The deadly and destructive nature of global capitalism has been on full display in Australia. Years of drought in the country’s eastern states have sparked some of the worst wildfires in history. Since September 2019, at least 30 people have died and more than 14 million acres have burned, an area nearly the size of West Virginia (New York Times, 1/3). Over one billion animals have perished in the carnage (ABC News, 1/8).
The blame for this devastation lies squarely with the capitalist bosses. They like to deflect responsibility by telling workers that we need to make better lifestyle choices to reverse climate change. In reality, however, it is the rulers’ profit system—and especially their dependence on fossil fuels—that is driving environmental collapse.
For the local ruling class, the Australian wildfires present an opportunity to push more fascist discipline on workers. Meanwhile, the U.S. and Chinese imperialists are leveraging the crisis to gain a competitive edge in a region with strategic importance for the next global military war.
The revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) calls on the international working class to reject the bosses’ “solutions” to environmental crises that sentence millions of workers to our deaths each year. By building a mass Red Army of millions led by PLP, we can overthrow the rulers with communist revolution. By doing away with money and profits, we can create a collective society that struggles for working class safety and ecological sustainability.
Imperialist tide turns, Down Under
For decades, Australia has remained tightly bound to the U.S., the world’s top imperialist power. Shortly after World War II, the U.S. bosses created military alliances with Australia to contain the Soviet Union (still a workers’ state at the time) and the communists in China, who had just emerged victorious after years of war against various capitalist armies.
In recent years, Chinese capitalists have projected more power in the South China Sea and the greater Pacific region, home to vital marine shipping routes and billions of dollars in trade (Geopolitical Futures, 2/3). As a counter, the U.S. bosses are urgently working to strengthen ties with Australia. Since 2005, the two nations’ militaries have staged a biannual training exercise with logistics sharing, amphibious landings, and air operations (Army Technology, 7/29/19). The northern coastal city of Darwin is home to 2,500 U.S. marines. In late 2018, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence announced a joint commitment with Australia to upgrade Lombrum naval base on Manus Island in nearby Papua New Guinea, or PNG (Reuters, 11/16/18). The move came amid talk of China extending its Belt and Road Initiative and developing ports in PNG. As the U.S. Naval Institute warned:
Manus’s commanding position north of mainland Papua New Guinea would allow China to regulate sea lines of communication (SLOCs) heading toward the eastern Australian seaboard and New Zealand. The 2,100-square-kilometer island also flanks the approaches to maritime east Asia. Indeed, prominent naval thinker Milan Vego maintains that “bases flanking friendly or enemy shipping routes . . . provide great advantages in both offense and defense in wartime (usni.com, December 2018).
Although the Australian ruling class still leans toward the U.S., the Chinese bosses have steadily expanded their presence on the island continent. China is the top importer of Australian commodities, and brings billions of dollars in annual tourism revenue (Wall Street Journal, 2/9). Notably, the Australian bosses signed on as a founding member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, a Chinese-run alternative to the U.S.-dominated World Bank and International Monetary Fund (ACRI, 4/25/19).
As China’s growing economic influence in and around Australia leads to greater military ambitions, it could trigger a response from the U.S. and open inter-imperialist conflict in an unstable region.
Building fascism, one natural disaster at a time
The Australian ruling class had over 10 years to prepare for the latest environmental cataclysm. The Black Saturday bushfires of 2009 were some of the country’s worst ever (The Guardian, 2/6/19). But instead of tightening environmental regulations and improving fire-fighting infrastructure, the bosses claimed that broader access to technology would protect workers and wildlife (The Conversation, 2/6/19). As usual, the bosses were wrong. As usual, workers are paying for their profit-driven neglect.
Australia is the world’s largest exporter of both coal and gas, and Prime Minister Scott Morrison is the industry’s leading cheerleader. According to a German think tank analysis, the country ranks last among 57 nations for climate change policy (guardian.com, 12/10/19). As capitalist climate disasters become more frequent and intense, the bosses are using them to build fascism. “Under legislation pending in Tasmania, and expected to be copied across Australia, environmental protesters now face up to 21 years in jail for demonstrating” (NYT, 1/3). Bosses worldwide are gearing up for an environmental rebellion they see as inevitable. A new wave of fascist anti-protest laws recalls the anti-terrorism laws pushed through the U.S. Congress after 9/11.
Liberal reformism can’t save workers from climate disaster
As the bosses look to exploit environmental crises to build fascism, many workers and youth understand that climate change poses a real risk to their future. Large numbers are mobilizing within mass movements like the climate strike in September 2019, the biggest demonstration in Australia’s history, followed by the massive “Extinction Rebellion” and anti-mining protests in Melbourne (NYT, 11/6/2019). In some cases, militant students have become the face of the movement, leading the charge to call out capitalist-made unnatural disasters.
But it didn’t take long for liberal bosses and revisionists to co-opt the movement, turning the focus from Australia’s fossil fuel billionaires to a campaign to oust Morrison (CBS News, 1/10). In the absence of revolutionary communist leadership, what began as an anti-capitalist movement was quickly funneled into the dead end of reformist electoral politics.
Communist revolution will reverse climate disaster
The international working class can’t allow ourselves to get duped by fake leftists or sell-out liberals. All of these frauds support capitalism, the system that has put profit ahead of clean air and water for centuries. Removing a few corrupt politicians won’t change the course of capitalism’s daily assault on workers and the environment. Recognizing our own power is essential to understanding how workers will one day run the world. In Australia, with limited government support and no pay, thousands of volunteer firefighters have led the battles against blazes “the size of small European countries” (bbc.com, 12/24/19). Whenever a climate disaster occurs, workers are the first to step up and act selflessly to rescue others from danger—and to rebuild.
Armed with communist politics and organization, we can transform the bosses’ crises into an international movement to destroy capitalism through communist revolution. From Melbourne to San Juan and everywhere in between, rebel against capitalism and join PLP.
*****
Racism, income inequality plague workers in Australia
The bosses in Australia like to brag about their status as one of the longest-living capitalist “democracies” in the world, and how the country has gone almost three decades without a recession (Market Watch, 2/9). Wage growth for workers has slowed to a trickle, while corporate profits and executive bonuses have soared. In one year alone, between 2016 and 2017, the number of billionaires in Australia grew by 20 percent. Workers are experiencing an “income recession” as rising living costs have combined with falling wages (actu.org).
Meanwhile, racist attacks on workers, ever present in this capitalist “democracy,” have only intensified in recent years. Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s government has carried out a racist policy of “resettling” asylum seekers to offshore island detention centers in Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Awaiting legal processing, these workers often languish for years and are easy targets for sexual violence and robbery (Foreign Policy, 7/24/19).
The indigenous workers in Australia, compromising about 3 percent of the population, continue to lag behind in child mortality, literacy, and employment. On average, indigenous men die eight years younger than non-indigenous men, and youth suicide rates are four times higher (BBC, 2/12).
