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http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/mi/2/2.htm
Marxist Interventions is an on-line Australian journal. The articles in this
issue focus on major controversies within and beyond the Australian left.
Few issues have challenged the Australian left as much as the Howard
Government's 1999 military intervention in East Timor. Contrary to the
common view that the intervention was a humanitarian action forced on a
reluctant government by popular pressure, Sam Pietsch analyses it as an
imperialist use of military power to secure longstanding strategic interests
of the Australian state. The intervention also enabled the Howard Government
to increase military spending and act more aggressively to assert imperial
power in the Southwest Pacific.
Marxist strategies for change often centre on the potential of organised
labour struggles. Yet labour is divided in many ways, including between
leaders and the rank and file. The tradition to which Marxist Interventions
belongs has long argued that the union rank and file has different interests
to those of the labour bureaucracy. Robert Bollard's essay on the Great
Strike of 1917 is a defence of our position, in response to critics such as
conservative historian Jonathan Zeitlin.
There is now an exhaustive literature about the global financial crisis.
Australia's peculiar position remains a matter for somewhat puzzled debate.
Ben Hillier looks closely at the effects of the crisis on the Australian
economy. He considers how the relative stability of Chinese demand, the
buoyancy of the housing market and the circumstances of the financial sector
have so far insulated Australia from the carnage witnessed in Europe, Japan
and the US. Since the article was completed, upheavals in Greece have showed
how fragile the situation is.
In March and April 2010, a major debate broke out in the Australian media
over Anzac Day, featuring such issues as militarism, race and gender. Class
differences in society have received relatively little attention. Kyla
Cassells presents a comparative study of Anzac Day and Labor Day in Victoria
between the World Wars, which explores how these days were used by Trades
Hall, the Australian Labor Party, and the RSL to perpetuate political
agendas. She also considers the contestation of these agendas by such groups
as the Communist Party, women, and the unemployed.
During 2008 and 2009, Muslims at RMIT University in Melbourne ran a
successful and important campaign for the return of dedicated Muslim Prayer
Rooms on campus. Because the campaign's central demand was for a religious
space, much of the left dismissed the movement outright or even supported
University management. This raises serious questions concerning the
Australia left's clarity about racism. Katie Wood and Liam Ward consider the
campaign and its lessons.
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