Marxist Interventions (2009-2011)
Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/1885/12541
Marxist Interventions was an annual Australian-based on-line journal which published theory and empirical research informed by Marxism between 2009 and 2011. Articles were published after a double-blind review process.
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CONTRIBUTORS:
Mick Armstrong is a member of the National Executive of Socialist Alternative. His publications include: 1, 2, 3, what are we fighting for? The Australian student movement from its origins to the 1970s and The Labor Party: a Marxist analysis. sbma2 @ bigpond.net.au
Bill Dunn teaches political economy at the University of Sydney. His latest book is Global political economy: a Marxist critique (Pluto, London 2009). bill.dunn @ usyd.edu.au
Ben Hillier bmh @ netspace.net.au
Peter Jones is a socialist activist, and recently completed his honours thesis on the political economy of emissions trading. u2545097 @ anu.edu.au
Rick Kuhn’s Henryk Grossman and the recovery of Marxism won the Deutscher Memorial Prize in 2007. Rick is a socialist activist in Canberra. rick.kuhn @ anu.edu.au
Tom O’Lincoln is a Melbourne activist, and author of several books on left and labour history. suarsos @ alphalink.com.au
Louis Proyect is a computer programmer at Columbia University who was active in the Socialist Workers Party from 1967 to 1978 and in the Central America solidarity movement in the 1980s. He moderates the Marxism list, www.marxmail.org. lnp3 @ panix.com
Janey Stone is a long time socialist, women’s liberationist and activist in many radical movements, who knew Jeff Goldhar all his adult life. Janey has contributed to several books, including Rebel women, and is at present working on an article about the Australian folk revival of the 1960s. chacha_1_2_3 @ hotmail.com
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Recent Submissions
Item Open Access Issue 2 (2010) pp. 109-119 - ‘Right the wrong’: the RMIT University Muslim Prayer Room Campaign 2008-2009 / Liam Ward and Katie Wood(Rick Kuhn & Tom O'Lincoln, 2010) Ward, Liam; Wood, KatieDuring 2008 and 2009, Muslims at RMIT University in Melbourne ran a successful and important campaign for the return of dedicated Muslim Prayer Rooms on campus. Because the campaign’s central demand was for a religious space, much of the left dismissed the movement outright or even supported University management. This raises serious questions concerning the Australia left’s clarity about racismItem Open Access Issue 2 (2010) pp. 79-108 - Politics and meaning: Melbourne’s Eight Hours Day and Anzac Day, 1928-1935 / Kyla Cassells(Rick Kuhn & Tom O'Lincoln, 2010) Cassells, KylaThe public commemoration of particular days can have an impact on public consciousness. This article considers the commemoration of Anzac Day and the Eight Hours Day during the Great Depression. It explores how these days were used by Trades Hall, the Australian Labor Party, and the Returned Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Imperial League of Australia to perpetuate political agendas. It also considers the contestation of these days by various groups, including the Communist Party; women; the unemployed, and the Movement Against War and Fascism; and how the commemoration of the days responded to, and was shaped by, this contestationItem Open Access Issue 2 (2010) pp. 59-77 - Australias resilience during the global crisis, 2007-2009 / Ben Hillier(Rick Kuhn & Tom O'Lincoln, 2010) Hillier, BenThere is now an exhaustive literature detailing the causes and consequences of the global financial crisis. The point of this intervention is to look at the effects of the crisis on the Australian economy. Australia cannot be understood without regard to the international situation. The contribution therefore begins by briefly commenting on the nature of the global crisis. It then considers how the relative stability of Chinese demand, the buoyancy of the housing market and the circumstances of the financial sector have so far insulated Australia from the carnage witnessed in Europe, Japan and the US. The final sections comment on the current state of the Australian economyItem Open Access Issue 2 (2010) pp. 39-58 - 'Rank and fileism' revisited: trade union bureaucracy and Australia's Great Strike / Robert Bollard(Rick Kuhn & Tom O'Lincoln, 2010) Bollard, RobertIn the early 1990s a debate was initiated by conservative historian Jonathan Zeitlin, who attacked a number of (mainly) British Marxist historians for ‘rank and fileism’—alleged exaggeration of what (Zeitlin argued) were arbitrary distinctions between the rank and file of trade unions and their bureaucracy. A key element of Zeitlin's criticism was his allegation that such historians were obsessed with periods of radical insurgency. This article uses the Great Strike of 1917 in eastern Australia to argue that such episodes of revolt are valuable because they illustrate in a stark and unequivocal way the inherently conservative nature of the trade union bureaucracy.Item Open Access Issue 2 (2010) pp. 7-38 - Australian imperialism and East Timor / Sam Pietsch(Rick Kuhn and Tom O'Lincoln, 2010) Pietsch, SamThe Howard Government’s military intervention in East Timor in 1999 was an act of imperialism. It was not forced on a reluctant government by popular pressure, nor were its aims humanitarian. Rather, the intervention used military power to secure longstanding strategic interests of the Australian state. From 1974, successive Australian governments supported Indonesia’s occupation of East Timor in order to foreclose the possibility of rival powers gaining influence in the Indonesian archipelago, which might allow them to threaten Australian interests. But, by September 1999, the Indonesian occupation had become untenable. Australia inserted military forces into East Timor to ensure that the transition to independence would be relatively orderly, avoiding a destabilising power vacuum. The intervention also boosted Australia’s ability to defend its economic and strategic interests in the new nation. The success and domestic popularity of the intervention allowed the Howard Government to increase military spending and act more aggressively to defend Australia’s imperial interests in the Southwest PacificItem Open Access Issue 2 (2010) pp. 39-58 - Financial fault lines / Ben Hiller(Rick Kuhn & Tom O'Lincoln, 2010) Hiller, BenThere are almost as many theories of the nature and causes of the global financial crisis as there are toxic assets burning holes in the balance sheets of large financial institutions. The problem with many of the theories is that they haven’t really explained a lot. As the late Peter Gowan noted, ‘Much of the mainstream debate on the causes of the crisis takes the form of an “accidents” theory’ (p. 62). The refrain of capitalism’s defenders has been that a generally good vehicle was crashed by the ‘contingent actions’ of reckless drivers. Whether it is the passing of the Garn-St Germain Depository Institutions Act in the early 1980s, the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999 or cavalier policies of the US Federal Reserve in the wake of the dot.com collapse, the prognosis is the same: the powers-that-be failed to adequately straightjacket the greed of financial traders. No doubt there is truth in this charge, but there is an ocean of systemic failure beneath the surface of human error. The Great Credit Crash , edited by Martijn Konings, brings together contributions that attempt to penetrate beneath this surface. Divided into three sections, eighteen essays cover the nature, geography and politics of the crisis. Much of the focus is on the structural and long-term problems that have afflicted the United States economy and the rest of the world. Many of the contributors identify contradictions in the ‘neoliberal growth model’ as being at the heart of the crisis. Originating in the stagflation of the 1970s and industrial decline of the 1980s, neoliberalism sought the construction of ‘new institutional mechanisms of control’ (Konings, p. 6) to shore up private capital in the face of a spate of economic crises in the heart of the world system. The tremendous growth of interest-bearing financial capital—as the financial sector overtook manufacturing to become the largest sector of the US economy—was the centrepiece, many argue, of an unstable and unsustainable regime of accumulation.Item Open Access Issue 3 (2011) pp. 7-30 - The fire last time: the rise of class struggle and progressive social movements in Aotearoa/New Zealand, 1968 to 1977 / Brian Roper(Rick Kuhn & Tom O'Lincoln, 2011) Roper, BrianA dramatic upsurge in working class struggle, surpassing in magnitude the rise of the Red Feds from 1908 to 1913 and the 1951 Waterfront Front Lockout, took place in New Zealand from the Arbitration Court’s nil general wage order in June 1968 to the union movement’s defeat of the Muldoon Government’s attempted wage freeze in 1976. This article describes and analyses these struggles and their impact on progressive social movements, particularly the anti-war, women’s liberation and Māori protest movements.Item Open Access Issue 1 (2009) pp. 119-120 - Jeff Goldhar’s socialist legacy / Janey Stone(Rick Kuhn and Tom O'Lincoln, 2009) Stone, JaneyWhen life-long socialist Jeff Goldhar died in 1997, he left a bequest. Set up at the end of 1998, the Jeff Goldhar Project is now celebrating 10 years of activities. Jeff became politically active in the 1960s, attending demonstrations against the Vietnam War and as an active member of the Labour Club at Melbourne University. While in the UK in the early 1970s he joined the International Socialists (now Socialist Workers Party), and on his return to Melbourne, became a member of the fledgling Australian organisation, Socialist Workers Action Group. Jeff was diagnosed with a terminal illness in the mid-1990s. He wanted to leave a bequest to ‘allow us to bring our history and ideas to those receptive to them’. (First three paragraphs of article).Item Open Access Issue 1 (2009) pp. 107-112 - Debate on revolutionary organisation / Louis Proyect(2009) Proyect, Louis; Armstrong, MickOne of the more rapidly growing groups on the left is Socialist Alternative. Unfortunately it would appear from a book by Mick Armstrong that they remain wedded to partybuilding conceptions that will inhibit future growth. It is understandable why such selfstyled Leninist formations would cling to counter-productive methodologies since the dead hand of tradition weighs heavily on any group seeking to establish itself as the avatar of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Trotsky. Perhaps a better approach would be to start with a fresh sheet of paper, an approach virtually ruled out for small propaganda groups obsessed with ‘revolutionary continuity.’Item Open Access Issue 1 (2009) pp. 83-105 - Whose liberty? Australian imperialism and the Pacific war / Tom O'Lincoln(Rick Kuhn & Tom O'Lincoln, 2009) O'Lincoln, TomAustralia presents its Pacific War effort as a fight for liberation. This article challenges that view. The Allied forces were fighting to re-impose their own imperialist control, and this includes Australia. The war is best understood as part of a long term pattern of imperialist contention. The wartime intervention in East Timor, the battle to sustain control of Papua New Guinea, the restoration of Dutch rule in eastern Indonesia and Canberra’s determination to play a role in the occupation of Japan, all illustrate this theme.Item Open Access Issue 1 (2009) pp. 53-82 - Xenophobic racism and class during / Rick Kuhn(Rick Kuhn and Tom O'Lincoln, 2009) Kuhn, RickBetween 1996 and 2007, the Howard Government used racism to sustain its popularity. From the late 1990s, the primary victims of racist campaigns against immigrants were refugees who arrived by boat, without official permission. After 9/11 2001 the focus increasingly shifted to Muslims and Arabs, who were more explicitly targeted from 2005. While the conservative parties’ racist policies served electoral purposes, their campaigns were also shaped by a deeper logic: the interests of the capitalist class and its capacity to influence state policies. The declining appeal of racist arguments and policies contributed to the Government’s demise in 2007.Item Open Access Issue 1 (2009) pp. 47-52 - Going gangbusters? / Ben Hillier(Rick Kuhn & Tom O'Lincoln, 2009) Hillier, BenThe Journal of Australian Political Economy special issue on the long Australian economic boom is timely for two reasons. First, because its release comes at the end of the boom, allowing for a comprehensive overview of and a vantage point from which to appraise the long period of expansion which began back in 1992. Secondly, the contributors are generally critical of the neo-liberal orthodoxy, whose bankruptcy is now apparent. The most obvious question to ask is: ‘how were 16 years of expansion sustained?’ Michael Howard and John King, while citing ma ny factors, evoke ‘long wave theory’ to explain the period. This theory, put forward by Russian economist Nicolai Kondratiev in the 1920s, postulates that in addition to short-run boom-bust cycles, the capitalist economy undergoes long-term upswings and downswings in price movements, accumulation and economic growth. Howard and King suggest that the period from 1992 represented the first half of a new global long wave upswing.Item Open Access Issue 1 (2009) pp. 23-45 - Neither free trade nor protection but international socialism: contesting the conservative antinomies of trade theory / Bill Dunn(Rick Kuhn and Tom O'Lincoln, 2009) Dunn, BillAttitudes towards international trade are remarkably polarised. Most mainstream economists advocate free trade as a mainstay of national and global prosperity. Meanwhile, many critics see it as the major cause of inequality and poverty. This polarisation is remarkable given the weakness of any systematic relationship between the propensity to trade and overall economic well-being and the practical infrequency of complete openness or autarchy. The dualism of trade theory is supported by, and reproduces, a conservative worldview which tends to obscure other more determinant aspects of political economy, and directs opposition to global capital into safe, nationalistic channels.Item Open Access Issue 1 (2009) pp. 9-22 - Saving the planet or selling off the atmosphere? Emissions trading, capital accumulation and the carbon rent / Peter Jones(Rick Kuhn and Tom O'Lincoln, 2009) Jones, PeterGovernments are increasingly implementing emissions trading schemes, ostensibly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Karine Matthews and Matthew Paterson argue that the drive to implement emissions trading is primarily driven by the goal of supporting capital accumulation, rather than environmental considerations. This article ultimately agrees, but argues that their approach is not consistent with Marx’s labour theory of value. The concept of the ‘carbon rent’ is used to develop a more consistent approach to understanding how the state can use emissions trading to distribute income away from the poor and working class.