,our “next Shane Warne” could veryeasily have ended up in pieces in a bag,not in an Australian cap.[Trevor hosts Refugee Radio at3CR in Melbourne. Visit 3cr.org.au/refugeeradioshow to listen to thepodcasts]