Comrade Charlie McCaffrey

My political mentor was a comrade named Charlie McCaffrey.

Charlie’s been dead for over two decades but his influence is still very much alive.

The following is the text of an obituary I wrote about Charlie. It was published in Vanguard, paper of the CPA(M-L) on February 25, 1987.

Having recently had some contacts from overseas relatives of Charlie who wanted information on him, I’ve decided to put that obituary up on my blog:

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Comrade Charlie McCaffrey has passed away.

His death came quietly in the early hours of the morning on Wednesday February 11 after a brief illness.

He would have been the last to have wanted any sort of recognition or eulogy, yet his position as a leading comrade of our Party demands it.

Comrade McCaffrey was born in 1904 in Glasgow, Scotland. As a young man he travelled to Australia. He was a member for a short time of the Australian Workers Union in Mildura before joining the Newcastle branch of the Federated Ironworkers Association in 1926.

Possessed of a fiery temperament, Charlie burned with the indignities and injustices suffered by working people under capitalism. A brilliant organiser and leader of his peers, he worked tirelessly within the labour movement, and recognised in the Communist Party and in Communism the only answer to the social contradictions of class society.

In 1938 he was deputed by the FIA to conduct industrial appeals during the Lysaght dispute in Queensland and Tasmania. He was elected and organiser and State Councillor of the FIA in 1939.

The out break of the war saw an attempt to introduce the so-called National Register, a forerunner of today’s semi-fascist ID card. Comrade McCaffrey campaigned strenuously against the National Register, a fact noted in his favour when he stood as a candidate for State Labor in the 1941 NSW elections. (State Labor was an attempt by left Labor and Communist activists to oust the right-wing Curtin-McKell Labour Party.)

As Vice-President of the Newcastle Trades and Labour Council during the Second World War, Charlie successfully integrated the defence of workers’ living standards and working conditions with all-out support for the allied war effort against fascism. He negotiated skilfully for the resolution of disputes involving Greek crews on ships calling at Newcastle. The conditions of work for Greek seamen were atrocious and they were involved in frequent stoppages of work when they reached the Australian coast. Upholding principle and dealing with the various ships’ officers, Charlie was able to secure returns to work, earning him the praise in February 1943 of Rear Admiral J Muirhead Gould and in January 1944 of the Department of Supply.

(Charlie, left, with Soviet navy personnel and Newcastle officials)

A matter of great satisfaction to Charlie at this time was the visit to Newcastle of ships of the Soviet Navy. He personally hosted the Soviet naval officers during their stay in Newcastle, and organised a massive public meeting and Mayoral reception for the Soviet sailors in the Newcastle Town Hall.

At the end of the war, Comrade McCaffrey was called on by his union to transfer to Adelaide where he took up the State Secretaryship of the FIA. The Ironworkers had been eclipsed by the right wing Australasian Society of Engineers under Alby Thompson. One of Charlie’s first duties was to organise a visit to the Pope factory where he was shown the plant under the watchful eye of owner Mr Barton Pope. After conducting his union work, Charlie was approached by Pope and told that anything that he had seen in the factory (mainly whitegoods products) that he wanted for his own use could easily be delivered to his home. Charlie’s reply was short and contemptuous. A shocked Barton Pope responded: “Hell, you’re not like Alby at all - his place is full of our stuff!”

Charlie’s outstanding communist qualities quickly earned him a place on the SA State Committee of the Communist Party of Australia. For many years he was widely acknowledged as the “No. 1 Communist” in South Australia, a description he himself would have disliked, but one which was earnt through a fearless devotion to the Party during difficult times, and an unwavering commitment to furthering the interests of his class.

In 1959 Comrade McCaffrey took part in a visit by an Australian Communist delegation to the People’s Republic of China. Also on that delegation was the late Ernie O’Sullivan with whom Charlie was to form a lasting friendship. Inspired by the efforts of the Chinese people to build socialism, Charlie returned to South Australia determined to establish a local branch of the Australia-China Society.

His efforts bore fruit in the early sixties when an SA Branch was established. Its first office-bearers were Joe Drummond (President.), David Caust (Secretary), Lil McCaffrey (Treasurer) with a Committee comprising Roy Baynes, Bill Warton, Marj Johnston and Alice Thornton. Later made a Life Member of the Society, Charlie always maintained a close and supportive interest in its activities.

The early Sixties were also, however, a period of division and fragmentation in the Communist movement. Although the 1963 State Conference of the CPA had resolved to “express to Comrade McCaffrey its sincere appreciation for his work on the State Committee of the Party over a period of many years”, he grew increasingly dissatisfied with the path taken by the CPA national leadership. With David Caust, Roy Baynes and others, he analysed the contradictions that led to the formation of the CPA(M-L), under the leadership of Comrade Hill in Victoria. His decision to join the new party considerably strengthened the CPA(M-L) outside of its home base in Victoria.

Following the defeat of the Communist leadership of the Ironworkers in 1951, Conrade McCaffrey had returned to the factory floor - to the SA Rubber Mills plant at Edwardstown. He resisted numerous offers of “advancement” including from within the Labor Party. It was suggested that he should withdraw from the CPA, that a position in Parliament was only a matter of time. For 17 years Charlie worked at the Rubber Mills both as a Communist and as a union delegate for the workers in the factory. He left only in 1969 to undertake the responsibility with his wife Lil of opening and running the East Bookshop.

As a leading member of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist), Comrade McCaffrey became a focal point for the revolutionary young people during the late Sixties and early Seventies. The rapid expansion of the Party in South Australia at that time was in large part due to Charlie’s faith in newer and younger comrades, and to the care he took in guiding and encouraging their ideological development. He travelled to both Albania and China with Comrade E. F. Hill and encouraged our study of Hill’s writings. He made extensive contributions to the national leadership of the Party and was one of a select group of “elder statesmen and -women” whose views were solicited by a newer and younger leadership. In the early Eighties he joined Comrade Hill in representing the Party in discussions with the CPA, contributing to a better atmosphere within the Australian Communist movement.

(Ted Hill, 2nd left, and Charlie, 2nd right, with Enver Hoxha and Albanian comrades)

(Charlie, 3rd left and Ted Hill, 3rd right with Kang Sheng, centre, and Mme Deng Yingchao, 2nd left)

Comrade McCaffrey was a statesman of his class. He was a fierce warrior of, and for, the proletariat. He was fierce in his commitment to Marxism-Leninism and withering in his contempt for those whom he considered had used their working class positions or contacts for personal gain or advancement. He had a depth of analysis that was born of practical experience of class struggle and refined by study of the Marxist classics. He was a man of enormous personal dignity and bearing.

His memory will always be honoured.

Gao Mobo: The Battle for China's Past

Three decades of hostile mythology have lain like a fog over the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the man who initiated it, Mao Zedong.

At last, an important academic study of Mao-era China has come along, shining a light through the miasma of lies and distortions that begin with the “ten years of disaster” line of the Deng ascendancy, and continue through the publications of Jung Chang and Li Zhisui.

Professor Gao Mobo’s The Battle for China’s Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution (Pluto Press, 2008) reasserts the validity of the Cultural Revolution and makes significant claims for its having benefited both China and the broad masses of the Chinese people. In the process, it dismisses the neo-liberal agenda of the restorationists inside the CCP and unmasks the reality of the growing divide between urban and rural China.

Gao claims that the rapid economic growth of the major cities in the coastal provinces, touted as a success for post-Mao reforms introduced by Deng and others, actually conceals the fact that “there are millions of people who are actually worse off since the post-Mao era reform years.” He says that gender equity has suffered setbacks after making significant gains during the Cultural Revolution, and cites education and health as two areas in which many of the rural population are now worse off than during the Mao years. And in any case, he claims, it is precisely the “enormous achievements made during the Mao era that paved the way for later development”.

Prof. Gao deconstructs the dominant contemporary Chinese elite discourse about the Cultural Revolution and Mao Zedong’s policies, showing how the elite’s identification with Western values has shaped their remembering of the past. The consequence of this is that whereas Chairman Mao pursued policies designed to narrow the gap between the cities and the countryside, between agriculture and industry, and between mental and manual labour, the current leadership is prepared to exacerbate them, to allow the Gini co-efficient to rise to crisis point, in order to benefit themselves through a pursuit of policies designed to narrow the gap between China and the West.

Gao offers scathing criticisms of Jung Chang’s Wild Swans, Li Zhisui’s The Private Life of Chairman Mao: The memoirs of Mao’s personal physician, and Chang and Halliday’s Mao: The Untold Story. He does not have the space to comprehensively rebut these works that have influenced the way millions in the West now view Mao and the Cultural Revolution, but he does offer sufficient critiquing of their dishonesty and unreliability as to strip away their general credibility.

Gao asserts that it is wrong to see the origins of the Cultural Revolution in a power struggle between Mao and Liu Shaoqi; instead he reestablishes Mao’s fear that the Chinese Party might take the same path towards revisionism as its Soviet counterpart as the main determinant of his decision to launch the Cultural Revolution. Going soft on imperialism, indeed collaborating with it against the national liberation movements and revolutionary struggles of the poor; allowing the moral compass of the Party to switch from “serving the people” to that of serving the self-interest of an entrenched urban Party elite; and allowing the youth to slide into nihilism and uncertainty rather than nurturing them as successors to the proletarian cause – these were the hallmarks of revisionism and the reasons why Mao searched for a way to continue the revolution under the conditions of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Far from hiding behind the curtains and plotting the downfall of Liu Shaoqi, Mao at first cautioned against targeting him and said that he should be given time to think about the direction China should take, that he should be allowed to “continue to make revolution” (quoted in Stuart Schramm’s Mao Tse-tung Unrehearsed).

Gao examines the restorationists’ suppression of any alternative to the “ten years of disaster” myth, claiming that it “deprives a probable majority of the Chinese of the right to speak up”. In two very revealing chapters, revealing certainly for the majority of people in the West who neither speak nor read Chinese, Gao examines challenges to the elite’s hegemony by way of contrary narratives in the e-media. Although the existence in China of websites espousing a positive view of Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution is somewhat precarious (a case in point: http://www.maoflag.net/ from which I obtained Wu Bin’s rebuttal of the pro-capitalist nonsense of Xie Tao, has been closed) a number of them do exist, and together with online chat rooms, provide an opportunity for genuine socialists to put a different view to that of the elite.

In his concluding chapters, Gao focuses on contemporary China and the question of “imaginings of alternative models of development and other possible forms of human organization”. He is cautiously optimistic: “Now Mao’s legacy has started to be looked at a little more seriously. The past can be viewed positively now because the failure of the present is obvious even to some of the political and intellectual elite…Positive lessons…can also be drawn from the Mao era. The ideas and practices of Chinese socialist democracy should be made use of.”

Whilst this book should be highly recommended, there were, for me a couple of areas for improvement. The publishers have done the author a disservice by allowing too many proof-reading errors to pass by without correction: “full blunt” (p. 23) should surely be “full brunt”; “the world depends our way of talking about it” needs “upon” after “depends”, and so on.

More importantly, Gao refers in several passages to Stalin in terms that are reminiscent of the way that Chinese neo-liberals, whom he criticizes, refer to Mao. He lends credibility to the dominant discourse about Stalin, with statements like “Mao was not like Hitler or Stalin”. Stalin was a champion of the working class, Hitler was its scourge. The two cannot be equated. And whilst it is not within the purview of Gao’s book to make any analysis of Stalin, there might have been at least an acknowledgement of the possibility of Stalin having been demonized in a similar fashion to Mao, an acknowledgement of the possibility (for me a certainty) that history will properly evaluate Stalin and the contributions of the Soviet people and state to the defeat of fascism and to keeping alive the hopes and aspirations of the working class and of all oppressed peoples. (I am looking forward to the translation from Russian of US academic Grover Furr’s new book on Stalin, Anti-Stalinist Villainy, and hope that it will do for the great Soviet leader what Gao’s book does for Mao.)

Finally, although Gao sees capitalism with Chinese characteristics as mainly being a restoration of a comprador bourgeoisie serving transnational capital, one of its other consequences is that of finding outlets for investment of accumulated capital. Contradictions are emerging between Chinese private and sovereign capital on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the working people of countries in which Chinese capitalists and the Chinese state are becoming major investors. China has huge investments in Africa, and its giant Haier whitegoods corporation is behind the first SEZ for Chinese investors that recently opened in Pakistan. and Pakistan’s real estate market is deemed to be another profitable area for Chinese investors.

Since last year’s Australian federal election in November, applications for proposed investment from China have almost reached $A30 billion - three times the total proposed investment from China in 2005-06 and 2006-07 combined. The new Labor Government has placed restrictions on investments by Chinese sovereign wealth funds, and is closely scrutinising investments by Chinese state-owned enterprises in Australian resource companies who sell minerals to those same SOEs in China. There is at present an average of one new Chinese investment approval given by the Australian government in every nine days (Financial Review, July 5-6, 2008). On my back doorstep, here in South Australia, CITIC is a major shareholder in environmental despoiler Marathon Resources which wants to mine uranium in the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary.

These few qualifications aside, Gao’s book is an historic first blow at the body of anti-Mao propaganda. Whilst it will not be read by millions in the same way that the populist and sensationalised garbage of Jung Chang, Li Zhuisui and the many others of the elite who have found a Western market for their reminiscences – real and imagined –it will certainly arm the loyal supporters of late Chinese Chairman with a weapon with which to defend his great legacy.

To continue the work of this book, it is also necessary that ways be found around the language barrier so that the Chinese revolutionary e-media is made more accessible to friends of the Chinese revolution in the non-Chinese speaking world.

I conclude this review with sincere thanks to Gao Mobo for the publication of this vital study of the important legacy of Mao Zedong.

Democratic Socialism is Capitalism Pt 10

(This is Part 10 of Wu Bin's refutation of the restorationist agenda advanced by Xie Tao and others. Links to previous chapters that I have translated are at the bottom - Mike)


10. Promoting the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and wanting China to take the path of Western constitutional government.

Mr Xie Tao completely negates the history of the several decades of socialist revolution and construction in our country, attacks the Anti-Rightist Campaign, the people’s communes, the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, and opposes the dictatorship of the proletariat. Slandering the socialist system “as unable to safeguard democracy, safeguard human rights, or defend the dignity of the Constitution”, and at the same time as Mr Xie Tao demands the complete “end” of socialism, he brings out his flag of capitalist “constitutional democracy” and wants our country to “take the path of democratic socialism”, saying: “Some people say our system is excellent but refuse to study Western democracy or the separation of the three powers. Whether a system is good or not is not a question of theory but a practical issue.” He says: “The reform of the political system can no longer be delayed. Attempting to retain the Mao Zedong model of a political system, and only reforming and opening up in the economy, will be to follow the failed path of Chiang Kai-shek and the Guomindang’s bureaucratic capitalism. Only constitutional democracy can fundamentally solve the problem of corruption in the ruling party. Only democratic socialism can save China!” He says: “There are now inner-party deliberations on the separation of the powers (the separation of decision-making, supervision and implementation: the Party Congress and the Standing Committee to exercise decision-making power, the Party Central Committee to exercise executive power, and the Central Discipline Commission to exercise the power of supervision), and on the democratization of the leadership system, in order to achieve a breakthrough in the reform of the political system and in some local experimental areas. From absolute rejection to combining the exploration of the separation of the three powers with its practical form is a major breakthrough in the political reform of the guiding ideology.” He pointed out: “As the ruling party, the Communist party must make fundamental changes in its method of operation”. Then he says, “From reform of the system of leadership by the ruling party to reform of the country’s political system, this two-step strategy, may well be a constitutional path with Chinese characteristics”.

Mr Xie Tao’s ideas are very clear! He wants China to implement the so-called “constitutional democracy”, “the two-step strategy”, and to go along with what He Weifang and others clamoured for at last year’s March 4 Xishan Conference. We remember that on March 4 last year, He Weifang proposed: implementing a “constitutional model” is a prerequisite for a “multi-party system”, and the Communist Party can no longer continue as a ruling party. In evaluating what He Weifang had raised, the Voice of America said that this must be the “core question of China’s political reform”. Mr Xie Tao’s “constitutional democracy” and He Weifang’s “constitutional model” are birds of a feather. He Weifang proposes to implement “an independent judicial system”, so Xie Tao proposes that “the National Peoples Congresses at all levels should implement the authority of the Parliaments of the democratic countries”; He Weifang proposes the “illegality of the Communist Party”, so Mr Xie Tao believes that “the reform of the guiding ideology of the political system” requires a “breakthrough”, a “separation of the three powers”.

In opposing the deceitful propaganda of Chiang Kai-sheks’s so-called implementation of “constitutional democracy”, Chairman Mao once said something like, “What is constitutional government? … What kind of democratic government do we need today? New-democratic government, the constitutional government of New Democracy. Not the old, outmoded, European-American type of so-called democracy which is bourgeois dictatorship…” “The sort of constitutional government which the Chinese die-hards are talking about is the old type of bourgeois democracy found abroad.” “The Chinese national bourgeoisie, on the other hand, does want this type of constitutional government and would like to establish a bourgeois dictatorship in China,” but for us “The constitutional government to be promoted is new-democratic constitutional government”. “What is new-democratic constitutional government? It is the joint dictatorship of several revolutionary classes over the traitors and reactionaries.” “At the present time the so-called constitutional and democratic governments of countries like Britain, France and the United States are in fact man-eating governments” (Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Vol. 2, New Democratic Constitutional Government).

(Chairman Mao taking a "constitutional" of his own at Xibaipo in Hebei Province in 1949 on the eve of the PLA's entry into Beijing.)

Only socialism can save China – this is the unbreakable truth that only emerged after the experience of untold hardship and the sacrifice of more than 20 million lives in the revolution led by the Chinese Communist Party and Chairman Mao. Wanting to turn back the wheel of history, to practice private ownership and implement the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, to restore capitalism, is the wishful thinking of Mr Xie Tao and his accomplices. The Chinese working class and the Chinese people must not allow them to do this!

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Pt 1: http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2007/05/democratic-socialism-is-capitalism-pt-1.html

Pt 2: http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2007/05/democratic-socialism-is-capitalism-part.html

Pt 3:http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2007/06/democratic-socialism-is-capitalism-part.html

Pt 4:http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2007/08/democratic-socialism-is-capitalism-pt-4.html

Pt 5: http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2007/07/democratic-socialism-is-capitalism-pt-5.html

Pt 6: http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2007/08/democratic-socialism-is-capitalism-pt-6.html

Pt 7: http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2007/12/democratic-socialism-is-capitalism-part.html

Pt 8: http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2008/03/democratic-socialism-is-capitalism-pt-8.html

Pt 9: http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2008/06/democratic-socialism-is-capitalism-pt-9.html

Arkaroola: further contamination to be revealed?

Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary despoiler Marathon Resources (ASX code MTN) may have added to its contamination of the pristine wilderness environment near Mt Gee, according to one report circulating in shareholder chatrooms.

The report follows:

Preliminary assessments by a group of independent engineers have discovered extraordinary levels of dangerous nitrate pollution contaminating underground aquifers adjacent to the illegal MTN burial dumps at Mt Gee.

Evidence has been found that the extreme contamination levels in the water are poisoning wildlife depending on natural soakage springs where the highly contaminated water seeps to the surface.

MTN appears to be aware of the polluted subterranean water discovery but are practicing a "code of silence".

However now the word is out, the Conservation Council will be calling on the SA Govt to explain why results of these contamination investigations have been restricted.

The ramifications of this discovery are enormous. Compensation claims by affected indigenous and pastoral occupants are likely and remedial work costs will be never ending. When it appears that the Mt Gee tragedy can't get any worse, every day and in every way, MTN finds a way to sink lower and lower.

...................

These bastards should be kicked out of Arkaroola once and for all.

Arkaroola must be protected from mining by special legislation NOW!!!

George Hogg film review

Last night I saw the film released in Australia under the title Children of the Silk Road and overseas as The Children of Huang Shi. The film is a largely fictionalised and “Hollywoodised” account of how Englishman George Hogg (below, left) helped to found the Shandan Bailie School during the War of Resistance to Japan in China.

Despite its distortions and omissions the film has a largely positive portrayal of Hogg, is quite honest about the corruption of the Kuomintang, the atrocities of the Japanese, and avoids negatively stereotyping its only Communist character played by Chow Yun Fat (although it does make him unbelievably fluent in English).

The distortions centre on the relationship between Hogg and a beautiful blond-haired and blue-eyed nurse. Her character is based on that of Anglican missionary nurse Kathleen Hall, a New Zealander, who smuggled medicines to Dr Norman Bethune and the Communist Eighth Route Army and who nursed Hogg back to health after he contracted typhus.

The major omission is of any reference to the politics of the work in which Hogg was involved with another New Zealander, Rewi Alley . Together they founded a school for the training of boys in skilled trades that would enable them to work in the movement for Chinese Industrial Cooperatives established under the auspices of Dr Sun Yat-sen’s widow Mme. Soong Qingling. This was an elementary form of socialist organisation for which there was such enormous enthusiasm by its participants that US military observers took its Chinese name “Gonghe” and coined the term “gung-ho” (see symbol at right).

When Hogg died of tetanus in 1945, it was Rewi Alley that was at his side, reading at Hogg’s request, passages from the Communist Manifesto.

Sciptwriter James MacManus may or may not have stuck to some semblance of the original truth, but as he notes in an article written for Times Online that after having been made by his script agent to “write the script again and again”, it was finally sent to production companies “and the rewrites began again as production companies paid for options and demanded their own version. Needless to say, nothing of my script - not even the original title – has survived four different writers and the many film companies that have developed the film over the years.”

If the film inspires viewers to tap into the available materials on the real life of George Hogg, Rewi Alley and Kathleen Hall it will have served a very useful purpose. Certainly a number of on-line comments indicate that people who have seen the film intend to do just that.

In addition to the links below, accurate information on Hogg can also be found in Rewi Alley’s At 90: Memoirs of My China Years and Tom Newnham’s He Mingqing: The Life of Kathleen Hall, both published by the New World Press, Beijing.

Background to the film and Hogg from China Radio International:
http://english.cri.cn/4406/2008/04/11/1441@344615.htm

A short review of the book “Ocean Devil” on which the screenplay is supposedly based:
http://linkchinese.net/news/2008/04/27/george-hogg-biography/#more-251

Another short review of the book:
http://www.btmbeijing.com/contents/en/btm/2008-05/books/oceandevil

Goonight John, Goodnight Vic...

Marathon Resources founding Directors Dr John Santich and Dr Vic Bogacz “have elected to retire to pursue new business interests” according to a just-released statement to the Australian Stock Exchange.

Santich and Bogacz profess to be explorers rather than miners, and are known to have interests in other companies and other sites, notably the Warburton Ranges in Western Australia and in Poland’s Silesia.

Their departure from the Marathon Board, where they were seen as political liabilities in the wake of the scandal that erupted over the unlawful disposal of waste at Mt Gee, prepares the way for a renewed Marathon push to get approval for a license to mine uranium within the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary.

In an effort to push the Marathon Board as now having cleaner and greener credentials, it has also been announced that Dr John (Shad) Linley has been appointed as a Non-Executive Director.

Linley’s claim to fame rests on his position as CEO of the Korean-owned multinational Sun Metals Corporation, owner of Townsville’s zinc refinery.

The ASX announcement states, “Dr Linley brings a wealth of experience to the Board which will support the company in fully addressing the challenges ahead.”

No prize for guessing what those “challenges” are!

It continues, “Dr Linley was CEO at Sun Metals in Townsville, the world’s most efficient and environmentally sensitive zinc refinery successfully built and operated on the edge of the Great Barrier Reef’.

I bet Marathon shareholder, now Director and Labor Party identity Chris Schacht, has waved that little line under the noses of his erstwhile colleagues Premier “Miner Mike” Rann, State Treasurer Foley and Primary Industries Minister Holloway.

And I’ll equally bet that Tourism Minister Lomax-Smith is overlooked; after all, she’s done nothing to defend South Australia’s major tourism icon, Arkaroola, to date and is conveniently missing in action in her other portfolio area, education, where there is currently a major industrial campaign being waged by the Education Union.

We’ll have to wait till tomorrow to see how the share market reacts to this latest little piece of spin from Marathon, but with shares currently trading at a low $1.43 it’ll take a major buyer to inject any optimism into MTN on the Exchange.

Perhaps there’ll be some big bundles of shares being offloaded soon…..

An infestation of grubs

Lenin coined the deca-syllabic term "parliamentary cretinism" to describe the practices characteristic of bourgeois political institutions.

However, South Australian Liberal Party leader Martin ("Major Marty") Hamilton-Smith wanted something easier to say this morning, opting to describe State Treasurer Foley as a "grub" for raising the issue of the 26 company share portfolio that he holds whilst serving as Leader of the Opposition.

Foley had the temerity to suggest that serving politicians, who can vote for and against legislation in the parliament, and who sometimes even in Opposition receive confidential business and other briefings, might be compromised by continuing to hold shares in publicly listed companies.

It was a fair point, and Marty has a case to answer that should extend to more than a single syllable outburst.

But is it also a case of the pot calling the kettle black?

We have already raised the issue of Premier Mike Rann's connections with wilderness sanctuary despoiler Marathon Resources through another company established by its CEO John Santich (see here).

In brief, Rann's private home in the Adelaide suburb of Norwood sports a rooftop of solar panels installed by the Solar Shop, owned by Stellar Energy P/L established by Santich.

There is no suggestion of graft involved, although the Solar Shop website prominently displays the Premier's home and the fact that he has given them his custom.

What is intriguing is that Santich has recently gone in with Uranium SA, a prime shareholder of which is Rann favourite Tom Phillips, former CEO of Mitsubishi which recently closed down its Adelaide manufacturing plant.

And State Labor Party heavyweight Chris Schacht, who lobbied successfully with Rann to overturn the Party's "no new uranium mines" policy, was elevated from shareholder to Executive Director of Santich's Marathon mob when the latter ran into trouble for violating the terms of its Arkaroola/Mt Gee exploration licence.

It's a cosy set of relationships, and one in which Santich could feel comfortable enough to say, in March 2007, that "we have essentially the approval of the state government - it's supported it (the Mt. Gee project - ed.) in every possible way".

It also explains why Marathon is still in the running for approval to rip uranium out of the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary following the rap over the knuckles it got from Rann's government with a short-tailed grass wren feather in the form of a suspension of its exploration licence, issued on the same day that it announced the completion of its exploration program!

The drought may have knocked the wildlife around at Arkaroola, but there's an infestation of grubs all round in the coward's castle of state parliament.

Arroyo deserts people for company of US masters

Philippines President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) has incensed the Filipino people by leading a junket to the US whilst the nation recovers from a lashing by wild storms.

Whilst the people grieve for their dead and the prices of food and oil skyrocket, Arroyo’s priority has been to get to the US for further orders from her masters.

However, Filipino-American RATs or "Rapid Action Teams" will scour the streets of the cities she visits to harass her “garbage regime”.

Arroyo and her entourage, which included at least 59 loyal congressmen, left for the US on Saturday even as Typhoon Fengshen was battering a large area of the Philippines.

Heidi Laurel, 21, whose parents and five brothers and sisters were among the missing in the sunken Princess of the Stars (right), was screaming the name of Arroyo as she desperately pleaded for information about her family.

'Where is President Arroyo? We need you here now. Where are you?' she screamed after security guards at Sulpicio Lines, the shipping company that owns of the ill-fated ferry, prevented her from entering the office.

Archbishop Angel Lagdameo, president of the influential Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, lambasted the visit for its insensitivity to the plight of the hundreds of thousands of victims of Fengshen.

'In the face of the exaggerated and expensive trip of more than 60 of our national leadership to the United States for more than a week, how can we talk of austerity and frugality in spending the people's taxes, knowing for whom they must be urgently applied in times of great calamity,' he said.

'The insensitivity of Gloria shows much too much,' the opposition newspaper the Daily Tribune said in its editorial.

'Not even a typhoon that lashed the Philippines, with thousands rendered homeless ... causing the rapid sinking of a ship where hundreds went missing, with many dead, were enough reasons for Gloria Arroyo to cut off her working trip to the United States to meet for a few minutes an American lame duck president,' it added.

(The actions of a US puppet like Arroyo stand in stark contrast to the actions of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao who immediately travelled to the earthquake-devestated Sichuan Province to personally console victims and to deal with problems as they arose.)

BAYAN-USA, an alliance of progressive Filipino groups in the U.S. representing organizations of students, scholars, women, workers, and youth denounced Arroyo’s visit. Chito Quijano, Chairperson of BAYAN USA said, ”The US-Arroyo administration is the Bubonic plague of the Filipino people, and we must rid ourselves of this pestilence. Our families in the Philippines are suffering because of this US-Arroyo administration that is rotten to the core.". BAYAN USA first launched RAT actions against Arroyo during her 2005 visit to the United Nations in New York.

"The pinnacle of Arroyo's US visit will be her meeting at the White House with Bush and members of his Cabinet on June 24th, where she will further undermine Philippine sovereignty in exchange for US military-backing," said Quijano. US military presence in the Philippines will be a key agenda in the Bush-Arroyo meeting not just because of the "War on Terror," but also because of US economic interests in the region.

This past February, US military were involved in the massacre of innocent civilians in Sulu. Just recently the US oil company, Exxon-Mobil, announced that it would be doing oil exploration off Sulu.

Quijano also stated, "Arroyo's appalling record of human rights violations continues to worsen as people are still being extra-judicially killed or disappeared and Arroyo's death squads and the Armed Forces of the Philippines are still the main suspects at large." Based on data from Karapatan, there have been a total of 903 extrajudicial killings and 193 enforced disappearances since Arroyo came to power in 2001. "This White House meeting between Bush, the world's number-one war criminal, and his number-one puppet, Arroyo, can lead only to plans of more human rights violations and attacks on civil liberties and democracy," concluded Quijano.

RAT actions are planned for Washington, with follow-up RAT attacks in New York on June 26 and in Los Angeles

Washington, DC-based group Katarungan: Center for Peace, Justice, and Human Rights in the Philippines, will be doing an action themed "Airing the President's Dirty Laundry" on June 25 at 6pm in front of the Willard Hotel. Participants in the action will be holding a ten foot puppet of GMA whose arms will act as clotheslines bearing symbols of some of the President's most unpopular and not so secret legacies—extrajudical killings, rampant corruption, rice shortage and rising cost of very basic needs.

RATs and their supporters will be uniting behind these demands:

Control the Prices of Rice, Gas, and Basic Necessities!

Stop the Killings & Enforced Abductions in the Philippines!

No to U.S. Military Aid to the Philippines!

No to Labor Export Policy!

End Political Corruption!

OUST GLORIA!

Democratic Socialism is Capitalism Pt. 9

This is the ninth instalment of Wu Bin's refutation of Mr Xie Tao's advocacy of the restoration of capitalism in China. Links to the earlier chapters are appended to the end of this post. Once again, I must apologise for the delay in the translation, but I'm not an expert and I have a full-time job so I work at the pace I can manage. Only three more sections after this one!

9. Misrepresenting “The Three Big Transformations”, Negating Mao Zedong Thought

While misrepresenting and negating Marxism-Leninism, Mr Xie Tao has not forgotten to attack and slander Comrade Mao Zedong and Mao Zedong Thought.

(1) His attack on Mao Zedong is for “’left’-leaning revisionism”, saying things like “the collapse of the Soviet Union, the great changes in Eastern Europe, China taking the path of reform and opening up, all these are the defeat of ‘left’-leaning revisionism and the victory of Marxism.”

He also shamelessly cooks up rumours about Mao Zedong. He says things like: “After Mao Zedong had completed his somewhat arrogant ”Three Great Transformations” in December 1956, he rapidly realised that he had made a mistake and put forward his new economic policy. He said: ‘The Shanghai underground factories and the state enterprises are in opposition. Because society needs it, start to develop it. It should be brought above ground and legitimized and allowed to hire labour. At the moment it takes three months to make clothing, the sleeves from cooperative factories have one long and one short, buttons don’t have buttonholes, and the quality is poor. It’s best to open privately run factories and have them compete with those above ground, and open some family run businesses. Advertising for labour should also be allowed. This is called the new economic policy. I suspect the Russian New Economic Policy ended too early. It was only carried out for two years, and turned a retreat into an attack; there have been insufficient social commodities up till the present time. We have retained 2.5 million people in privately run enterprises (1.6 million in industry and 900,000 in commerce) whereas the Russians only retained eighty or ninety thousand people. We can also give consideration, so long as society needs it, to increasing the numbers of underground factories and opening big private factories and arrange a treaty that for ten or twenty years they will not be confiscated. If the overseas Chinese invest for twenty years, we won’t confiscate for 100 years. We can also open investment companies and repay the capital with interest. We can promote state control and private control. We can abolish capitalism and we can promote capitalism” (“Compilation of documents on the road taken since the founding of the Republic” [1953-1956] p. 308). This is a policy that Mao Zedong came to recognize, but which he didn’t have the courage to implement. These ideas in opposition to his own mistakes merely stuck to his lips, they were a single spark of a correct policy which was quickly put out. Now we need to put right the mistakes recognised by Mao Zedong but which he lacked the courage to correct, and to implement his new economic policy.”

Mr Xie Tao cites this passage from Chairman Mao, the original source of which is p. 107 of Vol 7 of the Collected Works of Mao Zedong, and the title of which is “Discussions with Responsible Cadres in Civil Construction and the Association of Industry and Commerce”, dated December 7, 1956. In this article, Chairman Mao emphasizes how, in the socialist transformation of capitalist industry and commerce, to better carry out our Party’s guiding principles and policy questions. In this discussion, Chairman Mao said: “I’ll explain the basic accomplishments of the approximately three years of industrial and commercial transformation. My report, and Comrade Liu Shaoqi’s report, to the Eighth National Congress were different, talking about the basic achievements of the first half of this year. Who was correct? The report from the Eighth National Congress was correct. The basic accomplishment spoken of was joint state-private ownership, not nationalisation, for nationalisation is a complete accomplishment. This was approximately three years. In relation to this sentence of mine, some people had a misunderstanding and thought there was no need to cancel the fixed interest (an annual rate of interest paid by the state to the national bourgeoisie on the money value of their assets for a given period of time after the 1956 conversion of capitalist industry and commerce into joint state-private enterprises – Trans.). The cancellation of fixed interest is a complete accomplishment, not a basic accomplishment.” On the second day of these talks, in “Discussions with Personages in Industrial and Commercial Circles” (December 8, 1956), Chairman Mao pointed out: “We have a two-stage revolution. We have already passed through the bourgeois democratic revolution and solved its problems. The socialist revolution is now also already basically completed. However, it is still not yet finally completed. There are still many problems in the cooperative transformation of agriculture, the cooperative transformation of handicraft industry, in joint state-private ownership and in other matters. After the complete achievement of socialist transformation in the future, there will also be many problems.” “In relation to the socialist transformation of capitalist industry and commerce, this is carried out by everyone. The bourgeoisie as a class must be abolished, however everyone will carry this out.” “Why do we need to carry out state-private ownership, why do we need to carry out socialism? This if for making it easy to begin the development of the nation, for socialism has more advantages than the system of private ownership in the development of the nation’s economy and culture, and in bringing about national independence.” We must bring together these two talks of Chairman Mao’s over two days, for obviously the position of Chairman Mao and the Party is to develop the socialist economy as quickly as possible in the transition from new democracy to socialism, because “socialism has more advantages than the system of private ownership in the development of the nation’s economy and culture, and in bringing about national independence.” The things said by Mr Xie Tao about Mao Zedong having “rapidly realised that he had made a mistake…after the ‘Three Great Transformations’”, and having “a policy that Mao Zedong came to recognize, but which he didn’t have the courage to implement. These ideas in opposition to his own mistakes merely stuck to his lips, they were a single spark of a correct policy which was quickly put out,” this sort of analysis and inference is entirely his own fabrication.

In our country, the shift to socialism was made in a timely way after the victory of the new democratic revolution, and this was the greatest aspiration and best choice of the Chinese working class and the Chinese people, and an inevitable trend of the development of the Chinese revolution, as well as the only road to national prosperity and people’s well-being.

After the founding of New China, our country embarked on the socialist road, not taking the road back to capitalism and this was decided by the nature of the Chinese Communist Party and the revolution, and by Chinese circumstances. During the Liberation, more than 80% of the fixed assets of bureaucratic capital comprising industry, mining and transport had already been confiscated by the Government and transformed within a state-owned economy which was socialist in nature. At that time, the People’s Government already controlled the lifeline of the national economy and rapidly realized national financial and economic unity, with the absolute authority to regulate and control the national economy and had a strong foundation for planning national economic development. In the process of restoring the national economy, whilst capitalist industry and commerce played a positive role, at the same time it increasingly became evident that there was also a negative side. Thus, after the restoration of the national economy, along with large-scale economic development, an agenda for the socialist transformation of individual farming, handicraft industry and capitalist industry and commerce was inevitably put forward, and through the conscientious efforts of the whole nation and whole people, it must be said that this profound social change was implemented relatively smoothly. For a large country of hundreds of millions of people to smoothly embark on the socialist road was of great significance and impact not only for China, but was also profound and far-reaching for the whole world.

(2) Mr Xie Tao continues his attacks, saying “Mao Zedong had not read ‘Capital’, nor did he read works by Engels written in the last years of his life (Engels’ most important work from his declining years ‘An Introduction to the Class Struggles in France’)…what he read most of was works by Lenin and Stalin.” As mentioned previously, he also attacks Lenin, Stalin and Mao Zedong as “the greatest revisionists”; and attacks Mao Zedong for “taking the ‘methods of struggle of 1848’ abandoned by Engels as a banner to wave, revising Marxism from the ‘left’”.

As long as they have a clear conscience and aren’t prejudiced about it, anyone will acknowledge that Comrade Mao Zedong throughout his whole life was diligent in study and was a model for the entire Party and the people of the whole nation. Not only was he assiduous in his studies and in his research on the works of Marxism and Leninism, he was exceptionally proficient in the basic theories of Marxism and Leninism; not only was he serious in his studies of the works of Marxism-Leninism, he also encouraged the whole Party and the people of the whole country to study the works of Marxism-Leninism and armed the people of the whole nation with Marxism-Leninism.

As early as 1938, during the holding of the Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixth Congress of the CCP, Mao Zedong pointed out: “Ours is the task of leading a great nation of several hundred million in a great and unprecedented struggle. For us, therefore, the spreading and deepening of the study of Marxism-Leninism present a big problem demanding an early solution which is possible only through concentrated effort,” he pointed out. “So far as shouldering the main responsibility of leadership is concerned, our Party's fighting capacity will be much greater and our task of defeating Japanese imperialism will be more quickly accomplished if there are one or two hundred comrades with a grasp of Marxism-Leninism which is systematic and not fragmentary, genuine and not hollow.” (Selected Works of Mao Zedong Vol 2 p 533 Chinese ed.) After the founding of New China, in order to get the whole Party to adapt to the new requirements of socialist revolution and construction, Mao Zedong and the Central Committee repeatedly issued calls for the entire Party to study Marxist-Leninist theory. On the 20th March, 1951, he issued “Decision of the central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party on Strengthening Theoretical Education [Draft]”. In August 1956, in his “Talks with Music Workers”, Mao Zedong pointed out: “…not to accept Marxism would be bad for us. It would be unreasonable not to accept it” (“Collected Works of Mao Zedong” Vol 7, p 78 Chinese ed.) “These works by the forefather Marx must be read and we must observe their basic principles” (“Collected Works of Mao Zedong” Vol 8, p. 109 Chinese ed.)

After the 20th Congress of the CPSU, in order to oppose and prevent revisionism and wage struggle against these fake Marxist demagogues and identify their conspiracies, and to prevent the restoration of capitalism in China, Mao Zedong repeatedly stressed that in order to study the basic theories of Marxism we had to study the original works. He personally set out the works of Marx and Lenin to be studied and personally made the arrangements for their study. He said we must study several, more than a dozen, or several scores of Marxist-Leninist works. In a planned manner, and within a few years, we must have read several dozens of Marxist-Leninist books. For this reason he proposed to write a series of Notes for the classics of Marxism-Leninism, with the possibility that the Notes would exceed the original texts in length. On February 15, 1964, when organizing the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin for high cadres to study, included 8 works by Marx, 3 by Engels, 11 by Lenin, 5 by Stalin and 3 by Plekhanov. On June 16 of the same year, he proposed at a workshop of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, in view of the lessons from the practice of revisionism by the Krushchov clique in the Soviet Union, that we had to pay attention to raising successors to the proletarian revolution. How should they be raised? The first thing is that they “they must have some knowledge of Marxism-Leninism; it would be best if they have a bit more knowledge of Marxism-Leninism.” On November 6, 1970 the Central Committee issued “Notice on Questions of Study for Senior Cadres” that had been carefully checked by Mao Zedong, and transmitted the instructions by Mao Zedong at the Second Plenary Session of the Ninth Party Congress about senior cadres finding the time for the study of Marxist-Leninist works, and suggesting that the cadres in each unit study 6 works by Marx, Lenin and Stalin and 5 by Mao Zedong. From 1971 until his death in 1976, Mao Zedong many times emphasized paying attention to the propagation of Marx and Lenin, and the study of books by Marx and Lenin. He requested that members of the Central Committee and the high and middle-level Party cadres should earnestly read and study and get a good grasp of Marxism. Looking over Mao Zedong’s whole life, no matter whether it is the revolutionary era or the period of peaceful construction, he never forgot to study and demanded that the cadres of the entire Party studied the works of Marxism-Leninism.

Comrade Mao Zedong was a great proletarian revolutionary statesman, military strategist and revolutionary, a wise teacher and leader loved by the Chinese people and also an outstanding Marxist. Comrade Mao Zedong combined the universal principles of Marxism-Leninism with the practice of the Chinese revolution, creatively developed Marxism, developed it to a new stage and shaped the guidance of the Chinese revolution from its victory to the victory of Mao Zedong Thought. Mao Zedong Thought is a new milestone in the development of Marxism-Leninism. Mao Zedong Thought not only belongs to the Chinese people, but also to the revolutionary people of the whole world. Even though the international communist movement has moved to a low ebb over the last couple of decades, the banner of Mao Zedong Thought, together with the banner of Marxism-Leninism, still flutters high all over the globe, and Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought is still the strong ideological weapon of the international proletariat and revolutionary people in their life and death struggle against imperialism and the bourgeoisie. The name of Mao Zedong is inscribed on the banner of the Marxist parties of the Third World leading the national democratic liberation movement.

(Comrade Prachanda, chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal [Maoist] in front of portraits of the great leaders of the proletariat)

For example, the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), holding high the banner of Mao Zedong’s ideology of people’s war, has gained a great victory in the development of their military struggle. Venezuelan President Chavez, a highly respected opponent of US imperialism, has the Works of Mao Zedong on his office desk; he has meticulously studied Mao Zedong Thought and quoted from Mao Zedong many times in his speeches. He said, “I have worshipped Chairman Mao all my life”. Studying the experiences of the Chinese and Cuban revolutions, and carrying out a resolute struggle against US imperialism, he is determined to build Venezuela into a “21st Century socialism”. Examples like this are too numerous to mention.

Mr Xie Tao, in slandering Mao Zedong like this, is connecting with the forces of bourgeois liberalisation in our country and their ideological trend of “de-Maoification” that is said to have taken off. After the death of Chairman Mao, in order to bring China under the influence of capitalism, those traitors to the Communist Party and running dogs of imperialism, worked themselves into a simple frenzy of throwing filth all over Chairman Mao and Mao Zedong Thought. Not long ago, wasn’t that Mr Mao Yushi writing an article condemning Mao Zedong Thought as “an extremely destructive Thought” and the “main opponent of a harmonious society”? These people, they just want to cut down the flag, they just want to restore the old! There is a great feeling of “the wind sweeping through the tower heralds a rising storm in the mountains”. Clearly the current class struggle is sharp and fierce! However, like ants trying to shake a tree, this is easier said than done! Mao Zedong and Mao Zedong Thought have already firmly taken root in the hearts of the people of China and of the world.

(My photo of a not uncommon scene in rural China - in this case in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region - of a poster of Chairman Mao alongside the "ten great Marshalls" of the PLA in a peasant's house. Taken May 2008.)

Within our country, although the “de-Maoification” has strengthened in the last couple of years, it still cannot stop wave after wave of “Mao crazes”! Not only in our country, but also internationally, the prestige of Mao Zedong and Mao Zedong Thought continues to rise. A few years ago, the US Time Inc. selected the 100 most influential persons and things over the last thousand years, amply demonstrating and affirming the giant status of Mao Zedong in the eyes of the people of the world. As a result of this selection, there was neither Roosevelt nor Washington, worshipped by Xie Tao and Xin Ziling, although Mao Zedong whom they attack and slander appeared twice. Amongst these 100 people, there was the sole selection of Mao Zedong’s famous quote “Where there is oppression, there is resistance”. American scholar Michael Hart said with emotion, “The reason why Mao Zedong’s status is slightly higher than Washington’s is that the changes he brought to China are even more important than the changes Washington brought to the US. The reason his ranking is higher than that of Napoleon and many others is that his influence in the future will probably be greater than theirs”. Many foreigners place Mao Zedong alongside Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin as the teachers of the revolution. Japanese Member of Parliament Okada Haruo said: “Mao Zedong and Lenin are the same – they changed world history and are the greatest persons of the Twentieth Century”. US China expert Trier said: “The experience of Mao Zedong is enough to make him the embodiment of Marx, Lenin and Stalin for the Chinese revolution” (“Around the World”, 2001, No. 11).

This is the logic of the people and of the revolution, that no matter who he is, no matter how great his reputation, it is just wishful thinking to try and uproot Mao Zedong from the hearts of the people, it just cannot be done! All anti-Mao people will come to no good end, and will surely bring shame and ruin upon themselves, and they will become as filthy and contemptible as a pile of dog droppings!

(The poster reads: Chairman Mao is the red sun that will never set in our hearts)

(3) Mr Xie Tao fabricating a wild tale, says, “’The salvoes of the October Revolution’ were sent by Leninism, not by Marxism”, and attacks Mao Zedong for “after the founding of the nation, and in spite of the backward condition of China’s productive forces, giving up new democracy and the capitalist path of development and persisting with communism, relying solely on having a powerful state apparatus at hand and not fearing the rebellion of the national bourgeoisie. From this we can see the influence of Blanquism and Leninism on him. It is not accidental that Mao Zedong embarked on the road of violent socialism.” He slanders Mao Zedong as “a hundred times fiercer than Qin Shihuang, as an emperor without the dragon robes”. He attacks the “power structure and political system designed by Mao Zedong” for “turning into the greatest tyranny of all times and of all places”. He says, “A revolution that results in the elimination of private ownership, a social system characterised by rejection of the advanced productive forces, no matter in whose majestic name, can have no future at all”.

As a member of the Communist Party, Mr Xie Tao is able to come out with such filthy language! It can be seen that he’s not qualified to be a Party member at all! These sorts of people like him and Xin Ziling, Li Rui etc who wear the label of a Communist, insult the sacred name of Communism, insult the Chinese working class, insult the Chinese people, and insult the countless martyrs to the revolution!

In his “Preface”, Mr Xie Tao uses a very insidious “strategy” and trick, that of pitting Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought against Marxism, of setting them against each other; he separates the five revolutionary leaders – Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Zedong - and sets them against each other. On the one hand, they use the gimmick of distorting Marxism to negate Marxism. Just as Lenin once pointed out: “attempts are made to convert them into harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and vulgarizing it….They omit, obscure, or distort the revolutionary side of this theory, its revolutionary soul. They push to the foreground and extol what is or seems acceptable to the bourgeoisie” (State and Revolution, Ch. Ed. p. 6). As we have often said, this is flaunting the banner of Marxism in order to oppose Marxism. On the other hand, they use the banner of Marxism (already revised) to attack and slander Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought, to attack and slander Lenin, Stalin and Mao Zedong. They hate Lenin, Stalin and Mao Zedong precisely because Lenin, Stalin and Mao Zedong didn’t “revise” Marxism, but held high the banner of Marxism and followed Marxist theory and led the proletariat and the revolutionary people in rebellion against the bourgeoisie, in rebellion against imperialism, overthrew the rule of the bourgeoisie in the Soviet Union and in China, and put into practice socialism minus the exploitation and oppression of the bourgeoisie. Thus, in the opinion of Mr Xie Tao and his associates, in order to overthrow socialism and the dictatorship of the proletariat, it is first necessary to strike down the leaders of the proletariat and the revolutionary people, to negate their revolutionary theory – this is the “strategy”, the trickery and the reactionary logic of Mr Xie Tao and his ilk!

..........................

Links to earlier sections:

Pt 1: http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2007/05/democratic-socialism-is-capitalism-pt-1.html
Pt 2: http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2007/05/democratic-socialism-is-capitalism-part.html
Pt 3:http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2007/06/democratic-socialism-is-capitalism-part.html
Pt 4:http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2007/08/democratic-socialism-is-capitalism-pt-4.html
Pt 5: http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2007/07/democratic-socialism-is-capitalism-pt-5.html
Pt 6: http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2007/08/democratic-socialism-is-capitalism-pt-6.html
Pt 7: http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2007/12/democratic-socialism-is-capitalism-part.html
Pt 8: http://mike-servethepeople.blogspot.com/2008/03/democratic-socialism-is-capitalism-pt-8.html

Support Pakistan Food Workers

In 2004, Unilever Pakistan sold its Dalda brand plant manufacturing edible oils and fats in Karachi to a group of former company managers, who incorporated as Dalda Foods (Pvt.) Limited.

With competition growing in the edible oil sector, Dalda management has been busily applying the lessons it learned at Unilever: buy out the competition, and reduce permanent employment and potential union influence to an absolute minimum.

Earlier this year, Dalda acquired a majority stake in rival Wazir Ali Industries. But workers are now challenging the denial of rights to agency workers by fighting back through a newly formed union. Encouraged by a successful challenge to casualization at Coca-Cola Pakistan, Dalda workers contacted the Coca-Cola union and the IUF. Over 430 workers have signed up as members in the Dalda Food Employees Union, which applied for official registration with the authorities on May 13. Fearing a backlash - like Unilever's savage reprisals against temporary workers at the company's Rahim Yar Khan factory - the union successfully applied for a "stay order" which prohibits the company from terminating workers or closing the plant. Management violated the order and terminated 266 workers on May 24.

On June 2, the union received its official registration from the labour department, and, with support from the IUF-affiliated National Federation of Food, Beverage and Tobacco Workers applied for collective bargaining status. Management challenged this procedure in the court, arguing that the agency workers are not employed by Dalda Food, but by….the labour hire agency.

The Court then stopped the application status for collective bargaining, and fixed June 23 as the date for a further hearing.

The workers have set up a permanent camp in front of the company (right), with support from the Federation. With daily visits from trade unions and representatives of political and civil society organizations, the camp has become a living symbol of the struggle against Pakistan's brutal regime of outsourced and casualized labour.

You can support the union's struggle for union rights for all workers by sending a message of solidarity to the workers through the through the IUF Pakistan office and the National Federation of Food, Beverage and Tobacco Workers. The message below can serve as a sample. Please send copies of any messages you might send to the IUF secretariat. We thank you in advance for your solidarity and support.

Sample Message to the Dalda Food Employees Union (cut and paste into emails through links in the paragraph above).

Dear Sisters and Brothers

I have learned of your struggle from the IUF. I fully support your struggle for union rights and recognition at Dalda Foods. I am outraged to learn that management has sought to prevent your union from obtaining collective bargaining status by contending that employees hired through a labour agency should be denied trade union rights because they are not technically employed by Dalda Foods. You work for Dalda Foods, and Dalda management has fired 266 workers simply because they joined the union.

Trade union rights are universal human rights, and by denying those rights Dalda management is violating international Conventions which the government of Pakistan is obliged to defend and uphold.

Your have my full support - may your struggle end in a victory which will be a victory for workers everywhere!

Yours sincerely

First Anniversary of NT Land Grab

The first anniversary of the Howard Government’s so-called Northern Territory “intervention” falls on June 21.

We condemned the intervention at the time for professing to be motivated by the sexual abuse of Aboriginal children whilst in reality being an attempt to roll back the Northern Territory Land Rights Act and open Aboriginal lands up to the mining industry.

According to a weekly progress report on the Northern Territory Intervention leaked to an independent news source yesterday, only 63% of children in remote communities have received health checks promised under the “intervention”, and despite Howard's promise that all government funded computers would be audited for pornography, no computer audits have been carried out as yet.

The document also reveals that Centrelink has received approximately 40 Ombudsman's complaints, mostly around problems concerning the IM (income management) process. Under the IM scheme, welfare payments to Aboriginal Territorians were to be transferred to controlled accounts and substituted for food and clothing vouchers. Sources in the NT state that the cost of income management alone is currently running at $3000 per person per annum — to manage average welfare payments of around $10,000 per recipient. The documents point out that there are around 10,500 people under income management.

According to Mitch, an Eastern Arrernte/Luritja representative from Alice Springs, “Kevin Rudd has said his apology will contain an affirmation never to repeat past wrongs, but this is precisely what his government is doing rolling out Howard’s intervention. He is continuing the genocidal policy of the Stolen Generations and the Howard years.“We are back to ’flour, tea and tobacco days’, being forced to work and jump through hoops for ration vouchers. Centrelink is not providing proper services for remote communities so there has been a mass exodus of our young people. My brothers have been forced into town to look for work.”

Being “forced into town” in the context of the vast Australian outback means leaving the traditional lands for which one’s community acts as custodian and travelling sometimes many hundreds of kilometres into Alice Springs or other NT towns.

Lyle Cooper, a Health clinic worker and President of Bagot Town Camp adds in reference to the new Federal government’s apology to the Aboriginal stolen generations: “I thank you Prime Minister Rudd for your apology…(but) it's an invasion all over again. We are being told where to shop, what to eat, how to act and how to live.”

People of goodwill, progressive organisations, unions and churches have come together with Aboriginal organisations form the NT to call for the repeal of the NT “intervention”, and for real action in consultation with Aboriginal communities to implement the recommendations of the Little Children are Sacred report behind which the previous government disguised its land grab.

The following motion was endorsed unanimously by all divisions of theConstruction Forestry Mining & Energy Union (CFMEU) at their NationalBi-annual Conference at Brighton Beach Sydney, 22/2/08:

"That the CFMEU demand the immediate repeal of the Northern Territory Emergency Response Legislation; we further demand that Federal, State and Territory Governments sit down and enter into respectful dialogue with Aboriginal people in their communities and then act alongside and in support of Aboriginal people in keeping with the "Little Children are Sacred" report."

The Northern Synod of the Anglican Church called on the Australian Government to enter into a real partnership with indigenous people in the Northern Territory by enacting legislation that upholds human rights, affirms self-determination and enhances the capacity of individuals and communities to contribute to solving issues of concern within their own lives. Part of a motion carried by the Synod reads:

“Therefore we believe that the Government shoulda) repeal the NT Emergency Response Act 2007; andb) start afresh through consultative processes to develop a range of responses that directly address the recommendations of the ‘Little Children are Sacred’ Report.”

This Saturday, thousands of people around the continent will gather in support of indigenous sovereignty, self-determination and justice, demanding an end to the NT Intervention. They will demand:
- Repeal all "NT intervention" legislation
- Restore the Racial Discrimination Act
- Fund infrastructure and community controlled services
- Sign and implement the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples
- Aboriginal Control of Aboriginal Affairs

To the shame of the social-democratic Australian Labor Government, it is continuing to carry out the wishes of the imperialists in dismantling Land Rights in the Northern Territory.

Only a genuinely independent Australian nation, led by the working class in a republic based on a new Eureka-inspired Constitution, through a Treaty with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, can properly defend Aboriginal rights and give effect to genuine reconciliation and hope for the future.

In the meantime, we rally and march and continue to fight!

Teachers strike a huge success

South Australian members of the Australian Education Union have vented their anger at the state’s Labor government by holding a 24-hour strike.

The AEU covers Technical and Further Education (TAFE) lecturers, pre-school and school teachers, principals, school services officers (SSOs), early childhood workers (ECWs) and Aboriginal education workers (AEWs) in the public education sector.

Frustrated by months of stubborn rejection of their wage claim (21% over three years) and faced with the loss of protection for class sizes and working conditions, members voted by 85 percent in Electoral Commission-conducted secret ballots, to strike.

More than 500 worksites throughout the state were closed, despite the Education Department (DECS) doing its best to keep some sites open with the few scabs prepared to report for work, and claims that “modified programs” would be available.

With more than 11,000 AEU members on strike, the scene was set for a large turn-out at a mid-morning rally and march on Parliament House.

However, the preferred route, marching from Victoria Square where the State Administration Office housing the Premier’s Department is located, down the city’s main thoroughfare, King William Street to Parliament, was denied to the AEU on the grounds that a recent tram extension made the route unsafe. Also, and shades of Mussolini, the trams had to be allowed to run on time!

This meant that the march had to start from a distant and less accessible corner of the city.

If the government thought that this would minimize the impact of the march, they were soon to be proven wrong.

More than 8000 education workers, parents and students gathered and marched off to chants of “2-4-6-8 Mike Rann negotiate!” and “What do we want? A fair offer? When do we want it? NOW!”

The size of the rally became apparent as police hastily replaced safety cones, designed to keep traffic lanes and the tram line open for traffic in front of Parliament House, back across the street. Despite their best efforts, the crowd quickly spilled out to the tram line, and then across the tram line until the entire six-lane North Terrace was a sea of red.

Speakers including a primary school principal and a parent in her capacity as a school Governing Council chairperson, spoke before AEU President Correna Haythorpe proposed a series of motions calling for continued industrial and community actions. These were passed unanimously.

Smaller marches and rallies occurred in a number of country towns (above), and out on the APY (Aboriginal communities) Lands in the far north-west of the state (below).

According to the AEU, if there is no breakthrough in discussions with the government, a campaign of rolling stoppages will begin and may include another 24-hour stoppage.

By keeping the focus on the issues at stake to schools and their communities, and by maintaining the momentum through carefully planned and timed further action, education workers will be able to persevere in a protracted struggle, and win the majority of their demands.

Marathon in a spin

Uranium explorer and wilderness despoiler Marathon Resources is a bit too clever by half.

On June 10, the company released an upbeat announcement of a resources upgrade for the Mt Gee project.

The announcement claimed that drilling carried out in late 2007 and early 2008 had established “significant improvements in the understanding of the mineralization.” (The state Government suspended their drilling license at the end of February following investigations into the dumping of domestic rubbish and tailings in shallow graves at Mt Gee in violation of their exploration permit).

On the basis of this new information, Marathon upgraded its resource estimate by 11.5 percent.

Actually, Marathon’s resource estimates go up and down faster than a yo-yo on a short string.

A bit of shuffling between “indicated” and “inferred” status can work wonders on a resource estimate’s apparent value. As can a “reinterpretation of geology”.

And an upbeat announcement can deflect attention from less desirable publicity – such as the announcement, on the same day, of an update on the company’s submission of its rectification plan for the damage done to various sites around Mt Gee.

The plan is yet to be approved by the SA government (PIRSA) and the Environmental Protection Authority and there is no indication of cost to Marathon shareholders.

According to today's news, PIRSA and the EPA seem to be in no great hurry to accommodate Marathon.

They have requested a range of information from Marathon Resources before a clean-up of its drilling site in the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary can begin.

The Government bodies asked Marathon to supply information about the contractors they will use for the clean-up, to ensure they are independent from the company and that they have permission to drive dump trucks through the sanctuary in South Australia's Flinders Ranges.

The plan does incorporate the engagement of Papari Radiation Consultants “to advise on radiation protection throughout the process,” which presumably involves sifting through 22,800 bags and sixteen 200 litre drums to determine what is radioactive and what is not.

According to PIRSA recommendations, all general waste, including the bags and drums, must be transported to a licensed waste disposal site and appropriately disposed of; where that site is was not specified.

Mineral samples, including those that are radioactive, are to be safely removed from bags and drums and reburied within the same or similar geological and soil formations. It is assumed that this will be at, or around the three sites spoiled by Marathon, although again, this is not specified.
Environmental consultants Parsons Brinkerhoff and Futureye have also been engaged to “commit to a set of policies and principles that are in line with international leading practice guidelines on sustainable exploration and mining.”

Consultants are known to charge like wounded bulls, and using them to respin Marathon’s tattered credibility is going to cost shareholders.

Of course, Marathon is doing a fair bit of its own spinning, claiming that “potential for further mineralization is likely in the NE quadrant of the Mt Gee area but this is yet to be tested with drilling.”

This is a carrot for Premier “Miner” Mike (left) and Resources Minister Holloway to move quickly on lifting the suspension of Marathon’s exploration license. Who among the rest of us would ever want to let these bastards back in to further honeycomb this pristine and fragile wilderness area?

And despite the frequently-stated opposition to Marathon’s past, and proposed, activities in the area by the owners of the Arkaroola Wildlife Sanctuary, Marathon chairman Peter Williams is leaving no piece of radio-active rock unturned in an effort to win over owners, the Sprigg family. On a number of occasions he has let it be known that mining development would be “good” for Arkaroola’s infrastructure, and that Marathon needs to “demonstrate to the owners and the rest of the world that there can be coexistence between mining and eco-tourism.” Rather than fanning the flames of shareholder contempt for “greenies” and yellow-footed rock wallabies, Marathon claims that it “respects the important conservation work of the operators of the Arkaroola Wilderness Sanctuary…”

The best thing, however, would be for Marathon to clean up the mess it has made, restoring Mt Gee as near as possible to its original state, and then get the hell out of there.

That is the only respect that they are asked to show!

And as for the kiddies in the shareholder chatrooms, well their patience is running thin too. Recent comments include:

ooOOOoo

Recently I was evaluating some of the worst company failures and surprise, surprise, MTN is down there with the worst of them.Let me list some of the MTN management landmarks. Failing and Falling!!!!!

1 Decision to announce high prospectivity of Mt Gee knowing all the while that the area had been previously explored thoroughly for uranium and abandoned.

2 Deciding to explore when knowing the obstacles of working in one of the most valuable environmental zones on earth. clearly this strategy was designed to excite and deceive unaware investors

3 Employment of incompetents to run field operations led by an incompetent and deceitful board.

4 Burying uranium waste on site at one of the most sensitive areas within the lease. This is one way to grab the headlines. A reasonable person is entitled to ask "Hello is anybody home!"

5 Ignoring increasing evidence of environmental damage caused by their operations and failing to address issues such as impacts on the rare Short-tailed Grasswren, opposition of the pastoral lease holders, growing public concerns and other management issues caused by their presence.

And now we learn MTN is suing and counter suing.

Yep this is one successful story. Mount Gee is a spectacular Geological Monument but for MTN, it is a monument of failure. It surprises me that they still exist. I apologize if i have overlooked any MTN brilliant decisions.

12/06/08 18:01

HeinzKizzvelvet

oo000oo, what about the Purple Spotted Gudgeon?

can I ask a stupid question - shouldn't the point after point 5 be made available to shareholders in an ASX news release? This will send the price plummeting! Makes you wonder not IF but WHEN this company will fold.

I bet stevenj is happy he got out now.
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12/06/08 18:16

stevenjd

yeah, i am, time money investmemt.
I'm being more cut throat now.
Always said i was a work in progress.
When they get approvals to mine, i'll be back in on the open.
If that doesn't eventuate, other stocks are performing for me in their stead.
If there is a stampede to exit and it falls to 50c, i'll be interested on market phsycology technical bounce, but only for that, and out again.thats my play book for this one.
There has to be light at the end of the tunnel, there has to be a production schedule that can they can be accountable to.

If not, good luck finding your way through the forest at midnight.

Happy hunting.cheers

12/06/08 18:23

Tibbs

This individual has their own agenda!I HATE greenies ... Somehow, they always seem to get up my nose!;)
A Hotcopper Addict

stevejd

fair enough tibbs,and above posters may have agenda on the green side,but that doesnt change the fact that while MTN are gagged and bound, they aren't going to run the four minute mile for us.

cut em loose, and i'll hand em a drink and wave them on with cheers.

cheers

13/06/08 12:29

Taurisk

Hi Tibbs, StevenjI agree to a certain extent on your views, but I feel the greenies are doing an important job that all the rest of us are too busy ignoring. Sure, they get it wrong at times, but if you had seen what miners were able to get away with years ago, you'd have a different view. My husband worked in titanium mines down south from Perth in the seventies; people died due to the quick-profit motive (no workplace safety), and the place was a huge mess; and if you'd seen the carelessness, the environmental damage and the bleeding gaps in the landscape they were allowed to get away with, you would say it's a good thing we have better legislation in place.

This is to a great extent due to people who take a long-term view on this beautiful world (some of them known as 'Greenies'). They have their own ignorant or 'blind' spots, agreed, but I hope I never get so greedy that I want it all.

It is obvious that you don't try to establish a mine in an environmentally sensitive area. I guess it's another one of those factors investors have to be aware of.

Do your research before investing. I did hold MTN, but sold out with a small profit some time ago.

Sorry, I didn't mean to 'preach' - I just believe that everyone has an important role to play for the good of us all.

Taurisk