An old bootlicker.party article.
Originally published 31 March 2019.
To my peers,
And everyone else who
feels demoralised or confused by the NSW state election:
Like
you, I am tired, to the point of exhaustion. It has been so long since
we have had good news. The march of Communism in Australia has
seemingly ended and gone into full retreat. Just yesterday, I was
accused of "stealing" boxes from Bunnings. You know the refuse boxes
near the checkouts at Bunnings? Apparently you can take too many of
them and be refused service. And by "too many" I mean one too
many.
“All the cops”.
I was listening to radio 2SER 107.3FM on
Thursday, and they had an editorial report on how the NSW Police are
basically guns for hire in our city. The police will now guard
whatever event you want for cold hard cash. Police approval of music
festivals and other similar events is condition on how much money they
charge you for guarding your event.
The election result here in
NSW has emboldened the Right and the Police, and virtually every
reactionary layer of society, merely within a week. I feel like people
are treating me differently all of a sudden. People seem meaner and
more selfish, and have adopted a "fuck you, I've got mine"
mentality.
My general intuition and social sensitivity gives me the impression that reactionary layers of society feel more comfortable treating me and people like me like shit.
<“Ah, you fox! The gerrymander!”
I felt very demoralised and depressed by the NSW state election result. Until I found out that the popular vote of the election would have handed the ALP and the Greens a coalition government if our state employed a proportional representation electoral system.
I am much more aware of the
gerrymandering in Victoria because I was much more intimately involved
in the Victorian Socialists election campaign.
In Stephen
Jolleys electorate, the immoral and cynical preference trading of
right wing micro-parties ensured that even though Jolley came in with
the fourth highest vote, he would not be guaranteed a seat in the
Victorian Legislative Council.
So, I am happy to completely
write off Australia as not even having the appearance of a
democracy. For instance, the amount of cash you now have to hand over
to the electoral commission has now risen to astronomical heights. You
would now need hundreds of thousands of dollars to field candidates in
every seat in a state, let alone get "above the line" on the now
misleadingly confusing senate ballot paper.
The return of the material.
So despite all these terrible things, I feel heartened that the reality of the situation in Australia is very simple. I feel silly saying this, but I really believe it — Australia is not just an economic dictatorship, but a political one as well.
The biggest corporations allowed to trade in our state pay no tax. Enormous handouts of taxpayer money are just dished out without question, and line the pockets of the rich. Wages are now as low as they could possibly go, without being below the means of subsistence. The rich have never had it so good in Australia. I would go so far to say that we are not even "capitalist" anymore, by any Marxist definition of the concept.
We are more likely a highly
technologically advanced feudal nation, where we are serfs paying off
enormous arbitrary tithes to power companies, mortgagors, landlords,
and retail companies.
The reality of the political landscape of
Australia is not complex at all. Our parliament is the simplest and
most transparently corrupt body of hollow people I could ever
fear. Politicians in our country do and say what they are paid to do
and say. If the money stops flowing, the representation in political
policy ceases. I bet you all my material possessions that you can pay
a politician to do literally anything.
I suppose this is no
news to some. I suppose the argument I am trying to put forward is
that the solution to combating the incredible degeneracy of the
Australian political landscape is much simpler than it is usually made
out to
be.
“…a way out of this mess…”
The outlines of a way out of this mess were
spelled out to me by the wonderful pane of speakers I had the
privilege of hearing that were sponsored by the Australian Venezuela
Solidarity Network. As you know, Venezuela is a society that was
making incredible strides towards establishing socialism, until the
country, for various reasons, entered crisis. Venezuela is suffering
from a terrible colonial history of being a nation forced to be a
one-export state. Its currency is most likely subject to sabotage by
all the main imperialist centres of capitalist finance. As a result,
Venezuelas economy has ground to a halt, and daily life has become
very difficult for its population to live through, by conventional
means.
But despite the lies and the wanton utter bullshit that
pours out of the mass media about Venezuela, something miraculous is
happening. The people are getting by. The people are making do. They
may be more emiserated now than they were at the height of the success
of the progress of socialism in their country, but the Venezuelan
masses have started to self organise. They have begun to tackle the
issue of the scarcity of necessities themselves. They provide
employment and material compensation where there is none, and where it
is needed.
***
This presents the solution to the crisis
of Communism in Australia. We need to provide alternative structures
to capitalism right now. We need to be
creating the material power we need to fight
capitalism within capitalism. We are
constantly faced with the problem of not having enough resources and
material power to promote ourselves and force our way into the
political arena.
How else do you think the AYCC was able to
organise the enormous masses of students for the incredible climate
action rallies we have all been to? Money and material
resources. Forgive me if this sounds cynical or conspiratorial, but
this is my experience with the AYCC, and having been a member in the
late
2000s.
“hyaku”
“sen”
“man”
Marx
and Engels talk about the organic nature of humans being labour, or
work. Something has to change about the way we do activism because we
are not treating activism for creating Communism as work, we are
treating it as volunteering. If we could set
people to work, if we could somehow cease being parasitic on peoples
daily commitments, we could smash the ALP and the Liberal party and
the Greens.
The great successes of the revolutions in China and
Vietnam were because the political and military factors of society
were able to be separated from the way social change was able to be
done. I submit the economic factor of social change is able to be
separated out in Australias case.
Somehow, and I dont know
how, we need to be able to command the material
interests of society, or at least enough for a
revolutionary party of anywhere from 5 000 to 10 000 members — the
former limit being the relative size of the DSA, if it were
proportionate to the size of the Australian population.
I hope
this letter finds you well,
Blair
Vidakovich.
~
1 200 words.