Theory & History

By Hamish Chitts

When the visit of US President Barack Obama was announced last month, an official White House statement said he “is looking forward to commemorating the 70th anniversary of Australia-US relations”. Far from being a cause of celebration, the anniversary represents 70 years of cooperation in attacks, invasions and occupations in the pursuit of economic dominance and profit for a handful of obscenely rich people in both countries — a 70-year axis of evil pitting working people from Australia and the US against working people resisting imperialist exploitation.

By Allen Myers

An Australian Associated Press report a few months ago unintentionally pointed out one of the absurdities of modern capitalism. This is that a good part of the so-called wealth of capitalist societies doesn’t really exist. According to the report (as printed in the October 1 Sydney Morning Herald), the outbreak of the international economic crisis in 2008 caused personal wealth (excluding housing and self-owned businesses) in Australia to drop by 27%. It quoted the multinational Boston Consulting Group (BCG) as saying that Australian personal wealth fell by more than $600 billion from the year before. And — shed a tear for them — 32,790 households stopped being millionaires (leaving only 49,452).

By Kerry Vernon

International Women’s Day began at a time of political and social upheaval more than 100 years ago, on February 28, 1908, when socialist women in the US organised demonstrations and meetings all over the country demanding women workers’ political and economic rights and called it “Women’s Day”. In 1909, 2000 people attended a Women’s Day rally in Manhattan.

By Allen Myers

Marx and Engels’ establishment of the scientific basis of socialism was indispensable to the struggle for a better world because the fight against capitalism must be a conscious one in a way that capitalism’s fight against feudalism was not.

Invictus
Written by Anthony Peckman
Directed by Clint Eastwood
Starring Matt Damon and Morgan Freeman
Runtime: 133 minutes
In cinemas now
Reviewed by Dani Barley

By Allen Myers

From its very beginning, capitalism has always created resistance in those it exploits and oppresses. Well before capitalism had overrun the rest of the world, in Western Europe, where it originated, it was engendering opposition, at times quite fierce: sabotage of capitalist property, illegal workers’ associations, local rebellions. These indications that something was wrong led thoughtful people to seek solutions to the social evils they saw around them such the increasing dispossession of peasants, mass unemployment and petty crime.

By Linda Waldron

On October 2, Marek Edelman died in Warsaw at the age of 90. He had been the last surviving commander of the resistance forces during the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising against the Nazi occupation. Born in Poland, Edelman became a member of the youth organisation of the socialist General Jewish Labour Union, commonly known as the “Bund”, in the late 1930s.

By Allen Myers

When industrial capitalism developed in Western Europe in the 19th century, the great majority of businesses were privately owned. That is, they were the property of a single individual, or sometimes a family, or sometimes two or three partners with defined shares. There was no normal mechanism by which some outsider could become a part owner of the business.

By Allen Myers

A revolution is needed in order to overcome the evils that capitalist society is subject to. But that doesn’t mean that nothing can be improved in the meantime. Quite the contrary: struggles for improvements — reforms — can be successful to one degree or another, depending on many different factors. In 19th century Europe, there were socialists who thought that an “iron law of wages” existed in capitalism, and that this made it pointless for workers to try to win wage rises. Marx and Engels clearly and emphatically disagreed with that idea. Workers’ resistance to capitalists’ attacks and their efforts to win reforms were essential parts of the class struggle that will eventually lead to socialist revolution.

By Allen Myers

Capitalism is a system based on exploitation. For Marxists, this has a precise scientific meaning. Capitalists take for themselves the monetary values created by or belonging to other people — usually workers, but also small farmers and, to varying degrees, small shop owners and nominally independent tradespeople. This value is what their capital consists of.