Student meeting this Saturday!

Environmental destruction, war, poverty, oppression and exploitation. A public meeting explaining why the system is to blame.

It’s Orientation Week at most universities in Melbourne this week. The Socialist Party will be active at several campuses including Monash Clayton, La Trobe Bundoora, RMIT City and Melbourne Uni. We will be holding information stalls and recruiting to our student clubs.

We are also building for a public meeting titled ‘Why capitalism is a system of crisis’. Come along at 3pm this Saturday Feb 27th @ Trades Hall, corner of Lygon & Victoria Streets Carlton South.

For more info or to join one of our clubs phone 9639 9111.

Also sign up to our student email list here.

Introduction to new Urdu edition of ‘Permanent Revolution’ by Leon Trotsky

We publish below a new introduction by Peter Taaffe to Leon Trotsky’s ‘Permanent Revolution’, which our comrades in the Socialist Movement Pakistan (CWI) are publishing in Urdu.

What relevance does Trotsky’s Theory of the Permanent Revolution have to the problems of the workers’ cause or the peasants’ (small farmers) movement today? After all, it was formulated more than 100 years ago during the first Russian revolution of 1905-07.

Continue reading The Permanent Revolution today

SP Newsletter No.298

The closure of the Tote Hotel in January shocked music fans across Melbourne. For more than 20 years the pub has been at the centre of Melbourne’s live music scene.

Since then the Arthouse has announced it will close this year and several other venues have complained that they can no longer afford to host live shows. On every occasion licensees have blamed higher operating costs due to the State Government’s new liquor licensing conditions.

Continue reading Scrap Brumby’s liquor laws – Save live music!

The 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics are taking place in the Vancouver-Whistler area of Canada. Many Canadians are looking forward to the sports and hoping for gold, especially in ice-hockey. However there are growing concerns about the costs and problems the Olympics will cause.

The Montreal Olympics, in 1976, give a stark reminder of the huge expense involved. Before those games, Montreal’s mayor, Jean Drapeau, said that “the Olympics can no more have a deficit than a man can have a baby”. But the games cost the city $1 billion and the debt for the games was only paid off in 2006 - 30 years later!

By Socialist Alternative (CWI in Canada) reporters, Vancouver

Continue reading Winter Olympics: Shortage of snow but no shortage of debts

“Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil”

Karl Marx likened capitalism to a vampire which lives and expands by sucking “living labour” from the worker by extracting “surplus value”, “unpaid labour”.

But that is while the worker lives. Now we learn through Michael Moore, the US radical film-maker, that the biggest vampire, Wal-Mart - “a company with revenue larger than any other in the world” - actually bets on its “workers dying.

Peter Taaffe, reviews Michael Moore’s ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’

Continue reading Review: Michael Moore’s ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’

SP Newsletter No.297

Just before Christmas there were important developments on the Atherton Gardens public housing estate in Fitzroy (Melbourne). The estate is made up of four 20-storey towers and several two storey ‘walk-up’ blocks. Officially there are 2500 residents, but the true figure is probably closer to 4000.

Residents have been complaining for years about inferior refurbishments, poor maintenance, cockroaches, a lack of air conditioning and shoddy plumbing. It is estimated that recent work at the estate has cost the State government $74 million but most of the buildings are still falling apart.

Continue reading Public housing tenants get organised!

In the last weeks of 2009 Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez announced that the government would be nationalising eight banks. These banks represented 8% of the financial sector in Venezuela and held a significant percentage of Government deposits.

These Government nationalisations however have not been in response to the global financial crisis- as in some other countries. They have been made in response to a recent investigation into banking practices that uncovered corruption and embezzlement of deposits reaching up into to the highest levels of the Government.

By Denise Dudley, Socialismo Revolucionario Venezuela

Continue reading Venezuela: Chavez announces bank nationalisations

Only days after his December 1st announcement that a second surge of 30,000 troops would be sent to Afghanistan, US President Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. According to Obama, “Whatever mistakes we have made, the plain fact is this: the United States of America has helped underwrite global security for more than six decades with the blood of our citizens and the strength of our arms.”

By Andrew Grant, Socialist Party

Continue reading Bring the troops home from Afghanistan now!

Review of Jeyakumar Devaraj’s “Malaysia at the Crossroads, a Socialist Perspective” by Peter Taaffe

Jeyakumar Devaraj, member of the Central Committee of Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) and Member of Parliament for Sungai Siput, published a book on perspectives for Malaysia in August 2009. Peter Taaffe, General Secretary of the Socialist Party (CWI in England and Wales) and member of the International Secretariat of the Committee for a Workers’ International, reviewed it in a letter to Jeyakumar.

We are carrying a slightly edited (shortened) version of the review which deals with important questions of method, analysis and perspectives for Marxists in the struggle - to overthrow capitalism in Malaysia, Asia and worldwide.

Continue reading Perspectives for Malaysia: A Marxist approach

SP Newsletter No.296

Recent opinion polls have shown that support for an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) remains at just over 70%, despite 70% of respondents admitting they “don’t know enough” about Rudd’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS).

This coincides with 76% of Australians being ‘concerned’ about climate change, with over half the population seeing it as a ‘critical threat’.

Continue reading Market solutions won’t stop climate change