Overproduction
Allen Myers' (rather esoteric) essay "Reinventing the Labor Party" (GLW #350) raised interesting points most of which I agreed with.
He could have developed further the aspect of making "Australia" more competitive. With globalisation, world competition uses this ruse, this trick to keep wages down.
As we are all to keep wages down, with trade union Accord support, world living standards are kept down. It's self-defeating. We cannot sell enough goods to create prosperity because of low living standards. Catch-22.
In the nadir Depression year, 1932, President Roosevelt led the capitalist world to start spending. For years his New Deal attacked soil erosion problems, introduced unemployment insurance and old-age pensions.
Importantly, wage increases were little opposed — perhaps even encouraged. The 17 million jobless figure was soon halved. Australia's also dropped, as throughout the world.
The real trigger of the Great Depression was Over Production. We produced more than we could sell: i.e. Under-consumption.
When the unemployed start work they buy new clothing, perhaps a car. Thus more workers are needed in industry. The economy heads for a boom. The bust comes a decade or so later.
We need big national projects: hospitals, schools, affordable housing, roads, bridges, really free education, Aboriginal slum clearance.
After 50-odd years in the CPA — and before that in the Young Communist League — my final words (of wisdom?): In the ever-increasing complexity of this world — genocide, poverty, starvation, war, death from curable diseases — we must accept whatever support or co-incidence of policy with other bodies or people we can.
Kelvin Grove Qld
[Abridged.]
Drug law reform
I agree with "The heroin problem and the other one" (GLW March 3) that the State and Federal Government policy of zero tolerance for drug use hasn't worked and the NSW election politics have prevented any fundamental re-appraisal of the policy to date.
This is despite the rapid increase in the number of people using heroin, cocaine, amphetamines and other illicit drugs over the last few years. The escalation of drug-related crime and deaths through drug overdoses is evidence of its failure.
The emphasis should be changed further towards harm minimisation. This should include the expansion of rehabilitation clinics for people wanting to get off drugs and for those who want to keep using them the provision of safe injecting rooms should be tried. These may reduce the growing number of heroin deaths.
Will there be a trial in the ACT and Victoria of the prescription of heroin to a select group of registered users? This will depend upon the Prime Minister, but don't hold your breath. This would reduce the need for persons using heroin to resort to prostitution or crime to finance their habit.
I doubt whether the doubling of resources for police which will occur if the Liberals win the NSW State election and support the Federal Government's attempt to introduce a zero tolerance policy, would be able in itself to stem the influx of drugs and to reduce significantly the drug-related crime and deaths amongst users.
Farrer ACT
[Abridged.]
Makhno
The group Consciously Anarchists criticises the Bolsheviks for suppressing "libertarian opposition", citing the Makhnovists as an example (Resistance magazine, March 3).
But Nestor Makhno was no libertarian. Despite his adherence to anarchist theory, he acted like a petty military dictator ruling over part of Ukraine. This is not just a Bolshevik slander. Consider the following quotation from the anarchist writer Voline:
"Under the influence of alcohol, Makhno became irresponsible in his actions; he lost control of himself. Then it was personal caprice, often supported by violence, that suddenly replaced his sense of revolutionary duty ...
"The inevitable result of these disorders and aberrations was an excess of 'warrior sentiment' which led to the formation of a kind of military clique or camarilla about Makhno. The clique sometimes made decisions and committed acts without taking account of the opinion of the Council or of other institutions. It lost its sense of proportion, showed contempt toward all those who were outside it and detached itself more and more from the mass of the combatants and the working population" (quoted in Anarchism, by George Woodcock, Pelican Books, 1970, p. 397).
Revolutionary leaders, whether calling themselves "anarchists" (Makhno) or "Marxists" (Stalin), can degenerate into tyrants. The most important reason for this is not the faults of individual leaders, but the pressure of objective circumstances.
These pressures can only be combated by a party with a clear political understanding of the causes of bureaucracy. The best analysis of the roots of bureaucracy is Trotsky's in The Revolution Betrayed.
Brunswick West Vic
[Abridged.]
ISO at IWD
I feel compelled to write to express my outrage at the behaviour of certain members of the International Socialist Organisation at the International Women's Day march in Perth.
During proceedings a group of anti-abortion protesters arrived carrying placards and handing out leaflets.
The International Socialist's responded by telling women marchers to tear up their leaflets and physically remove the anti-abortionists, and when they refused to do so, the International Socialist members began to harass and abuse these women.
What the IS don't seem to realise is that this sort of behaviour does nothing to further the fight for women's liberation. It merely succeeds in diverting attention from the politics of the day.
Surely we should have enough confidence in our politics to realise that we shall win more people to the fight for women's liberation through active debate rather than censoring the opposition.
Leda WA
[Abridged.]
Vietnam
Is a process of capitalist restoration taking place in Vietnam? Does the program of economic renewal, doi moi, represent capitalist restoration? Is the government and state of Vietnam actively pursuing a capitalist program?
In NGO and UN circles it's fashionable to refer to Vietnam as a "transitional economy", the assumption clearly being that a capitalist society is the end-goal.
This is an important question for the socialist movement. Any discussion on these issues, like Darryl Bullen's letter (GLW #345), is invaluable.
In "Land reform and food security in Vietnam" (GLW #342) I attempted to indirectly pose these questions. The purpose of the article was to illustrate the crucial role of land reform in raising the standard of living of the poor and in the general development of the economy in Third World countries.
In Vietnam today most agricultural land is leased out by the state. This lease can last in one family for several generations. The communes play a primarily administrative role.
The article did not claim that land was communally owned. It's owned by the state. The commune administration controls the infrastructure, the irrigation systems, some marketing and some agricultural inputs such as tractors. The land is leased out by the District Committee of the province. Cooperatives are voluntary associations formed if people so desire.
However, the leasing cost of the land is still very minimal and can be a percentage of the production.
There are inequalities in income in the rural population. There are criticisms that the leasehold system is leading to a process of "land accumulation".
But the fact remains that in Vietnam the masses of people have far greater access and control over land than in most other ASEAN countries, with the particular example of the Philippines where 80% of all land is owned by the landed capitalist class and is responsible for extreme poverty in the rural areas where most people live.
People's access to and control over land could only have been achieved through a social revolution, which has taken place in Vietnam and not in the Philippines.
Philippines
[Abridged.]
Buzzwords
Eva Cheng and Allen Myers have been reviewing some books for us not to read about globalisation that is not happening! How useful.
Read The Global Trap anyway. If you are not simply looking for a "line" to adopt, books like it, or When Corporations Rule the World, are mines of information to be pillaged for your own ends, shortcomings notwithstanding.
Globalisation a "buzzword"? Would GLW know? Until Myers and Cheng's often welcome articles, in three years there had been precisely three articles on the economy in the nominally Marxist GLW — when even Santamaria was livid.
Eva Cheng's explanation? "There are no easy answers ..." Sure there are — Capitalism is Going For It. There's nothing happening? Really? Fidel reckons there is; Susan George, etc. GLW's standards of journalism have wonderfully improved in the last couple of years, but it needs to start joining the dots.
Brisbane
[Abridged.]
Open door immigration policy
Surely Helen Jarvis, as quoted by Jon Singer (GLW #351), was shooting from the lip when she said, "Only an open door to all who wish to immigrate can secure the democratic right for all people to choose where they want to live. Anything less contradicts human rights."
Tell that to the people of East Timor and West Papua who have been dispossessed by the Javanese or to the Palestinians dispossessed of what is now Israel.
She is right with: "Applying any criterion means discriminating against someone". Which leads to Jon Singer's insulting remark that: "The idea that those who already live in Australia can determine who else can is nationalistic and chauvinist".
Insults make a poor substitute for logic. But I suppose that when you are bereft of the latter the former must do.
The idea that any country could have an open immigration door policy is so stupid that it hardly bears discussion. Look at the social problems facing Europe today. After years of high employment and easy access for migrant workers and with unemployment now increasing the failure of that policy is self-evident.
Australia is already vastly overpopulated. Far from being chauvinistic to call for a closed door policy it is a matter of self-preservation — the driving force of all life forms.
Alawa NT
Corporate festival ejects Greens
Organisers of the recent Sydney do-it-yourself corporate feminist festival, go girl!, showed what sort of politics they support when they ordered three security guards to forcibly remove a Greens NSW upper house candidate Susie Russell.
She was ejected when she refused to stop handing out election material in the temporarily privatised Sydney Domain, at which the Greens had missed out on paying for a stall. The organisers claimed that because they'd rented the Domain, usually a public park, they were entitled to exclude those who hadn't paid a fee for a stall, unlike the many corporate organisations who had.
The Democratic Socialists don't agree that the right to political campaigning should be based on user-pays. The go girl! organisers showed the real depth of their corporate feminism by their invitation, last year, of the state Liberal Party leader, Kerry Chikarovski, to address the festival.
Democratic Socialist candidate for Port Jackson
Sydney