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	<title>Red Flag</title>
	<link>http://redflag.bloghi.com/</link>
	<description>Writings of Christina Janke, a revolutionary Marxist-Leninist-Maoist

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	<pubDate>Thu, 17 May 2012 20:05:53 +0000</pubDate>
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		<title>Red Flag</title>
		<link>http://redflag.bloghi.com/</link>
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		<title>---</title>
		<link>http://redflag.bloghi.com/2005/10/23/.html</link>
		<comments>http://redflag.bloghi.com/2005/10/23/.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 23 Oct 2005 07:16:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid>http://redflag.bloghi.com/2005/10/23/.html</guid>
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		<title>A short history of the Democratic Socialist Perspective in Australia</title>
		<link>http://redflag.bloghi.com/2005/10/23/a-short-history-of-the-democratic-socialist-perspective-in-australia.html</link>
		<comments>http://redflag.bloghi.com/2005/10/23/a-short-history-of-the-democratic-socialist-perspective-in-australia.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 23 Oct 2005 06:42:08 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid>http://redflag.bloghi.com/2005/10/23/a-short-history-of-the-democratic-socialist-perspective-in-australia.html</guid>
		<description> The communist movement in Australia is a dynamic movement, changing often and constantly changing to suit conditions. In the 1930s through to the 1950s, the Communist Party of Australia looked set to be a strong working class movement, creating...</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[The communist movement in Australia is a dynamic movement, changing often and constantly changing to suit conditions. In the 1930s through to the 1950s, the Communist Party of Australia looked set to be a strong working class movement, creating Australia’s first major trade union and having the first communist elected into a state parliament in 1944. In the 1960s, support began to drift from the CPA into other socialist movements and anti-war groups. In 1991, the Communist Party broke up altogether and was replaced by the Democratic Socialist Party as Australia’s most significant Marxist organisation. This essay shall examine the aims of the DSP, its history and its significance.   The DSP stands for the revolutionary overthrow of the current capitalist system and its replacement with a socialist society, in which "all decisions should be made by those affected by them or by their elected representatives. In a phrase, by extending the principles of democracy to all spheres of life" (Democratic Socialist Party, 1993: 10). The DSP champions the rights of workers, women, the indigenous people of Australia and homosexuals. The organisation is deeply opposed to American imperialism and is in solidarity with the people of Venezuela and Cuba.    The Democratic Socialist Perspective’s history dates back to 1965, when a group of radicalising university students active around the anti-Vietnam War campaign joined the Sydney University Labour Club. These students, including two of the current leaders of the DSP, Doug Lorimer and Jim Percy, were won over to Trotskyism later that year. In 1966, the Trotskyist students gained control of the Labour Club and recognising the need for an off-campus socialist youth organisation, they set up the Society for the Cultivation of Revolution Everywhere (SCREW) in 1967, which later became Resistance. By 1969, Resistance had grown quite large and was taking a leading role in the Vietnam Moratorium Campaign. In 1972, a new organisation was founded, the Socialist Workers’ League, with Resistance as its youth organisation. The SWL was a fusion of the Resistance membership, the Socialist Review Group and the  Labor Action Group from Brisbane (Percy 1990:20).   In 1972, the SWL joined the Fourth International, a world-wide socialist movement started by Leon Trotsky. The SWL was decidedly Trotskyist at this stage. By 1976, the SWL had branches in every major city in Australia. In 1978, the Communist League and the SWL united and the group became the Socialist Workers Party. In 1979, the SWP began to separate itself from the Fourth International. Unlike the Fourth International, the SWP had supported the Polish Solidarnosc movement in its struggle against Stalinism, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in defence of the popular Marxist government there and the Nicaraguan Revolution, which proved the central revolutionary theory of the International, Trotsky’s theory of one-stage revolution, to be wrong (Percy 1990:34). In 1986, the SWP split from the International and Trotskyism altogether. Although the DSP had "abandoned Trotskyism, and relinquished some of the theoretical positions of Leon Trotsky, Trotsky's analysis of Stalinism still stands us in good stead" (Percy 1990:32)  Over the next 10 years, the SWP grew larger and changed its name to the Democratic Socialist Party. In 1992, the DSP launched its new newspaper, Green Left Weekly. Following the massive anti-World Trade Organisation rallies in Sydney and Melbourne in 2000, the DSP proposed that the DSP and the International Socialist Organisation should unite (Boyle 2001:8). The ISO agreed and the Socialist Alliance was formed. The Socialist Alliance, now five years old, now consists of the eleven organisations. The DSP remains the strongest organisation within the Alliance and now primarily campaigns around the trade unions, anti-war, work, solidarity with the Cuban and Venezuelan revolutions and against the Coalition government.   The DSP has proved to be one of Australia’s most important political parties. For example, the DSP-initiated campaigns to save the East Timorese independence movement have been speculated to have been the only thing which persuaded Australia to intervene in the conflict there, saving the Timorese independence movement and allowing the creation of the East Timorese state. The DSP has campaigned against all major injustices suffered by the working class worldwide and continues to struggle for working class rights. Whether or not they eventually achieve their parliamentary and perhaps even revolutionary aims is yet to be seen, but it is certain that the DSP shall be always there, fighting for a better world.   References  Boyle, P. (2001) ‘M1, Socialist Alliance and the DSP’s Party Building Perspectives’, The Activist, No. 5, May, pp. 8-15.   Democratic Socialist Party (1994) Program of the Democratic Socialist Party, 2nd Edition, New Course Publications: Chippendale.   Democratic Socialist Party (1993) What is the DSP?, New Course Publications: Chippendale.   Percy, J. (1990) A History of the Democratic Socialist Party, Resistance Books: Chippendale.   Percy, J. and Lorimer, D. (2001) The Democratic Socialist Party and the Fourth International, Resistance Books: Chippendale.     ]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>India</title>
		<link>http://redflag.bloghi.com/2005/10/23/india.html</link>
		<comments>http://redflag.bloghi.com/2005/10/23/india.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 23 Oct 2005 06:38:33 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid>http://redflag.bloghi.com/2005/10/23/india.html</guid>
		<description> This month, the Communist Party of India (Maoist) linked up with the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) to establish a corridor through the lawless Indian-Nepalese bordering state of Bihar. Maoist groups from Peru, the Netherlands, Norway, France,...</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[This month, the Communist Party of India (Maoist) linked up with the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) to establish a corridor through the lawless Indian-Nepalese bordering state of Bihar. Maoist groups from Peru, the Netherlands, Norway, France, Germany, Sri Lanka, Nepal and India met in Kolkata, India, to discuss the present state of the revolutions in India and Nepal. The meeting agreed upon two points, firstly, for French Maoists and comrades from the Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka to assist in the training of Maoists forces in the border region, and secondly, for the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) (Class War), or, as it is more commonly known, the People’s War Group, to merge with the Maoist Communist Centre, which holds great deal of support from the local lower caste dalits, to form the Communist Party of India (Maoist), with Comrade Muppala Lakshman Rao as its secretary. The CPI(M) has successfully raided several government positions in Bankura and Purulia, in West Bengal, and launched a daring raid in Madhubani in September.

In Communist Party of India (Maoist) controlled West Bengal, Comrade Dhruva of the CPI(M) Central Committee stated that government attacks on the CPI(M) would only harden Maoist resolve and would serve only to give the CPI(M) more public support. Dhruva declared in September "give us five years, we will make sure you spend sleepless nights. After five years, we will launch our strikes." The statistics register the rapid growth of the Maoist movement from 156 districts in 13 states in September 2004 to 170 districts in 15 states by February 2005. The Maoists enjoy popular support in all regions they control. An analyst summarises that the Maoists are expanding at an average rate of 2 districts per week.
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		<title>Introduction to Red Flag</title>
		<link>http://redflag.bloghi.com/2005/10/20/introduction-to-red-flag.html</link>
		<comments>http://redflag.bloghi.com/2005/10/20/introduction-to-red-flag.html#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 20 Oct 2005 06:25:52 +0000</pubDate>
		<guid>http://redflag.bloghi.com/2005/10/20/introduction-to-red-flag.html</guid>
		<description> I don’t like the way Australia is going. Just in the last few years, things have gotten especially bad. We’re witnessing the attempts to destroy our student and trade unions, the sentencing of refugees to outback gulags, the increased powers...</description>
		<content:encoded><![CDATA[I don’t like the way Australia is going. Just in the last few years, things have gotten especially bad. We’re witnessing the attempts to destroy our student and trade unions, the sentencing of refugees to outback gulags, the increased powers given to the secret police, the dismantlement of our healthcare system, the privatisation of important public services, the rise in police brutality, the imprisonment or deportation of political activists, the testing of nuclear weapons in our deserts, the outright refusal of our government to sign a non-aggression treaty with our neighbouring countries, the destruction of free university education, the clampdowns on our civil liberties in the name of ‘fighting terrorism’, the absolute refusal of our country’s elected leader to listen to the voices of millions of Australians protesting against Australia’s part in America’s imperialist oil war against Iraq, the committing of unspeakable atrocities by Australian and American troops in the middle east and our government’s support of oppressive and totalitarian regimes such as those in the Boss’s Republic of China and the United States. On top of all that, we don’t have a bill of rights, the military gets billions of dollars every year, our schools indoctrinate people to the capitalist system and train them to hate alternatives to it, such as anarchism and communism, the native people of Australia live in third world conditions and the media is almost fully controlled by right wing, which uses it to pump out pro-American, anti-left propaganda.

To me, this represents the general failure of western democracy. The Australian people have absolutely no say in the laws and acts passed by the government. As Karl Marx pointed out, in western democracies, we "have the right to vote every three years for which members of the ruling class will oppress us for the next three years." Our workplaces certainly aren’t democratic. There is a boss who has the power to sack workers at will (especially now that the Liberals have introduced the Industrial Relations Act) and make a profit out of the worker’s labour. Just let me explain that: if you were to work in an auto manufacturing plant for eight hours and produced, say, $15 000 worth of goods, how much would you be paid? At the end of the day, $100, maybe? That means your boss will have stolen $14 900 from you. You are only paid enough to be able to stay alive (pay the rent, mortgage, whatever, buy food, pay taxes etc. etc.) so that you can come to work tomorrow so that s/he can steal more money off you. If we lived in a genuine democracy, the workers would control their workplaces and all money would be distributed evenly, instead of all going into corporate coffers. Anyway, enough of that digression. The point is, we don’t have a democracy. Even if we managed to wrestle political control away from the Liberal/Labour monopoly on power, and to vote in progressive groups like the Greens or the Socialist Alliance, we still would not have real democracy. The rich would still be rich, the poor still poor, the media still right wing and the cops still violent.  

At least, at the moment, we still live in a reasonably free country, even if it is free and rich only because of the millions of impoverished overseas workers toiling to keep western lifestyles intact. I am free to sport a mohawk, join whatever political group I wish, sell anti-government newspapers, listen to subversive music and attend political demonstrations. But the way things are going, even these hard won rights may be crushed (hard won: the government never gives the people rights out of its own kindness. Every right, the right to vote {first for men, then for women, then for the indigenous community}, the eight hour day, freedom of speech and so on, was won through the mass struggle of the working class. The ruling class fears a politically aware working class, and will only give them rights in order to prevent the workers completely liberating themselves in the form of a revolution). I am quite certain that within ten years, we not shall have barely any rights at all. 

This blog contains information which you may or may not use. Some of it you will find quite useless, probably. The point of it is to encourage all left wing youth to take a stand and prepare for the worst. If worse comes to worse, we must be prepared to fight for our liberty in whatever form we find most effective, be it guerilla warfare, direct action, sabotage or mass revolt. The masses of Australia are asleep. It is our duty, as anti-authoritarians, to try and wake them up. Only through the combined action of hundreds of thousands of politically aware anti-authoritarians can we stop the bastards from grinding us down. This blog also contains information which you may find useful in arguments against the brainwashed types and a few articles about terrific punk rock bands and people. 
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