[lbo-talk] "A Labor Party Based on the Trade Unions"

[Mike Ballard]

We've got a Labor Party based in trade unions here in Australia.  The trade unions act as businesses here, protecting their fiefdoms and competing with each other for marketshare in the skills vending business. The Labor Party supports the ideology that the employing class and working class have interests in common.  It's a symbiotic relationship.  The leftist tendency is expressed in ways which show that the Liberal Party and their National Party allies just want to take more away from entitlements to the surplus value the workers create.  Of course, the workers don't know and aren't told that they create the wealth of Australia and are constantly told to act in a responsible manner--or be arrested and/or face heavy fines.  Heck, there are even laws which criminalise workers' standing up for themselves in the marketplace of commodities.  All the while the ideology of the free market is being touted.  The fear is that if the workers are allowed to act

 for themselves by say, recognising that 'an injury to one is an injury to all' they'd be so powerful that they'd overwhelm the employing class with demands for the wealth the employing class enjoys control of and ownership over.  So, still active workers are given the tasks of reforming the capitalist system in small ways, very small ways.  And these reforms take time, energy and eventually their burn-out toll.

Mike B)
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