This leaflet was originally published and distributed on 1 May 2015
A Capitalist Australia
Australia today is in the grip of economic decline and gloom. Wages are stagnant, unemployment is up on last year and the mining boom has gone comprehensively bust. Last year’s Federal Budget, which outraged the working class, has plunged the Coalition Government into deep unpopularity, but hasn’t sparked large scale resistance. The Government continues as the most reactionary in living memory: reckless and anti-scientific environment policies; divisive dog whistling and scapegoating of Muslims, which has sparked the Fascist “Reclaim Australia” movement; unprecedented boosting of militarist propaganda; and now the appallingly racist attempt to close down remote Aboriginal communities. We’d be tempted to say they could hardly sink any lower, except they’d probably take it as a dare.
A Capitalist World
Across the rest of the world, the scene is even worse. The Japanese Government of Shinzo Abe is rehabilitating the ugly World War II militarism as quickly as he dares. A fratricidal war continues in Ukraine, with Russian intervention and with Fascists being present on both sides of the conflict. In Greece, the Troika are punishing the population for their impudence in electing a government which promised (with however little hope of success) to end their murderous austerity program. In China, the tyrants of the so-called “Communist” Party crack down on the few civil liberties won in recent years. And in West Asia, the United States leads imperialist military intervention whose futility is exceeded only by its deadliness and destructiveness, while Da’esh and other religious reactionaries, a Frankenstein’s monster of Uncle Sam’s, wage jihad and engage in atavistic bloodthirstiness.
Resistance
Hope, however, has not died. There is resistance. In South Korea, a general strike is underway against anti-union laws, rampant illegal employer practices and attacks on pensions. In India, steelworkers last year won an important wage struggle. In the United States, an immense movement continues to grow against police murder of black people. In China, strikes continue despite the repression and continue to force wages up. And here in Australia, the threat to remote Aboriginal communities has provoked massive Aboriginal resistance and increasing numbers of non-Aboriginals into solidarity with them.
May Day
There is a force which can unite this resistance and that is the international struggle of the working class. This force is what we celebrate today on May Day. As workers standing together around the world, we can put a halt to employer and government attacks, to religious sectarianism and to war. And by building a working class movement that can stand together ever more strongly, we can make the revolution is necessary to abolish capitalism forever. We can establish a society of libertarian communism, a society with neither State nor classes, a society of liberty, equality and solidarity, where peace can prevail at last and we can begin to repair our relationship with the Earth.
WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!
Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group
PO Box 5108 Brunswick North 3056
1 May 2015
http://www.melbacg.wordpress.com
macg1984@yahoo.com.au
Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group 