The Australian ruling class, having endured the roller-coaster ride of the Trump administration, is now coming to terms with Biden and Co. and the smouldering pile of debris of post-Trump COVID-19 U.S.A.
Commentators have described the USA as unraveling. Former Foreign Minister Bob Carr has described it as a failed state. It is the country with biggest economy and the most powerful military but there are deep structural faults across its society. Some ascribe the cause to Trump and his chaotic lassiez-faire response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In the 1960’s working people in the USA enjoyed one of the highest standards of living with plenty of permanent employment, health insurance and comparatively high wages and salaries. Science and technology boomed with the demands of space exploration and the needs of the military in the various wars the US was conducting. Taxes on the rich were relatively high and the differential in pay schemes between bosses and workers was more modest than today. And there were boom profits for the big corporations.
African Americans were asserting themselves with the tremendous upsurge in struggle that ensued, led by figures of Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party. With this all the forces of the state – FBI, police, courts and jails were mobilised to crush this upsurge. Thousands were killed tens of thousands were beaten and jailed. The most radical still languish in U.S. jails to this day. These days mass organisations of African Americans are developing across the country.
The employment opportunities of the USA provided a magnet for the people of Latin America who poured in to fill many unwanted jobs in agriculture, hospitality, and domestic service. This wave turned into a tsunami as the drug cartels who fed the massive U.S. appetite for heroin, cocaine and amphetamines came to dominate society and government in Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and Colombia. Now Spanish speakers are starting to make sizable minorities in the USA and are on the way to becoming the majority. This makes parts of the USA ruling class worry as former parts of Mexico, like California, Arizona and Texas become more Hispanic.
Using the catch-phrase “globalisation”, the ruling classes of the USA started their domestic de-industrialization and the subsequent massive unemployment shocks when they started relocating their vast plants first to Mexico and Brazil where wages were lower and vastly greater profits could be realised. Later it was Thailand and then, when China started joint industries to facilitate more growth, it all took off. Most of the iconic industries of the USA shut down and relocated in China. Cities like Detroit and Flint that were home to the car industry became shells filled with the desperate unemployed and homeless.
Trump’s election in 2016 was predicated on jobs, bringing industries back home, revenge against China and whipping up familiar tactics – racist attacks against African Americans, Mexicans and Hispanics. The hopes of the U.S. ruling class were riding on Trump to deliver new life in the demented U.S. body politic.
Only a minority of people vote. Voter suppression is systematic for workers, and African Americans and the real choice is like coca-cola or pepsi cola. Regardless of who you vote for you still get rule from Wall St.
A fresh face and a new business-like ruthlessness as Trump’s administration sacked advisors and cabinet members relentlessly. There was a new aggressive stamp in U.S. foreign policy – war on climate and China. Then the COVID -19 pandemic revealed the inherent weakness of the lassiez-faire health system in the USA, extremely limited general health insurance (limited to over 65-year-olds), no system of public hospitals or general practice doctors. The world’s wealthiest country had the worst outcome 25 million cases and 500,000 deaths.
There has been “decoupling” but no repatriation of industry back to the USA. Space exploration is a plaything of the digital trillionaires. Boeing Aircraft Corporation is in serious trouble following three crashes of its latest 737 Maxi. The U.S. Federal Reserve threw trillions at the economy. It was free money for investment and development but most of the money percolated back up to the stock market where despite a collapsed economy, stocks reached new highs and stock brokers made huge bonuses. There was little investment or development. Instead as money flew to the money markets, the richer got a whole lot richer while the poor died and were buried in mass graves across the Land of the Free.
Since their election the LNP Abbott, Turdbull and Morrison governments have been fearless followers of the U.S.A. But Morrison has taken the role of deputy sheriff in the Pacific region to new depths of subservience.
Having absorbed the ideas of ex-CIA chief and former Trump Secretary of State Pompeo, the Morrison government has precipitated the collapse of trade with our largest trading partner. Trade Minister Birmingham cries, “They are not answering my phone calls!”
The policy script for the LNP, provided by the big foreign mining and energy corporations, is more mining at any cost, deny climate change and deregulate.
These companies are big donors and have an army of lobbyists with a phalanx of former politicians on the payroll. (See Michael West Media’s extensive coverage below )
https://www.michaelwest.com.au/lobbyland-ten-lobbyists-for-every-mp-has-democracy-on-life-su
Think-tanks like the Institute for Public Affairs and media monopolies like News Corp beat the drum for mining, deregulation and climate change denial.
Since they have come into government, the LNP have overseen the demise of the car industry, the third world standard NBN, the decimation of the university sector and the research sector.
Despite developments and proposals for industrialisation outlined by leading figures Chief Scientist Alan Finkel and Ross Garnaut – green hydrogen, green steel and rare earth metal fabrication and massive solar farms to power new manufacturing industry.
The LNP stays on message and does nothing to deviate from the one-dimensional path of mining. The price of Australian coal is $86/ tonne and iron ore at $215 (January 2021) . A Toyota Corolla at 1.4 tonnes cost about $29k. It takes 337 tonnes of coal or 135 tones of iron ore to buy a 2020 Corolla.
In 2020 the Harvard University published a list of Atlas of Economic Complexity * of countries. It is a measure of industrial and economic complexity. Australia rated 86th between Uganda at 85 and Burkina Faso at 87.
Here we languish, as the Australian ruling class hangs-on to the coat tails of the newest U.S. administration. Their economic and political interests are tied up with the USA and before that Britain. The ruling class is numerically weak and depends on the economic, political and military backing of foreign imperialist forces.
From colonial times until the 1960’s it was British capital and decisions that drove government policy in Australia. We were a source of agricultural supplies and minerals for them and they supplied manufactured goods. Nobody else got a look in and local Australian were denied finance and support under the Empire preference scheme. The British became the largest landholders – a place they still hold today.
Deference to British interests was rampant. Australia was built its first computer the CSIRAC in 1949 and was the fourth nation to do so after the USA, UK and the USSR. Contemplating developing a computer industry, the Australian government asked a British expert if it was viable. His reply Australia should stick to wheat and wool and leave technology to the British.
The British carried out nuclear tests here in Australia after Canada and the USA had rejected British requests. The Australian PM Menzies agreed to tests without consulting his cabinet. So from 1951-63 under the watchful eye of Sir Ernest Titerton, a Britsh member and later chairman of the Atomic Weapons Tests Safety Committee that oversaw the safety of Australian people, property and countryside. Many people were troubled by his persistent assurances that nuclear energy was safe, that nuclear weapons were desirable and that the fission yield from the tests was zero.
The result was catastrophic, the Tjarutja and Yulparitja people were pushed off their lands and many died from the radio-activity later. A cleanup paid for by the Australian taxpayer cost over $100 million but these lands have a lasting legacy of unihabitability due to toxic radioactive bomb debris on these and other First Nations peoples lands.
At no time did the ruling class think what was best for the Australian people, rather it was what was best for British imperialism. Their industry and their military science and their economic greed.
In time, British influence in Australia was overtaken by a more virile newcomer. Following the disastrous British defeat and surrender of Singapore to the Japanese in World War II, Australian PM John Curtain announced the turning to America. This marks the shift of the Australian ruling class’ allegiance to the U.S.A. And it has been down hill since then. U.S. companies flooded in, followed by military treaties and bases. Australian politicians would race off to Washington to kiss the President’s ring. Ever enthusiastic, Australian governments would offer our young ones for sacrifice in the constant sequence of wars instigated by the U.S.- Korea,Vietnam and later Iraq and Afghanistan.
Both political parties have shown bi-partisan support for the U.S. since 1942. They reflect the weakness and cowardice of Australia’s ruling class The crumbs of foreign imperialists is all they crave. The needs and aspirations of the Australian people count for naught. Communists, anti-imperialists and all patriotic Australians will never be satisfied with the mere crumbs of subservience. They will never be satisfied with the atrophied existence offered by imperialism.
| * The Economic Complexity Index (ECI) is a holistic measure of the productive capabilities of large economic systems, usually cities, regions, or countries. In particular, the ECI looks to explain the knowledge accumulated in a population and that is expressed in the economic activities present in a city, country, or region. To achieve this goal, the ECI defines the knowledge available in a location, as the average knowledge of the activities present in it, and the knowledge of an activity as the average knowledge of the places where that economic activity is conducted. |
