RSP launches campaign against racism & Labor government
STATEMENT FOR GENERAL DISTRIBUTION & MEDIA
Van Rudd from the Revolutionary Socialist Party
Announces Campaign Against Julia Gillard in the Seat of Lalor
The Revolutionary Socialist Party will be running Van Rudd against Julia Gillard in the seat of Lalor for the next federal elections.
Van Rudd's campaign will take a stand against the failure of both state and federal governments to defend Indian students against racist attacks.
Many young and working people in this country are fed up with Labor and Liberal, and the parliamentary system that guarantees the privileges of the corporate rich and perpetuates social inequality and discrimination.
Open Letter to Australia Made Campaign Limited
The letter below is a response to the request by Australia Made Campaign Limited to guarantee their logo would not be used in the future in such protests as the Australia Day anti-racism action. The letter is addressed to the legal representatives of Australia Made Campaign Limited.
The request made by your client amounts to demanding that we, and by implication any other community member who has a protest to register, forfeit our freedom of speech.
While the right to free speech is not constitutionally guaranteed in Australia, the High Court has noted and defended this as an important implied right. Such a right does not and cannot preclude the use of any symbols, signs or logos, whether they are registered trade marks or not.
The request made by your client is a direct challenge to freedom of speech and will not be ceded to by us.
Anti-war veterans group calls for protests when Barack Obama visits Australia
Anti-war veterans group calls for protests when
Barack Obama visits Australia
Press release
5 February 2010
"Think Obama is against war? Think again," said Stand Fast spokesperson and East Timorveteran, Hamish Chitts. “Obama is not a force for progress, he is not a man of peace - from his first day in office over 12 months ago he has firmly placed himself in the camp of the warmongers and war-profiteers.”
Stand Fast, he Australian-based veterans group which is comprised of veterans and former military personnel who oppose the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, is calling on all people of conscience to protest the upcoming visit of Barack Obama in the 2nd half of March.
Racism in Australia
White Australia Policy – The Background
In the simplest means, White Australia Policy was a restrictive immigration policy pursued in Australia. But if we dig deep, it was a systematic racial approach by the capitalist ruling class. In the mid-19th century there was a shortage of labour and Chinese and Pacific Islanders were brought in as labour. By the 1880s developing trade unions were calling for a policy to protect the “White working man”. By 1890 all states had legislation to preserve the purity of White Australia, Alfred Deakin being one of its strongest advocates. The new Commonwealth government legislated to exclude non-Europeans in its 1901 Immigration Restriction Act. The main device used was to be a dictation test in any European language – with the language being chosen to ensure failure. This policy of exclusion continued until the 1950s. The Labour administration repudiated the policy in the early 1970s.
Interview with Van Rudd in the Indian Journal, Outlook
|
Interview ‘The Dominant Culture In Australia Is A Racist Culture’
The leader of the Revolutionary Socialist Party who created a stir by protesting in the famous Ku Klux Klan outfit shares his views
Outlook Interviews Van Thanh Rudd
|
Australian politics – the Crisis of Labour and the role of Marxist Intervention
By Kathy Newnam
Crisis of capitalism
The defining feature of Australian politics today is the ongoing retreat of the organised working class. In the face of the serious capitalist economic crisis there is no mass expression whatsoever of the working class alternative. The class-collaborationist leadership of the trade union movement is unwilling and incapable of challenging the ruling class solutions to the crisis – cutting deals for pay cuts, shorter hours and other solutions demanded by the bosses to supposedly “save jobs”.
An international balance sheet of the ‘broad party’ strategy
By John Percy
This article aims to look at the experience of the “broad party” tactic or strategy as implemented by revolutionary socialists internationally over recent decades. In Australia we’ve just witnessed one particularly disastrous application of this tactic that became a strategy, resulting in the dissolution of the DSP [Democratic Socialist Perspective, previously Democratic Socialist Party].
Women's liberation today
By Zoe Kenny
Forty years after the second wave of the women’s liberation movement began there has been a major slide in consciousness about women’s rights and the continuing need for women to struggle for them. Since the demise of the movement in the late 70s women have been the target of a sustained ideological campaign, or a ‘backlash’ as that has been aimed at weakening feminist consciousness.
Why capitalism can’t save the environment by Allen Myers
[Talk presented to RSP Marxist Education conference January 2-5, 2010]
By Allen Myers
The 19th century US writer and humorist Mark Twain said that everyone talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it. He was able to make that joke because nobody at that time realised how capitalism was changing the weather. On the other hand, Twain’s remark has an unexpected relevance today: it could be a commentary on the Copenhagen meeting, where hundreds of heads of government talked about the weather but did nothing about preventing further changes.
Introduction to Socialism Classes
1. How does capitalism work as a social and economic system
READING: Why capitalism can't save the environment
Reference material: Marxist Economic Definitions - A Handbook
2. How capitalism rules
READING: Marxist theory of the state
3. The possibility of socialist revolution
READING: How to make a revolution
