Australian PM promotes AUKUS as platform for a total war economy

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese this week outlined a genuinely chilling vision of basing the country’s full economy on militarism and war.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with US President Joe Biden at Point Loma naval base, March 13, 2023, San Diego. [AP Photo/Evan Vucci]

He was speaking alongside US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the US naval base in San Diego to unveil particulars of the AUKUS method to give Australia with nuclear-powered extended-wide variety submarines, which are made especially for attacking China from its coastal waters.

Albanese boasted that his Labor government was creating “the most substantial single investment in Australia’s defence capability in our history,” predicted to price tag an astronomical $368 billion a lot more than 30 years.

This was dressed up as “deterrence” from “aggression” but it is a pivotal element of the escalating military encirclement of China by the US and its closest partners, accompanied by the provocative “Red Alert” declarations in the corporate media of the necessity to prepare for war with China inside three years.

Albanese equated the AUKUS pact to the establishment of a automobile enterprise in Australia by the US transnational corporations Fundamental Motors and Ford in the wake of Globe War II. “The scale, complexity and economic significance of this investment is akin to the creation of the Australian automotive enterprise in the post-Globe War II period,” he declared.

Albanese therefore likened the expansion of civilian enterprise following the final globe war with the constructing of an economy mostly primarily based on destruction—the production of weaponry for the subsequent globe war, practically undoubtedly a nuclear 1 that would threaten the rather survival of humanity!

This would will need, the prime minister emphasised, a “whole-of-nation function.” That signifies the establishment of a total war economy in which all else, such as social spending and the jobs, wages and conditions of the functioning class, ought to be subordinated to the requirements of a vast military expansion.

Albanese proposed tying the future of young guys and females to the fortunes of the military and weapons makers, feeding off the eventual constructing of eight submarines in Australia. He spoke of “creating jobs and escalating enterprises, appropriate about Australia” and “educating young Australians currently for the possibilities of tomorrow.”

In reality, comparatively handful of jobs are going to be created by the AUKUS deal, and even inside an expanded military. These who are incorporated are going to be educated to make and use weapons capable of killing millions. The vast majority of youth will be condemned to unemployment and poorly paid, insecure casual jobs.

To evaluate the auto enterprise, which when straight or indirectly employed hundreds of thousands of workers, with AUKUS submarine production, touted to develop eight,500 jobs at its peak in the 2040s, is a reactionary fraud on each and every single level.

In the quite initial spot, an escalating US-led war is presently underway, against Russia in Ukraine, and this is a prelude to war against China, with US generals and media outlets warning of war by 2025. Under the AUKUS deal, US nuclear submarines will be presently mostly primarily based in Western Australia by the finish of this year.

Secondly, the post-Globe War II launch of government-subsidised automobile assembly production in Australia, quite initial by Fundamental Motors from 1948 and then by Ford in the 1950s and 1960s, was predicated on the military victory of US imperialism in the globe war against German and Japanese imperialism.

Following two such international conflagrations in the quite initial half of the 20th century, at the price tag of tens of millions of lives, the United States prevailed. Washington established a military and economic hegemony a lot more than most of the globe that paved the way for the international expansion of US industrial and financial giants.

On that basis, and with the assist of the Stalinist bureaucracies in suppressing the revolutionary post-war struggles of the functioning class, international capitalism was restabilised just just after disastrous decades of war and depression. That laid the foundation for a short period of boom, for the duration of which workers forced the ruling class to make precise concessions, such as properly getting, education and welfare applications.

In the course of this period, American organizations set up auto, whitegoods and other industries in other nations, such as Australia. By the late 1980s, nonetheless, globalised production and the corporate exploitation of low-price labour platforms had shattered the post-Globe War II model. In Australia that led to the ruthless closure of the auto assembly enterprise, and lots of other manufacturing facilities, culminating in the shutdown of the final GM Holden assembly plant in Elizabeth, South Australia in 2017.

For decades, specially taking into consideration that the Hawke and Keating Labor governments of 1983 to 1996, Labor and the unions have enforced the dictates of the financial elite and globally-mobile transnational entities that scour the globe, searching for for the least costly production expenditures and the highest price tag of return for ultra-wealthy shareholders.

Albanese, echoing Biden, held out the prospect of “good jobs, with superb wages.” In reality, the conditions of workers, regardless of irrespective of whether employed by the giant weapons makers or enlisted in the armed forces, will be brutal, dictated every single by corporate profit-creating and the “sacrifices” demanded for the “war function,” as occurred in every single globe wars.

Far from an era of proficiently-paid jobs, what is becoming prepared is sweatshop conditions in industries of mass destruction.

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The Socialist Equality Celebration (SEP) is standing in the March 25 New South Wales state election to oppose this full program of militarism and war. We are the only celebration undertaking so. As we clarify in our election statement, collectively with our sister parties about the globe we are constructing an international anti-war movement of the functioning class, directed against the provide of war, the capitalist profit method itself.

We say: “Two globe wars are adequate! Cease the warmongers! Tens of billions for education and healthcare, not for militarism and war!”

Albanese’s propaganda about a future jobs bonanza is a cynical function, functioning hand in glove with the trade union bureaucrats, to overcome widespread opposition amongst workers and young guys and females to the prospect of a catastrophic nuclear war.

A “whole-of-nation” war economy demands political repression. It signifies silencing the anti-war sentiment that has continued taking into consideration that the horrors of the barbaric US-led interventions in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, all mostly primarily based on verified lies.

Against the war-mongering nationalism of Labor and the unions, workers and young guys and females have to have an international viewpoint, aimed at unifying their escalating struggles globally against the corporate oligarchies and governments that demand they fight and kill each and every single other for the benefit of the wealthy elites.

Above all, what is required is a socialist viewpoint, aimed at establishing workers’ governments to totally reorganise society in the interests of social have to have, not private profit. Socialist measures, such as placing the massive corporations beneath public ownership and workers’ manage, are the only way to establish common democratic and social rights—including to decent, proficiently-paid jobs and larger-superb price-cost-free education and healthcare for all.

We urge all our readers to assist our election campaign and, above all, to join the SEP to produce the revolutionary celebration needed to overturn capitalism and halt the plunge into Globe War III.

Speak to the SEP
Phone: (02) 8218 3222
E-mail: sep@sep.org.au
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Authorised by Cheryl Crisp for the Socialist Equality Celebration, Suite 906, 185 Elizabeth Street, Sydney, NSW, 2000.

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