873

Waving the Libyan flag.

While I agree with most of the sentiments expressed in Peter Boyle’s article on Libya in GLW #872, I think the Left must always be flexible and practical.

About 8000 people marched on the Western Australian parliament on March 15 to demand more local jobs from the resource export boom. The Construction Forestry Mining Energy Union, Australian Manufacturing Workers Union and Maritime Union of Australia all mobilised big contingents for the protest. Manufacturing employers also supported the rally. Local workshops are sitting idle while billions of dollars of infrastructure is being imported for the mining and offshore oil and gas industries.
Resistance supports the fight for equal marriage rights for Lesbian, Gay Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex and Queer (LGBTIQ) people. Resistance believes that the capitalist system has a vested interest in preventing people from uniting, and in continuing to repress queers. This oppression takes many forms, and includes laws that discriminate against LGBTIQ people. It is incredible that queer people in Australia still do not have the right to get married. This injustice has broad consequences for the whole LGBTIQ community.
In the midst of widespread anger at the on-going privatisation agenda, blatant corruption and developer connections of the New South Wales Labor government, the Liberal/National Coalition appears set to romp home in the March 26 NSW elections. With a Coalition government likely to extend the privatisation agenda even further, including massive cuts to the public sector and public services, the NSW Greens’ have come under fire for failing to direct their preferences to Labor.
Relations of production I agree completely with the article “How Socialism can be Won” (GLW #871). However, I urge Green Left Weekly readers not to forget the source of the socialist movement. This is the ideas formulated by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels and set out in The Communist Manifesto and many other works. There have been many attacks on Marxism over the years, a lot of them unfortunately coming from the political left. It has been suggested for instance that the computer has made Marxism obsolete.

Luis Almario, along with other Latin American activists, made the decision after many years as members to resign from the ALP to join the Socialist Alliance.

Zane Alcorn, candidate for the seat of Newcastle in the NSW state election, speaks from People's Blockade of the World's Biggest Coal Port, 13th March 2011.