Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese this week presented a really chilling vision of basing the country’s whole economy on militarism and war.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with US President Joe Biden at the Point Loma Naval Base, March 13, 2023, San Diego. [AP Photo/Evan Vucci]
He spoke alongside US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the US Naval Base in San Diego to reveal specifics of AUKUS’ strategy to provide Australia with lengthy-variety nuclear-powered submarines developed particularly to attack China from its shores. water.
Albanese boasted that his Labor government was producing “the biggest single investment in Australia’s defense capability in our history”, forecast to price an astronomical $368 billion more than 30 years.
This is dressed up as “deterrence” from “aggression”, but is a essential element of the escalating military encirclement of China by the US and its closest partners, accompanied by provocative “Red Alert” statements in the corporate media about the necessity to prepare for war with China inside 3 years.
Albanese equated the AUKUS Pact with the establishment of the automotive business in Australia by the American transnational corporations Common Motors and Ford following the Second Planet War. “The scale, complexity and financial value of this investment is equivalent to the creation of the Australian automotive business in the post-Planet War II period,” he mentioned.
Albanese therefore compared the expansion of civilian business following the final globe war to the building of an economy primarily based on destruction—the production of weapons for the subsequent globe war, just about undoubtedly nuclear, which would threaten the quite survival of humanity!
This would demand, the Prime Minister emphasized, “the work of the whole nation.” This signifies the establishment of a total war economy in which almost everything else, like social spending and the jobs, wages and situations of the functioning class, should be subordinated to the demands of huge military expansion.
Albanese recommended linking the future of young folks to the fortunes of the military and arms makers, feeding off the eventual building of eight submarines in Australia. He spoke of “making jobs and developing companies, about Australia” and “educating young Australians currently for tomorrow’s possibilities”.
In reality, the agreement with AUKUS will produce fairly couple of jobs, even inside the enlarged military. These involved will be educated to make and use weapons capable of killing millions. The vast majority of young folks will be condemned to unemployment and poorly paid, insecure casual jobs.
To examine the auto business, which as soon as straight or indirectly employed hundreds of thousands of workers, with the production of AUKUS submarines, which is advertised as possessing developed eight,500 jobs at its peak in the 2040s, is a reactionary hoax on all levels.
Very first, the escalating war led by the US is currently underway, against Russia in Ukraine, and this is a prelude to the war against China, with US generals and media warning of war by 2025. According to the AUKUS agreement, US nuclear submarines will currently be primarily based in Western Australia by the finish of this year.
Second, the government-subsidized begin-up of automotive assembly production in Australia following Planet War II, very first by Common Motors in 1948 and then by Ford in the 1950s and 1960s, was primarily based on the military victory of American imperialism in globe war against Germany. and Japanese imperialism.
Immediately after two such international conflagrations in the very first half of the 20th century, at the price of tens of millions of lives, the United States won. Washington has established military and financial hegemony more than considerably of the globe, paving the way for the international expansion of American industrial and economic giants.
On this basis, and with the enable of the Stalinist bureaucracy in suppressing the revolutionary post-war struggles of the functioning class, international capitalism was re-stabilized following the disastrous decades of war and depression. This set the stage for a short period of prosperity, through which workers forced the ruling class to make particular concessions, such as well being, education and welfare applications.
Throughout this period, American corporations established automotive, white goods and other industries in other nations, like Australia. By the late 1980s, even so, globalized manufacturing and corporate exploitation of low-cost labor platforms shattered the post-Planet War II model. In Australia, this led to the relentless closure of the vehicle assembly business and numerous other manufacturing facilities, culminating in the shutdown of the final GM Holden plant in Elizabeth, South Australia in 2017.
For decades, in particular considering the fact that the Hawke and Keating Labor governments of 1983 to 1996, Labor and the unions have enforced the dictates of economic elites and globally mobile transnational entities scouring the globe for the least expensive charges of production and the highest price of return for ultra-wealthy shareholders.
Albanese, echoing Biden, presented the prospects for “very good jobs, with very good salaries.” In reality, the situations of workers, no matter if employed by giant arms makers or enlisted in the armed forces, will be brutal, dictated each by corporate income and the “sacrifices” necessary for the “war work”, as occurred in each instances. . globe wars.
Far from an era of effectively-paying jobs, what is in retailer are industrial situations of mass destruction.
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The Socialist Equality Celebration (SEP) is contesting the New South Wales state election on March 25 to oppose this complete plan of militarism and war. We are the only celebration that does that. As we clarify in our election statement, with each other with our sister parties about the globe we are constructing an international anti-war movement of the functioning class, directed against the supply of war, the capitalist profit program itself.
We say: “Two globe wars are sufficient!” Cease the warmongers! Tens of billions for education and well being, not for militarism and war!”
Albanese’s propaganda about future jobs is a cynical work, functioning hand-in-hand with union bureaucrats, to overcome widespread opposition amongst workers and youth to the prospect of catastrophic nuclear war.
The war economy of the “complete nation” calls for political repression. This signifies silencing the anti-war sentiment that has continued considering the fact that the horrors of the barbaric US-led interventions in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, all primarily based on demonstrable lies.
Against the warmongering nationalism of Labor and the unions, workers and youth will need an international point of view, aimed at uniting their developing struggles globally against corporate oligarchies and governments that demand they fight and kill every other for the advantage of wealthy elites.
Above all, a socialist point of view is required, which aims to establish workers’ governments to entirely reorganize society in the interest of social requires, not private profit. Socialist measures, like public ownership and worker handle of big corporations, are the only way to establish fundamental democratic and social rights — like decent, effectively-paying jobs and higher-high quality cost-free education and well being care for all.
We invite all our readers to help our election campaign and, above all, to join the SEP in order to make the revolutionary celebration required to reverse capitalism and cease the plunge into Planet War III.
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Telephone: (02) 8218 3222
E mail: sep@sep.org.au
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Authorized by Cheryl Crisp for the Socialist Equality Celebration, Suite 906, 185 Elizabeth Street, Sydney, NSW, 2000.
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