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 daily news and political analysis of major world events. It also features commentary on world economy, social questions, history, culture and science.  See the online catalog of Mehring Books |
Join the Socialist Equality Party Student Clubs!Society at the end of the twentieth centuryWith less than two years before the end of the century and the beginning of a new millennium, humanity is at an impasse. None of the fundamental problems that plagued humanity at the turn of the century have been resolved. Global capitalism is once again gripped by a deepening economic crisis, while the blight of militarism and imperialist domination is symbolised in the brutal attack by the Clinton administration against the people of Iraq. The US aggression is aimed at securing strategic control over the Middle East, in particular the region's oil. The pretext is the supposed need to destroy Saddam Hussein's ability to create "weapons of mass destruction". But chemical weapons can be built in rudimentary facilities using readily available materials. Eliminating that potential is possible only through the complete destruction of Iraqi society its industrial and social infrastructure, electricity and water supplies, education facilities and thousands of civilian lives or the outright military occupation of the country. The Howard government, fully backed by the Labor opposition, is attempting to provide legitimacy for this cowardly onslaught, under conditions where the US is becoming increasingly isolated. Its collaboration is based on the calculation that the mounting economic and social crisis in Indonesia and throughout East Asia will soon see Australian capitalism requiring the military assistance of the United States in suppressing the masses of the region. The collapse of the Indonesian and other South East Asian economies provides yet another graphic demonstration of the deepening instability and destructive nature of the profit system. Virtually overnight, billions of dollars in stock and currency values have been wiped out and millions of working people plunged into abject poverty and destitution. The deepening social crisisThe present impasse is characterised by a profound contradiction. Science and technology have made astonishing advances, creating the material basis to dramatically raise the living standards and cultural level of the world's population, while the social conditions of broad masses continue to plummet. More than 100 years ago Karl Marx explained that capitalism, a system based on production for private profit not human need, was characterised by the accumulation of wealth at one pole, accompanied by the growth of poverty and misery at the other. A recent United Nations report bears this out. It found that the assets of the richest 358 individuals on this planet were equivalent to the combined income of 45 percent of the world's population, some 2.3 billion people. Further, around 1.4 billion human beings are forced to live on wages of a dollar a day or less. Australia has one of the worst levels of social inequality in the advanced capitalist countries. The assets of the richest 200 Australian families worth around $37 billion equal the total incomes of the poorest 40 percent of families, around 5 million people. Under the Hawke-Keating Labor government, the greatest redistribution of wealth from the working class to the rich took place in this country's history. Howard and the Liberals are accelerating this process with the destruction of vital social services such as education, health and welfare. Every day brings new job cuts as part of a never-ending process of downsizing that has seen the destruction of hundreds of thousands of jobs over the last 20 years. Full-time jobs are being replaced by low-wage, part-time and casual labour. Young people, among the worst affected, are the first target of the government's work-for-the-dole scheme, a scheme aimed at ending unemployment benefits and forcing youth into the most menial and low-paid jobs. All this takes place under the banner of "international competitiveness". Globalised production and finance has ignited a never-ending race between every nation-state to attract investment by cutting wages and ripping up what remains of the post-war "welfare safety net" to lower corporate taxes. The market, not human needs, is the guiding principle. The socialist perspectiveThe Socialist Equality Party Student Club advances the alternative to the politics of conformity, selfish individualism and complacency promoted by the media and all the official parties. We appeal to students who are inspired by the ideals of equality and human solidarity. The SEPSC unites students who want to use their training and education to contribute to resolving the social crisis and furthering the cause of human progress. The SEPSC is the student movement of the Socialist Equality Party. The SEP insists that the problems that afflict society unemployment, poverty, racism, war are rooted in the capitalist system. They can be overcome only if the working class reorganises economic life on a rational and planned basis to meet human needs, rather than the profit interests of the privileged few. The SEP embodies the great principle of social equality. It fights for the establishment of a workers' government, which would place the economy under the democratic control of the working class and marshal society's productive and technological resources to eradicate poverty, raise the living standards and cultural level of the masses and eliminate class distinctions. Such a government would take decisive measures to guarantee a decent job, high-quality education, health care and housing for all. The profit system & public educationAn elemental criterion for democracy and social equality is the existence of a universal, accessible and publicly funded education system. But today, whatever public education does exist is being dismantled in favor of a market driven, "user pays" system. In 1997, the Howard government slashed $600 million, or more than 12 percent, from the tertiary education budget. University students now face HECS fees of between $3,300 and $5,500 per year. Moreover, during the past four years, per capita funding for secondary education has declined in every state with greater and greater responsibility for school budgets foisted onto individual schools and institutions. Marketing of courses, attraction of fee-paying students, competition with other schools and institutions, subject and course enrolment figures and "cost efficiency" have become the preoccupation of education authorities rather than the pursuit and assimilation of knowledge. The SEPSC fights for the socialist principle that a high quality education should be guaranteed as a right for all. For this reason we demand the implementation of the following measures: 1. Put billions into public education The allocation of resources for research and education must not be subordinated to the dictates of profit, but determined by social need. Billions of dollars are required to upgrade and expand existing institutions and to build new ones, and to employ more teachers and academic staff to end overcrowding in the high schools, and reduce class sizes in the TAFEs and universities. 2. Guarantee the right of
all, regardless of income, Higher education must be available to all, free of charge. Abolish all HECS and overseas student fees. All students should be provided with a living wage while undertaking study. It is impossible to live on the below-poverty-level AUSTUDY allowance, whose eligibility criteria are designed to rule out many in desperate need of financial assistance. Upon graduation from high school, TAFE or university, every student must be guaranteed the opportunity of employment in their chosen field, or to continue study at a higher level. Simply the reversal of the tax cuts to the corporations and wealthiest individuals made by the Labor government in 1995 would raise $17.5 billion per year toward the funding of these and other measures. Rather than increasing taxes on the working class and the poor, as a GST would do, the SEPSC calls for the lowering of taxes on the working class and an increase on those who can afford to pay big business and the wealthy. A political organisation to unite all working peopleThe SEPSC upholds the principle of socialist internationalism. The perspective advanced by Karl Marx Workers of the World Unite is not only a moral ideal. The world market dominates every aspect of life. Everywhere workers are being pitted against one another by the demands of transnational companies and capitalist governments that unless they work for lower wages, investment capital will move to where it can achieve a higher rate of return. Workers can only oppose this by uniting across national borders. Capital has a global strategy; so must the working class. The SEPSC opposes all forms of nationalism and racism. Pauline Hanson's One Nation is only one part of a broad political spectrum. From her anti-immigrant chauvinism on the "right", to the various appeals for a bourgeois Republic, tariff protection and so-called Aboriginal Reconciliation on the "left", all the "mainstream" political tendencies, including the middle class radical outfits, work to prevent the working class from developing a unified and independent struggle against the profit system. The move towards a Republic is motivated solely by the economic and strategic interests of corporate Australia. The old identification with the British crown has become a barrier to greater penetration of Asian markets. Moreover, the ruling class requires a remodelled state structure and national identity to utilise against the working class in Australia and throughout the region. The SEPSC opposes all those who define the struggle against inequality and injustice in terms of race, nationality, gender, sexual preference or religion. Identity politics provides no challenge whatsoever to the profit system. There is no solution to the problems of workers and young people, whatever their background or skin colour, within the framework of the capitalist nation state. The campaign for Aboriginal Reconciliation is a case in point. The terrible oppression of Aborigines is a product of the profit system, not "white society". The reconciliation now being pursued is between the Australian bourgeoisie and a tiny privileged Aboriginal elite whose aim is to intensify the exploitation of the vast majority of the Aboriginal population. The current intellectual climateIn the present reactionary intellectual and political climate many critically-minded students, teachers and workers see no way forward. The greatest lie of our century the false identification of socialism with the Stalinist bureaucracy in the former USSR has created enormous confusion. According to the capitalist ideologues, the collapse of the Soviet Union has demonstrated the triumph of the profit system and the failure of socialism. The SEPSC works to clarify historical truth. Stalinism was not socialism. The Stalinist bureaucracy murdered tens of thousands of socialist-minded workers, artists and intellectuals in an effort to destroy those with any connection to the 1917 workers' revolution in Russia. Leon Trotsky led the socialist opposition to Stalinism, opposing the destruction of Soviet democracy and defending the Marxist program of proletarian internationalism against Stalin's nationalist program of "socialism in one country." This struggle culminated in the founding of the Fourth International in 1938 as the new world party of socialist revolution. The Socialist Equality Party is the Australian section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, which represents the continuity of this fight for Marxism. The working class & political leadershipThe working class made up of those whose physical and intellectual labour creates mankind's wealth constitutes the vast majority of the world's population. This is the social force capable of putting an end to the profit system and placing economic and social life on new and higher foundations. In doing so it will liberate humanity as a whole. The working class is driven into struggle by the operation of the profit system itself. The 1980s and early 1990s saw explosive battles in nearly every section of industry and the public sector, both here and internationally against the destruction of jobs and conditions. However, these struggles were, one after another, isolated and defeated. Responsibility for these defeats rests not with the rank and file, but rather with the leadership of the official labor and trade union movement. The ALP and ACTU have been the central mechanisms through which the attacks of big business have been enforced. Struggles of building workers, miners, pilots, public sector workers and, most recently, waterside workers, have all been isolated and undermined. A case in point is the National Tertiary Education Union which has collaborated in the destruction of more than 1,400 academic and general staff jobs over the past few years, despite opposition from students and staff. Students who identify with working people should have no romantic illusions about the ACTU or any of the trade unions. They represent neither the struggle against the profit system, nor the defence of public education, welfare or health services. The struggle for socialism versus protest politicsThe crisis confronting the working class and society as a whole can be resolved only through the establishment of socialism. It is not a matter of making the profit system more humane or making the big business parties more "progressive". It is a question of ending a social system that has become a reactionary brake on human progress. The global spectacle of capitalist "reform," i.e., the dismantling of yesterday's social welfare programs, is proof that the existing system cannot be reconciled with the needs of humanity. That is why the SEPSC opposes the perspective of protest politics, that the problems of society can be solved by putting pressure on the ruling class and their governments. This perspective ignores the fact that capitalism by its very nature is a system of exploitation, and that the profits of the ruling class are dependent on its ever more ruthless subjugation of the working class. In one way or another the self-described "socialist" groups that orbit around the NUS and the trade union apparatus the DSP, the ISO, the Spartacist League, Left Alliance etc. promote the outlook of protest politics. The SEPSC bases its perspective on the fact that the class struggle is irreconcilable, that the working class is a revolutionary force, and that the future of mankind depends on the ability of this class to carry out the conscious task of putting an end to the profit system and placing society on new and higher foundations. To do this the working class must establish its political independence from the parties and politicians of the ruling class and build its own mass socialist party. The central aim of the SEPSC is to build the Socialist Equality Party as this mass workers' party. A new period of social struggleA new period of history has opened up. The old economic and political order is breaking down. Huge social struggles lie ahead around the globe. These conflicts raise the need to bring a socialist outlook and perspective to students and workers. A mass working class political party which aims at the revolutionary transformation of society must be built. We call on all young people to summon their energy, enthusiasm and intellect to build this party, and we urge all students to join the Socialist Equality Party Student Club. |
