The state visit of South African President Nelson Mandela to Indonesia in mid-July focused attention on international efforts to mediate on East Timor but has also deflected attention from the gross violations of human rights and tyranny of the Indonesian regime in East Timor itself.
Mandela has visited Indonesia once before. In 1990 on a fund raising mission for the then recently unbanned African National Congress he called on Suharto, who donated US$10 million. 26 International Viewpoint #292
Mandela was criticised in South Africa and in international anti-apartheid circles for soliciting money from one of the bloodiest and most corrupt of South-East-Asia's autocrats.
In an effort to make amends he has recently made some high profile statements on the situation in East Timor and publicly called for the release of FALINTIL leader. Xanana Gusmao who is serving a twenty year prison sentence.
While in Jakarta, the South African President sought and obtained an unprecedented private meeting with Gusmao to assure him of his personal support.
However many East Timor campaigners are sceptical of both Suharto's good faith and Mandela's good offices. They note the close business links between Indonesia and South
Australia Fast track deportation
The deportations, if successful, would mark an all-time low in Australian grovelling to the Suharto dictatorship in Jakarta. Ever since the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975, Australian governments have in effect been complicit in the genocide which has seen the territory's population fall by over one-third. Australia is one of only a handful of countries which recognise Indonesia's de jure sovereignty over East Timor. Since 1979 Australia has claimed that the East Timorese are Indonesian citizens.
The deportation plans were described by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer as 'absurd and hypocritical' when they were unveiled by the former Labour government in 1995. For its part, Portugal has refused to consider taking the refugees unless they want to go there -and none do.
The 1,360 East Timorese are refugees by any standard. A representative
Africa which inevitably involve Suharto, his family and cronies. As well as the evident interest that the South African arms industry enthusiastically supported by the ANC-led Government has shown in the Indonesian "market'
With the US Congress blocking arms sales and Britain's Labour Government facing pressure over its sale of Hawk aircraft, the Indonesians are looking to South Africa and Russia for their purchases.
There are rumours that the regime may agree to Gusmao's early release and exile to Europe to lessen the consistent condemnation of its occupation and brutalities in East Timor. However Gusmao himself has reportedly said that the issue at stake is not his own freedom but the freedom of his people and the independence of his country. * survey of 147 cases carried out by the Refugee Advice and Casework Service in Melbourne found that 46% had suffered serious assault; 33% torture; and 19% sexual assault. Of the 66% who had been imprisoned, nearly half had been repeatedly beaten during interrogation and 39% had family members killed by the Indonesians.
There is a bright side to this grim story. Over 11,000 individuals and organisations have pledged support for the refugees. Set up by Catholic nuns, but now embracing secular organisations too, Australia's Sanctuary Network is preparing (illegal) sanctuary, to prevent the deportations from going ahead. It is unlikely that the government will dare to take on such a mass movement of civil disobedience. But if it does, its despicable actions must be fought. * * Co-editor of the Australian socialist monthly Militant, and a long-time supporter of the Fourth International.
Australia's conservative government plans to deport East Timorese refugees, who it now says are Portuguese citizens. John Tully* reports.
Australia's conservative government plans to deport East Timorese refugees, who it now says are Portuguese citizens. John Tully* reports.
Australia *
The greatest land grab since 1788
John Tully*
Australia was founded as a white settler society on the dispossession and genocide of indigenous peoples who had lived on the continent for up to 80,000 years before the 'First Fleet' arrived in 1788.
The total aboriginal population at that time can only be guessed at. It might have been as high as one million. What we do know for sure is that by the 1920s the aboriginal population had fallen to below 250,000. Opinion at the time spoke of 'smoothing the pillow of a dying race.' Hundreds of thousands of black people had died over the course of a little more than a century; some from disease and starvation; others in brutal massacres; others from heartbreak at the dispossession of their traditional lands.
Much of their land became freehold, owned and occupied by whites. Central to this process was the legal doctrine of Terra Nullius, which held that Australia was an empty continent in 1788! Large sections also became leasehold land, occupied for peppercorn (symbolic) rents by wealthy cattle owners. However, the British government did rule that Native Title could co-exist with leasehold. in 1848 the Colonial Secretary, Earl Grey, said that "these leases are not intended to deprive the natives of their former right to hunt over these districts or to wander right to hunt over these districts or to wander over them in search of subsistence in the manner to which they have been accustomed."
Despite Grey's ruling, Aboriginal rights were crushed under the weight of racism armed with the doctrine of Terra Nullius. It was not until the 1970s that Black people began to win back some of their land. The process was speeded up in the 1990s by two important High Court decisions which invalidated Terra Nullius. Racist hysteria
The Mabo and Wik decisions have sparked off a storm of racist hysteria. Although they quite clearly do not mean that freehold land can be subjected to Aboriginal land claims, many white Australians fear that they will be evicted from their suburban homes!
The Mabo decision ruled that Aboriginal peoples could make claims to land for which they could demonstrate an unbroken relationship. But only if the Crown had not granted 'exclusive tenure' to anyone else. If it had, then no claim can be made. The Wik decision merely established that the Wik people in Queensland had a legal right to make a claim for ownership of land leased by big mining and grazing interests from the Crown. It presents no threat to anyone - farmer or householder - who has freehold rights. In fact there are already agreements between traditional owners and mining companies in some places. If the Wik claim were granted, the lease-holders would have to pay rent to the traditional owners, not to the Crown. Millionaire squatters
All of this has been obscured and mystified by powerful white farming, mining and grazing interests, which are interlocked with political, media and industrial interests: a large section of the ruling class, in short. The big lease-holders, who pay around 33 cents per hectare for their land, have made gigantic profits over the years. They include in their ranks 24 federal conservative MPs and Australia's media barons Kerry Packer,
Rupert Murdoch and the Fairfax family. who between them lease millions of hectares.?
The Federal government is proposing to extinguish native title, but to pay compensation. But the big mining and farming interests go further. They want the unconditional 'extinguishment of native title on leasehold land, without compensation to the indigenous peoples. In other words a return to Terra Nullius in what amounts to the greatest theft of Aboriginal land since white settlement. It is even likely that Aboriginal people would either be evicted from their traditional lands, or forced to pay rent to the land barons!
The hysteria over Wik has contributed to the surge of support for Pauline Hanson's far-right One Nation Party. Large numbers of rural National Party supporters may well join her organisation in protest at the government's "soft" line. * Note * The author is co-editor of the Australian socialist monthly Militant, and a long-time supporter of the Fourth International. 2. Liberal Party President John Elliot's IXL controls almost six and a half million hectares. National Party Federal President Don MacDonald, controls over three million. And Hugh McLachlan, a cousin of the Defence Minister, controls 4,700,000 hectares. Industrial giant BHP and the insurance companies AMP and National Mutual between them account for over ten million hectares.
New Labour Party holds national conference
Australia's small New Labour Party was formed in November 1996 in Newcastle, New South Wales. Besides students, workers, small farmers and academics, it has recruited a growing number of union officials, particularly from the maritime, electrical and construction unions. Members come from the Australian Labour Party (ALP), the dissolved Communist Party, and various left groups. Many NLP members have never belonged to any party.
According to National Secretary Bob Leach, the party's main strength is its broad spread of opinion, from social democrat and left liberal to Marxist.
The party plans to stand parliamentary candidates, hopefully in alliance with the Greens and the Australian Indigenous People's Party. But it was clear from the mood of this year's conference that members want New Labour to be a grass roots activist party, participating in the social and other struggles.
The party has pledged support for the indigenous people's struggle for land rights; for the East Timor Sanctuary Network (see p.26); and for the fight for trade union rights. In an attempt to forestall bureaucracy and careerism, the party's programme demands that all NLP parliamentary candidates pre-sign their resignations so that they can be evicted if they "rat" on party policy.
According to John Tully of Militant newspaper, "the conference, which was held in the Melbourne offices of the Electrical Trades Union, was extremely successful and bodes well for the future development of the party."
The most controversial debate was on the question of proscription of members of other political parties. In the end delegates agreed to refuse NLP membership to members of any party which stand candidates in parliamentary elections.
This clearly proscribes ALP members and possibly bans the Democratic Socialist Party, the largest far-left organisation in Australia.
National Secretary Bob Leach, from the Social Democratic wing of the party, stressed that the ban did not affect members of some Marxist groups including Militant and the Freedom Socialist Party. Nevertheless, these tendencies led a spirited, though unsuccessful struggle to keep New Labour open to DSP members. [JT] *
27
The global financial crisis
On August 15 Wall Street suffered its largest decline since "Black Monday" in 1987. Michel Chossudovsky explains why global financial markets are so fragile, and the implications for the rest of us. Black Monday October 19, 1987 will be remembered as the largest one day drop in the history of the New York Stock Exchange. The fall was greater than on October 28, 1929, the first day of the Wall Street crash and the beginning of the Great Depression. In the 1987 meltdown, 22.6 percent of the value of US stocks was wiped out, largely during the first hour of trading on Monday morning. The plunge on Wall Street sent a "cold shiver" through the entire financial system leading to the tumble of the European and Asian stock markets.
Almost ten years later on Friday August 15, 1997, Wall Street experienced its largest one day decline since 1987. The Dow Jones [index of shares in the largest and most traded companies] plummeted by 247 points. The symptoms were similar to those of Black Monday. "Institutional speculators" sold large amounts of stock with the goal of repurchasing them later. But the immediate impact was to provoke a plunge in prices. Futures and options trading played a key role in precipitating the collapse of market values.
The tumble on August 15, 1997 immediately spilled over onto the World's stock markets triggering substantial losses on the Frankfurt, Paris, Hong Kong and Tokyo exchanges. Various "speculative instruments" in the equity and foreign exchange markets were used with a view to manipulating price movements.
In the weeks that followed, stocks continued to trade nervously. Wide speculative movements were recorded on Wall Street; billions of dollars were transacted through the NYSE's Superdot electronic orderrouting system with the Dow Jones index swinging spuriously up and down in a matter of minutes. Asian equity and currency markets declined steeply under the brunt of speculative trading. In a three week period the Hong Kong Hang Seng Index declined by 15 percent. The Japanese bond market plunged to an all time low.
Business forecasters and academic economists alike have casually disregarded the dangers, alluding to "strong economic fundamentals." G7 leaders are afraid to say anything or act in a way which might give the "wrong signals." Wall Street analysts continue to bungle on issues of "market correction" with little understanding of the broader economic picture.
Meanwhile, public opinion is bombarded 28 International Viewpoint #292 in the media with glowing images of global growth and prosperity. The economy is said to be booming under the impetus of the free market reforms. Without debate or discussion, so-called "sound macro-economic policies" (meaning the gamut of budgetary austerity, deregulation, downsizing and privatisation) are heralded as the key to economic success.
The realities are concealed, economic statistics are manipulated, economic concepts are turned upside down. Unemployment in the US is said to be falling yet the number of people on low wage part-time jobs has spiralled. The stock market frenzy has taken place against a background of global economic decline and social dislocation. A new financial environment
Since 1987, a new global financial environment has unfolded. A renewed wave of corporate mergers, buy-outs and bankruptcies has paved the way for the consolidation of a new generation of financiers clustered around the merchant banks, the institutional investors, the stock brokerage firms, and the large insurance companies. In this process, commercial banking functions have coalesced with those of the investment banks and stock brokers.
From these transformations, the "institutional speculator" has emerged as a powerful actor, overshadowing and often undermining bona fide business interests. Using a variety of instruments, these institutional actors often dictate the fate of companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Totally removed from entrepreneurial functions in the real economy, they have the power of precipitating large industrial corporations in bankruptcy.
Their activities include speculative transactions in commodity futures, stock options and the manipulation of currency markets including the plunder of central banks' foreign exchange reserves. In the last two months they have "successfully" targeted Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines
. They are also routinely involved in "hot money deposits" in the emerging markets of Latin America and Southeast Asia, not to mention money laundering in the many offshore banking havens. The daily turnover of foreign exchange transactions is of the order of one trillion dollars a day, of which only 15 percent corresponds to actual commodity trade and capital flows.
Within this global financial web, money transits at high speed from one banking haven to the next, in the intangible form of electronic transfers. "Legal" and "illegal" business activities have become increasingly intertwined. Favoured by financial deregulation, the criminal mafias have also expanded their role in the spheres of merchant banking.
The concentration of wealth The concentration of wealth
This restructuring of global financial markets and institutions has enabled the accumulation of vast amounts of private wealth, a large portion of which has been amassed as a result of strictly speculative transactions. There is almost no need to produce commodities: enrichment is increasingly taking place outside the real economy, divorced from bona fide productive and commercial activities. In turn, part of the money accumulated from speculative transactions is funnelled towards the offshore banking havens. This critical drain of billions of dollars in capital flight dramatically reduces state tax revenues, paralyses social programmes, drives up budget deficits, and spurs the accumulation of large public debts.
In contrast, the earnings of the direct producers of goods and services are compressed. The standard of living of large sectors of the World population including the middle classes has tumbled. Wage inequality has risen in the OECD countries. In both the developing and developed countries, poverty has become rampant. According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), worldwide unemployment affects more than 800 million people. The accumulation of financial wealth feeds on poverty and low wages.
The post-1987 period is marked by economic stagnation. In the OECD countries, GDP growth has fallen from 3.1 percent per annum in the 1980s to a meagre 1.7% in the 1990s. Many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America have experienced negative economic growth rates. In the emerging economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, GDP collapsed in the early 1990s by more than 30% Replicating 1920s policy failures
Wall Street was swerving dangerously in volatile trading in the months which preceded the crash of October 29, 1929. Under the Coolidge and Hoover administrations, laissez faire was the order of the day: in early 1929 the Federal Reserve Board declared that it "neither assumes the right nor has it any disposition to set itself up as an arbiter of security speculation or values."
The economics establishment largely upheld this verdict. The possibility of a financial meltdown had never been seriously contemplated. Professor Irving Fisher of Yale University stated authoritatively in 1928 that "nothing resembling a crash can occur". 1929, a few months before the crash, he affirmed that "there may a recession in the price of stocks but nothing in the nature of a catastrophe". '
The illusion of economic prosperity persisted: optimistic business predictions prevailed even after the collapse of the New York Stock Exchange. In 1930, Irving Fisher
economics * stated confidently that "for the immediate future, at least, the perspective is brilliant". According to the prestigious Harvard Economic Society: "manufacturing activity [in 1930]... was definitely on the road to recovery" 2 Financial deregulation
The same complacency prevails today as during the frenzy of the late 1920s: *The [1987] crash had left many people wondering what happened, why it happened and what can be done to prevent it from happening again". . The broad economic causes of the crisis are not addressed. Echoing almost verbatim the economic slogans of Irving Fisher, today's economic orthodoxy not only refutes the existence of an economic recession, it also denies outright the possibility of a financial meltdown: "Happy days are here again ...a wonderful opportunity for sustained and increasingly global economic growth is waiting to be seized..." 3
According to Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas of Chicago University, the decisions of economic agents are based on so-called "rational expectations", ruling out the possibility of systematic errors which might lead the stock market in the wrong direction. the stock market in to i
In the aftermath of the 1987 stock market crisis, the regulatory policy issues were never resolved. According to the various commissions set up by the US Congress, the White House and the New York and Chicago exchanges, the 1987 crash had been triggered by specific events leading to "reactive responses" by major financial players including institutional traders and dealers in mutual funds. No other reason was given. "Sound macro-economic policies" combined with financial deregulation were the irrevocable answers. The term "speculation" does not even appear in Wall Street's financial glossary!
A presidential task-force was formed under the chairmanship of Nicholas Brady (later to become Treasury Secretary in the Bush Administration). The institutional speculators overshadowing bona fide corporate interests, represented a powerful lobby capable of influencing the scope and direction of regulatory policy. The task-force took on an detached attitude pointing to the "adequacy" of existing regulations.
In the aftermath of the 1987 crisis, the policy errors of the 1920s were repeated.
Government should not intervene. The New York and Chicago exchanges were invited to fine-tune their own regulatory procedures which largely consisted in "freezing" computerised programme trading once the Dow Jones falls by more than 50 points.* These so-called "circuit-breakers" have proven to be totally ineffective in averting a meltdown.
Recent experience amply demonstrates that the Dow Jones can swing back and forth by more than fifty points in a matter of minutes. The NYSE's Superdot electronic order-routing system can now handle (without queuing) more than 300,000 orders per day. This is an average of 375 orders per second, representing a daily capacity of more than two billion shares. When speed and volume have increased tenfold in relation to 1987, the risks of a financial instability are significantly greater. Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan admits that: "[while] technological advances have enhanced the potential for reducing transaction costs (...), in some respects they have increased the potential for more rapid and widespread disruption" s
Moreover, in contrast to the 1920s, today's major exchanges world-wide are
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economics interconnected through instant computer link-up. Volatile trading on Wall Street, "spills over" into the European and Asian stock markets thereby rapidly permeating the entire financial system, including foreign exchange and commodity markets, not to mention the markets for public debt. The demise of national currencies under periodic attack by institutional speculators will inevitably backlash on the trillion dollars Euro and Brady bond markets. The fate of national economies
Under the brunt of an impending balance of payments crisis, several of the largest debtor countries in Latin America, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe are facing the same predicament as Mexico. Following the Mexican 1994-95 crash, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Michel Camdessus intimated that ten other indebted countries could meet the same fate as Mexico requiring the application of potent doses of economic medicine: "we will therefore introduce still stronger surveillance to be sure that the convalescence goes well." • However, by crippling national economies and requiring governments to deregulate, the IMF's "economic therapy" prevents the possibility of a "soft landing". "IMF surveillance" of debtor countries' macro-economic policy tends to further heighten the risks of financial meltdown.
The present economic crisis is far more complex than that of the inter-war period.
Because national economies are interlocked in a system of global trade and investment, the impact of any crisis is potentially far more devastating. The technological revolution (combined with delocalisation and corporate restructuring) has dramatically lowered the costs of production while at same time impoverishing millions of people.
Macro-economic policies are internationalised: the same austerity measures are applied all over the World. In turn, large corporations have the power to move entire branches of industry from one country to another. Factories are closed down in the developed countries and production is transferred to the Third World where workers are often paid less than a dollar a day.
The social consequences and geopolitical implications of the economic crisis are far-reaching — particularly in the uncertain aftermath of the Cold War. In the developing World and in the former Soviet block, entire countries have been destabilised as a consequence of the collapse of national currencies often resulting in the outbreak of social strife, ethnic conflicts and civil war. In the former Soviet Union as a whole, industrial output has plummeted by 48.8 percent and GDP by 44.0% over the 1989-1995 period.? In some cases, wages have fallen to less than ten dollars a month; in Bulgaria, old age pensioners receive two dollars a month.
Budget austerity, plant closures, deregulation and trade liberalisation have contributed to precipitating entire national economies into poverty and stagnation. In turn, the evolution of financial markets has reached a dan30 International Viewpoint #292 gerous cross-roads. The massive trade in derivatives undermines the conduct of monetary policy in both the developing and developed countries. Dangerous cross-roads
The speculative surge of stock values is totally at variance with the movement of the real economy. Stock markets "cannot lead their own life" indefinitely. Business confidence cannot be "sustained by recession". The price to earnings ratio (P/E) on the S&P 500 has risen dangerously to 25.8, well above the P/E level of 22.4 prevailing in the months prior to the October 1987 crash.
In many regards, the stock market frenzy is analogous to the Albanian "ponzi" pyramid schemes. People who have invested their private savings will "get rich" while the market rises and as long as they leave their money in the stock market. As soon as financial markets crumble, life-long savings in stocks, mutual funds, pension and insurance funds are wiped out. The fund managers will not lose out because they are "looking after other people's money" Neither will the speculators: their purchases are financed ("on margin") using their broker's credit as well as other loans from the banking system.
More than forty percent of the American adult population has investments. in the stock market. A financial meltdown would lead to massive loan default sending a cold shiver through the entire banking system; it would also result in bank failures as well as a tumble of pension and retirement savings funds. Financial disarmament
It is essential that G-7 leaders acknowledge an increasingly dangerous situation and adopt without delay a coherent structure of financial regulation (and intergovernmental co-operation). Market forces left to their own devices lead to financial upheaval. Close scrutiny of the role of major speculative instruments (including option trading, short sales, non-trading derivatives, hedge funds, non deliverable currency transactions, programme trading, index futures, etc.) should be undertaken.
A report published by the Bundesbank in 1993 warned that trade in derivatives could potentially "trigger chain reactions and endanger the financial system as a whole". 8 Regulation cannot be limited to the disclosure and reporting of trade in derivatives as recommended by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Concrete measures are required to prohibit the use of specific speculative instruments.
The risks associated with the electronic order routing systems should also be the subject of careful examination. Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board admits that "the efficiency of global financial markets, has the capability of transmitting mistakes at a far faster pace throughout the financial system in ways which were unknown a generation ago...
A form of "financial disarmament" is required directed towards curbing the tide of speculative activity. (The term "financial iT term "financial disarmament" was coined by the Ecumenical Coalition for Social Justice'). In turn, the whole system of offshore banking including the movement of dirty and black money should be the object of tight intergovernmental regulation.
At the June 1997 Denver Summit, G7 leaders in a muddled and confusing statement called for "stronger risk management", "improved transparency" and "strong prudential standards". The de-stabilising role of speculative activity on major bourses was never mentioned. In contrast, the G7 statements by political leaders profusely heralding the benefits of the free market have generated an atmosphere of deceit and economic falsehood. "Business confidence" has been artificially boosted by G7 rhetoric largely to the advantage of the institutional speculator. An alternative economic agenda
There are no easy policy solutions. The global economic system is affected not only by the forces of recession and financial restructuring but also by complex social, political and strategic factors. The evolution of international institutions (including the World Trade Organisation and the Bretton
Woods twins) is also crucial inasmuch as these international bodies play an important role in overseeing and regulating macro-economic and trade policies, often to the detriment of national societies.
The World community should recognise the failure of the dominant neo-liberal system inherited from the Reagan-Thatcher era.
Slashing budgets combined with lay-offs, corporate downsizing and deregulation cannot constitute "the key to economic success"
These measures demobilise human resources and physical capital. They trigger bankruptcies and create mass unemployment. Ultimately, they stifle the growth of consumer spending. After all, "recession can not be a solution to recession"
Regulating the stock market is a necessary but not a sufficient condition. Financial markets will not survive unless there is an expanding "real economy". Though this will not occur unless there is a major revamping of economic institutions and a rethinking of macro-economic reform. *
The writer is Professor of Economics at the University of
Ottawa. He can be contacted at [email protected]. fax: (+1 613) 7892051. Copyright Michel Chossudovsky. Notes 1. Quoted in Michel Beaud, A History of Capitalism, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1983, p. 158 2. Quoted in John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash,
1929, Penguin, London. 3. Let Good Times Roll, The Financial Times, editorial commenting OECD economic forecasts, Jan. 1st, 1995. 4. "Five Years On, the Crash Still Echoes, The Financial Times, October 19, 1992. 5. BIS Review, No. 46, 1997 6. Quoted in David Duchan and Peter Norman, "IMF Urges Close Watch on Weaker Economies", The Financial Times, London, 8 February 1995, p. 1. 7. Official data compiled by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. 8. Martin Khor, " Baring and the Search for a Rogue Culprit, Third World Economics, No. 108, 1-15 March 1995, p. 10. 9. BIS Review, No. 46, 1997. 10. "The Power of Global Finance". Third World Resurgence, No. 56, March 1995, p.21.
Asia Pacific solidarity conference
Issues and Topics i Sydney, Australia • April 10-13, 1988
The struggle for democracy and the end of the Suharto dictatorship •
Self-determination: East Timor, Sri
Lanka, West Papua, Bougainville •
Struggle and New Thinking
Governments, corporations, banks and international financial institutions, all talk of Asia and the as a region of miracle growth, of accelerated development, of economic boom. For millions of other people, the picture is different: political and social struggle for basic human rights, for a sustainable economic and social order.
These conflicts include the massive worker and student struggles in South Korea against new labour laws; a sharpening struggle against the dictatorship and cronyism in Suharto's Indonesia; the continuing uprising of the East Timorese people for self-determination; labour struggles and renewal in the Philippines in the face of the neoliberal Philippines 2000 offensive; the ongoing war on the island of Bougainville; and the conflict in Sri Lanka over the national rights of the Tamil people and authoritarian government. Attacks On Democracy
The strengthening of authoritarian practices as a means of defending austerity and economic restructuring policies have become major concerns throughout the region. Laws to ban trade union organisers from worksites in Australia; outright bans on independent trade unions in Indonesia; restrictions and harassment of NGOs in Malaysia form a pattern of general resistance to democratisation by governments throughout the region. Community Resistance
There are innumerable initiatives to fight this trend. New political movements have emerged in Indonesia; old movements are transforming themselves in the Philippines; an unofficial trade union movement can force the South Korean government to retreat; Malaysian democrats rally to the cause of the East Timorese; the Burmese democrats still refuse to surrender; and anti-neoliberal activists have been elected to the New Zealand parliament.
These are just a few of the many examples of democratisation initiatives in the region.
Indigenous people's struggles and land rights in Australia and New
Zealand • Labour and the struggle against neoliberalism • Neoliberalism and its social impact • APEC and counter-APEC • Asian Tigers and NICs - who's benefiting, who's battling • Women's liberation, development and democratisation
• NGOs, political movements and the universities • Democratisation, development and social class •
Global capital's economic police - the World Bank, IMF and WTO
Country Reports
Australia • Bougainville • Burma •
China • East Timor • India • Japan •
Indonesia • Malaysia • New
The Institute
Zealand • Pakistan • Papua New
Guinea • Philippines • South Korea
During February to May 1997 a range of
• Sri Lanka • Thailand • West Papua individuals involved in political movements, community organisations and universities consulted over the need for greater regional co-ordination and dialogue regarding the current struggles against authoritarianism, violations of the right to self-determination and the social and economic impacts of the world-wide neoliberal offensive.
An interim council was formed to establish the Asia Pacific
Institute for Democratisation and Development. The provisiona aims of the Institute are
• To promote research and disseminate ideas on the issue of how to ensure a socially just and environmentally sustainable development as well as rounded democratisation.
• To facilitate dialogue and cooperation between the academic community, the NGO community and the peoples' movements (parties, trade unions, campaign committees, etc) The interim council comprises academics, political leaders and community activists from Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Australia and New Zealand. It is proposed to expand this initial list to include East Timor, Japan and South Korea.
The Participants
Participants who have confirmed their interest include:
• Dr Syed Husin Ali, scholar, writer and president Malaysian People's Party (PRM); API interim council member. › Renato Constantino Jr., founding convener Asia Pacific Coalition on East
Timor (APCET); president, SANLAKAS, Filipino Federation of Democratic Mass Organisations ir the Philippines; API interim council member. › Dr Francisco Nemenzo, founding president
BISIG, (Union for Socialist Ideas and Action); professor of political science, University of the
Philippines; API interim council member. › Anna Maria Nemenzo, convener Women's Health
Movement, the Philippines; API interim council member. > Jose Ramos-Horta, special representative to Xanana Gusmao; 1996 Nobel Peace Prize co-Laureate. › A senior representative of the External Delegation of FRETILIN > Nico Warouw, International Representative, Peoples
Democratic Party of Indonesia; API interim council member. > Edwin Gozal, Indonesia Centre for Labor Struggle (PPBI), Indonesia. > Dr Sunil Ratnapriya, director, Sri Lanka Institute for
Occupational Health and Safety; national executive member of the New Socialist Party of Sri
Lanka; API interim council member. » Matt Robson, MP, Foreign Affairs Spokesperson for the
New Zealand Alliance; API interim council member. › Max Lane, national coordinator of Action in Solidarity with Indonesia and East Timor; lecturer, Department of Southeast Asian
Studies, School of Asian Studies, University of Sydney; API interim council member. > Dr Helen
Jarvis, Head, School of Information, Library and Archive Studies, University of New South
Wales; researcher on Cambodia killing fields project; API interim council member. » Moses
Havini, representative of the Bougainville Interim government. > John Ondawame, representative of the Free West Papua Movement.
The conference aims to be a unique gathering of activists, researchers and academics. Your support, attendance and participation is what will make this conference a success. For more information contact the Conference Secretariat, P.O
Box 515, Broadway 2007, Australia. Tel: 61-02-96901320; Fax: 61-02-96901381
better-known works. Reading the selections Le Blanc has chosen will provide students with a good base of knowledge, a strong foundation for further learning. Books like What Is to Be Done? and State and Revolution are easily available in various editions. Also, the annotated bibliography included in From Marx to Gramsci will help guide those students and socialists who wish to continue and deepen their studies.
Le Blanc has not made an idiosyncratic or tendentious selection. He accurately highlights the revolutionary continuity that spans the century from The Communist Manifesto to the assassination of Leon Trotsky. Friedrich Engels, in his "Speech at the Graveside of Karl Marx," noted that Marx was before all else a revolutionist. His real mission in life was "to contribute, in one way or another, to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the state institutions which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the modern proletariat."
That statement from Engels sums up the spirit which animates this collection of Marxist literature. Le Blanc's book, then, is a corrective to the prevailing trends in Marxology, of academic Marxism. Advocates of these views utilise Marxism only as a method of study, for analysis of literature, cultural studies, and so forth. However much Marxism may be applied in this way, Le Blanc rightly asserts the primacy of Marxism as an instrument of revolutionary political struggle, as Marx himself would have wished.
In Part One, a 122-page "Introduction to Revolutionary Marxist Politics," Le Blanc identifies and explains the essential concepts of revolutionary Marxist theory. Readers will find a carefully detailed outline of Marxism as a philosophy, theory of history, analysis of capitalism, and a political program leading to a vision of a socialist future. In addition, Le Blanc provides simple capsule summaries of Social Democracy, Stalinism, Maoism, fascism, and concepts like Marxist theores of imperialism, permanent revolution, uneven and combined development, and much more. In effect, Le Blanc's Introduction constitutes a concise Marxist encyclopaedia.
In this work Le Blanc presents no new or startling discoveries, nor does he advance any singular theory. This observation should not suggest a weakness in the content and design of the book, whose purpose is to provide readers with a solid grounding in Marxist theory. Originality in this domain would be capricious. Le Blanc firmly and clearly asserts the revolutionary tradition established long ago by the writers included in this volume. He develops a tightly woven, richly documented argument to show the underlying continuity of theoretical orientation and practical political perspective which unites the founders and builders of revolutionary Marxism. As he is widely read in the literature of and about Marxism, Le
Blanc is able to draw on his extensive knowledge to illustrate the continuity and development of revolutionary Marxist ideas.
Clarity is the primary virtue of Le
Blanc's prose style. Complex ideas are broken down and their basic elements are enumerated, so that the theories can finally be grasped in their fullness. Le Blanc's writing style highlights the logic of the ideas under examination, developing these step by step. Each chapter in his historical overview is heavily and usefully footnoted. These numerous references are well integrated into the text. A reader does not feel that Le Blanc's encyclopaedic knowledge is demonstrated for its own sake; his plentiful references help to show the development, the controversial nature, or the multi-sidedness of the theories under discussion.
To do less would be to oversimplify, but Le Blanc is not guilty of condescending to his readers. Le Blanc's writing strikes and maintains a balance between simplicity and complexity: clarity in exposition that respects and reveals the depth of the theories. Much of the success of Le Blanc's historical overview is due to his ability to write in an informed and clear style.
As a result of these numerous qualities, this anthology is especially recommended for college students or participants in radical study groups. Socialist veterans, also, Will find in this book a useful tool to sharpen their understanding of Marxist fundamentals.
Part One concludes with a timely question in a chapter entitled, "Does Revolutionary Marxism Have a Future?" Le Blanc concedes the failure of revolutionary Marxism in the late 20th century, acknowledging that it has failed to achieve the goals advanced by the theorists on whom we have focused our attention - Marx, Engels, et al.
Do these setbacks confirm the views of those who proclaim that History ends with a triumphant capitalism? Here Le Blanc considers the theoretical objections to Marxism raised by informed, prominent critics like Sidney Hook, Bertram D. Wolfe, and James Burnham. They considered Marxism as elitist and undemocratic, with Stalinism as the inevitable, if unintended, outcome of Marxist doctrine. Eventually they all rejected Marxism outright.
Marxists are able to refute these conclusions, and Le Blanc presents the necessary rebuttal in these words:
"The fact that post-capitalist societies created through popular revolutions have resulted in bureaucratic dictatorships instead of socialist democracies can be explained not by the impossibility of socialism or democracy but by specific historical circumstances which were not inevitable and which can be overcome. Socialism can only be realised on a world scale, and particularly requires that advanced industrial countries be involved in bringing it into being."
Le Blanc also considers the prognosis for
Marxism in light of the fall of the Communist regimes in the Soviet Union and
Eastern Europe. He offers a coolly objective political assessment and does not minimise the problems that loom large for those who advocate the revolutionary Marxist perspective, noting especially that the power of a correct theory generally has much less impact on popular consciousness than the power of a mighty collapse.
Le Blanc does not predict the future, nor reviews does he promise that revolutionary Marxism will be transformed into a relevant plan of action. He does, however, convincingly demonstrate that Marxism is one of the most comprehensive and intellectually powerful prescriptions for social change ever developed, showing that the revolutionary Marxist perspective adds up to an approach to reality and a body of thought which is irreplaceable for those wishing to come to grips with the past and the future.
Marxism cannot be learned solely from books, and a cadre cannot be developed in the library. Experience in political movements and in the class struggle is also necessary to fully understand Marxist concepts and to develop revolutionaries. Yet Marxists do not exalt activism at the expense of theory. There is much to learn and there are many books to read. But if one book can be recommended as the starting point, it is this anthology. * Humanities Press, (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.) 1996, $22.50, 350 pp. Strife: Sex and Politics in Labour Unions. Edited by Barbara Pocock
This is a collection of essays about gender politics in unions in Australia, England, Canada and the US. It casts a searching eye over trade unions and challenges they face with respect to gender politics in organising, unions' industrial objectives, and in their internal culture.
The authors recognise the progress made in unions with respect to women. But they argue that taking that change past the policy stage, and to a new level which challenges union culture more fundamentally, remains a challenge in many places.
The authors are union activists and feminists. The questions they ask arise from the contest between their unionism and their feminism. The book reflects about the habits of unionism and their effects upon gender politics, including factionalism, the power of incumbency, merit versus experience, the definition of the 'good' union official, leadership and the training of leaders, pressures on women unionists - in the press, and in their lives, their public representations, questions of sameness versus difference and sexuality and sexual difference in the union *.
Chapter titles and authors include: Gender, strife and unions. By Barbara Pocock • Gender and union organising in Australia. By Sally McManus • Organising and representing women: Lessons from the United States.
By Margaret Hallock. • Moving on from masculinity?
Australian Unions' industrial agenda. By Claire Thomson and Barbara Pocock • A rising voice: Canadian women get organised. By Julie White • Making democratic unions: From policy to practice. By Jude Elton • Sexual politics in trade unions. By Suzanne Franzway • Women union leaders: Mongrels, martyrs, misfits or models for the future. By Leena Sudano • Difference or deficiency:
Gender, representation and meaning in unions. By Kathie
Muir • Women's self-organising and union democracy in the UK: Proportionality and fair representation in UNI-
SON, By Marian Mann, Sue Ledwith and Fiona Colgan.
Allen & Unwin, June 1997 For further details contact Dr
Barbara Pocock, Labour Studies, University of Adelaide,
Adelaide South Australia, Australia 5005 Fax 61 8 8303
4346 email [email protected]
33
* reviews
Devil's Pact - Inside the
World of the Teamsters
Union, by F.C. Duke Zeller reviewed by Charles Walker
This insider's account of sleaze and corruption at the highest echelon of the US
Teamsters union bureaucracy confirms many of the rank and file's worst suspicions. The insider is Duke Zeller, formerly the communications director (for 14 years) of the
USA'S largest private sector union. The book is chiefly a portrayal of Jackie Presser, the one-time Teamsters president, mob associate, and FBI informant. (Presser's history was more extensively detailed in Mobbed Up, by
James Neff, which has notes and an extensive bibliography, lacking in Zeller's book.)
In 1978, Zeller was employed as an assistant to Presser, with the approval of
Frank Fitzsimmons, the union's president. Later, Presser told Zeller that "Fitzsimmons received a kickback on nearly every freight contract he negotiated. There wasn't anything Fitzsimmons did on any contract where he didn't get money... Fitz would stash the cash away beneath a loose floorboard, under a rug in his home, or in the lining of an old raincoat he had hanging in his closet." In 1981, Fitzsimmons died and was succeeded by Roy Williams, whose "election came "politburo style' by unanimous vote of the general executive board, after a 20-minute meeting in Las Vegas. In 1983, Williams resigned following his jury conviction for conspiring to bribe a Senator. "The union picked up the entire cost of his defense. As a result, in salary, expenses, and benefits as general president in 1982, Williams received $813,247." Later, he turned government informer, gaining his release from prison.
On April 21, 1983, Presser was unanimously chosen by the general executive board to replace Williams, overcoming some initial opposition. "Don't worry," Presser told Zeller, Tm locked in through the boys in the East." Zeller adds, "The boys' were the Mafia." Vice President Jesse Carr totaled his spoils: "I got another plane, two new offices, a new secretary, the Western Conference of Teamsters, and more money. That's not bad for one vote.