(en) Australia, Melbourne, The Anvil #4/1 - THE NEED FOR A RANK AND FILE MOVEMENT*

The Campaign for a General Strike to Stop Tony Abbott is developing, but needs to go a lot 
further and a lot faster. Each day that goes by without an organised working class 
response is a day that Liberals harm working class people and democratic rights in 
Australia further, a day to destroy the environment, torture refugees, wage imperialist 
war in West Asia, stoke reactionary social forces and stack public offices with Right wing 
zealots. To wait till the next election is to concede Tony Abbott the right to commit any 
crimes, no matter how appalling. ---- The Senate Won't Save Us ---- Firstly, many of the 
atrocious measures contained in last May's Budget were waved through because they were 
part of the appropriation bills which give the government authority to spend public money. 
This is how cuts to school and hospital funding for the States, cuts to higher education 
and many program cuts have gone ahead uncontested.

Secondly, relying on the Senate allows the Government to wangle deals with Right wing 
independents and minor parties if they have to ? neither Labor nor the Greens can be 
trusted to oppose government attacks consistently. The Government got the abolition of the 
mining tax and its anti-refugee legislation through, so placing faith in the Senate is a 
recipe for disappointment.

The Labor Party Won't Save Us

The ALP, whatever its previous philosophy, is now a thoroughly neo-liberal party. Many 
members continue to fight the good fight inside it, but decades of rule changes have 
ensured that the leadership always wins. Labor's differences with the Liberals are 
marginal and, left to their own devices, when in power they would implement most of the 
attacks they now profess to oppose. We have seen it already under Hawke, Keating, Rudd 
and Gillard. Now the ALP serves Big Business even more slavishly. Anybody who thinks Bill 
Shorten would chart a substantially different course from Abbott, let alone reverse his 
attacks on workers, has rocks in their head.

The Union Officials Won't Save Us

Virtually the entire union bureaucracy is loyal to the Labor Party (most of the exceptions 
having thrown in their lot with the Greens ? good luck with that!). The limit of their 
ambitions is a return to a Labor government, with the more photogenic of their number 
landing plum parliamentary seats for themselves.

The officials will not challenge the neo-liberal consensus unless their own positions are 
threatened ? and not necessarily even then. They quake in fear before the State apparatus 
and have no faith in their rank and file members. They cannot even defend the 
institutions over which they preside, let alone mobilise a movement that can stop broader 
government attacks on the working class.

We Have to Save Ourselves

Only by organising a movement at the base of our unions can we fight back. We have to 
mobilise a rank and file groundswell in favour of a general strike to stop all of Tony 
Abbott's attacks. Once the movement is strong enough, we must be prepared to act 
independently of the union officials. When we create facts on the ground, the officials 
will be forced to either lead the struggle against Abbott or be bypassed.

Take Back Our Unions, Take Back Our World

The organised rank and file necessary to build the general strike against the Abbott 
Government is also necessary to fight subsequent attacks on the working class by 
Australian capitalists. The union bureaucracy must be shattered and those genuine 
elements within it must dissolve into the rank and file movement. By its nature, 
capitalism continually attacks workers and siphons off ever more wealth and power to those 
already rich and powerful. To end the attacks for good, our rank and file movement must 
link up with similar movements overseas and rise up in worldwide revolution against 
capitalism.

To contact the Campaign for a General Strike to Stop Tony Abbott, look for that name on 
Facebook, or E-mail: generalstriketostopabbott@gmail.com.

From 'The Anvil' newsletter of Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group (MACG), issue 4/1, 
Feb. 2015.

*You can download the current and back issues of The Anvil here 
http://melbacg.wordpress.com/the-anvil

Related Link: http://melbacg.wordpress.com


* From 'The Anvil' newsletter of Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group (MACG), issue 4/1, 
Feb. 2015.

http://www.anarkismo.net/article/27850