In the coming federal elections, the Democratic Socialists will be fielding candidates in all major cities. Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly spoke to Peter Boyle, the Democratic Socialists' national election campaign director, about the vote for Pauline Hanson's One Nation in the June 13 Queensland election and its consequences.
Question: What do the Democratic Socialists make of One Nation's vote in Queensland?
This is a very serious development. One Nation, a racist, right-wing, nationalist-populist party, has taken nearly a quarter of all votes in the state. With an average of 30% in rural seats and 15% in urban seats, this cannot be dismissed purely as a result of rural backwardness.
In the immediate term, this is a split in the traditional right, posing big problems for Borbidge in Queensland and Howard in Canberra. In the longer term, if One Nation consolidates across the country, it spells many dangers for the working class and oppressed minorities.
The rise of a far-right electoral party tends to shift the politics of the major capitalist parties to the right. We've seen this already: Hanson boasts about how Howard has taken up some of her policies. Less noticed has been the shift of Labor to the right on several issues: native title, work for the dole, welfare rights of new migrants and refugees.
One Nation's successes legitimise racism, national chauvinism and bigotry of all sorts.
Further down the track, if One Nation's right-wing populism grows, and an extra-parliamentary wing develops, there could be organised right-wing thugs being used systematically by the capitalists against workers and oppressed minorities. That's not an immediate threat. The would-be militia chiefs out there in One Nation's rural branches would be a little wary of taking on the organised working class after the mass pickets during the Patrick's dispute.
Question: One Nation won the votes of quite a significant group of small farmers, small business people, pensioners and workers who are hurting. Why?
Right-wing populism is built on the real social destruction by economic "rationalism" and neo-liberal "reform". Unemployment has become chronic as big businesses and governments have downsized.
Thousands of small businesses have been driven to the wall, and thousands of small farmers have been driven off the land. Health, welfare and education services have been slashed.
The worst pain is concentrated in regions where the urban and rural pain come together.
One Nation taps this pain through a combination of scapegoating of Aborigines, Asians and "foreigners", and an appeal to Australian nationalism.
The line is that the alternative to so-called economic rationalism is economic nationalism, i.e. let's protect Australian capitalists from foreign competition and we will all be better off. It is appealing not just because it's simple but also because it builds on years of brainwashing that all Australians share a common interest.
That's always been a lie. Australian capitalists' interests are directly in conflict with the interests of the people they exploit here and overseas. That should be clear from the widening gap between rich and poor even in this so-called egalitarian society.
That gap shows that economic rationalism is the conscious pursuit by Labor and Coalition governments of policies that maintain the profits of big business at the expense of the great majority of the population.
Hanson's nationalism only channels the anger of the victims of economic rationalism away from the real cause of their pain, the big capitalists. She's doing a job for the exploiting class, and many of her supporters are going to find that they have been duped.
Question: If economic nationalism isn't the alternative, what is?
This is going to be at the hub of the Democratic Socialists' election campaign. Our message is that protectionism, economic nationalism, won't save jobs, won't stop the cuts to basic services and the destruction of entire communities.
All big businesses are committed to the neo-liberal madness. If Australian capitalists are offered a few billion dollars more of tariff protection or subsidies, they'll grab it, thank you very much, and then use it to "modernise", restructure and sack another few thousand workers anyway.
Hanson's idea of setting up a state bank to offer farmers and small businesses cheap loans is not going to stop the neo-liberal onslaught. Such a bank would be chewed us and spat out in a tick by the profit-hungry private banks.
If society wants to control the profit madness in the finance sector, it has to nationalise the whole sector and put it under democratic, community control (not under self-serving and unaccountable managers or politicians).
If we want to stop the relentless job destruction by big businesses, we have to take them out of the hands of their profit-hungry owners.
If we want to end environmental destruction, again we are going to have to take all the decisions that affect this out of the hands of the profit-mad capitalists.
Question: Aren't people going to see your proposals for such massive nationalisations as utopian?
Some people will say that, but it doesn't change the fact that this is what is required to solve terrible social problems. It is the only practical course back from the last two decades of economic deregulation, privatisation and public austerity.
It is not enough to slow the tide of privatisation — it's got to be reversed, and large Â鶹´«Ã½ of the economy have to be brought under community control and ownership.
When people who want to change things say we are "utopian", they mean either that it is not possible to run society truly democratically, without predominant ownership by a few wealthy people, or that they think there is an easier solution. They are wrong on both counts.
First, this society is already largely run through the collective efforts of thousands of people. The school system, most public utilities and even big private companies operate only on the basis of widespread cooperation between workers.
But under capitalism, the direction of all this collective work and the distribution of its fruits are dictated by a few wealthy owners. These days many of them make their biggest profits simply by being destructive and through gambling in the giant casinos called financial markets. We don't need them to run society. In fact, they are destroying society.
Secondly, there is no easier solution. Subsidising capitalists, protecting them with tariffs, doesn't work. Hanson says it worked in the 1950s and 1960s, so why won't it work today? In fact, those policies merely built up the strength of the capitalists who are pushing the neo-liberal agenda today.
Question: But protectionism is still widely supported by Australian workers.
That's a fact, and it is a major contribution to Hanson's appeal. Right-wing populism was given a massive head start by the failure of the left, broadly speaking, to challenge economic nationalism.
Economic nationalism and racism were ideological foundation stones of the ALP. In the mid-1970s, the dominant right wing of the ALP junked protectionism when the big capitalists demanded that they do so, but the left hung on to economic nationalism.
They twisted their nationalist arguments to justify getting the unions to help Australian capitalists become "more competitive". This was the meaning of their support for the Accord and later for enterprise bargaining. All they were doing was helping the bosses shaft their workers. They were joined in this by the former Communist Party of Australia.
Today much of the old left hangs on to economic nationalism, supposedly as an alternative to economic rationalism. That's really utopian. It's not having the guts or the honesty to tell workers that they have been screwed for corporate profit. The solution is in fighting the bosses — foreign or Australian.
The old left's economic nationalism has given massive ideological assistance to One Nation.
The same problem infects many in the environmental movement, who talk about transcending old paradigms but cannot think outside of the myth of Australian national interest. It shows up in their opposition to immigration, though they have been shamed into whispering about it since the cruder message of Hanson has come to dominate.
We are taking a blunt message into this election campaign: Australian nationalism, like the nationalism of all the rich and exploiting nations, is racist and reactionary. Defeating One Nation politically requires a war against the chronic nationalist ideological infection in the Australian working class.