Speakers included Mary-Alice Waters, the author of the book's preface and a member of the National Committee of the Socialist Workers Party in the United States, and Olympia Newton, a member of the National Executive Committee of the Young Socialists in the United States. Newton is also the production organizer in the Pathfinder printshop where the new book and all of Pathfinder's titles are printed. They were joined on the platform by Ron Poulsen, a leader of the Communist League and a member of the Maritime Union of Australia.

The meeting was co-chaired by Young Socialists member Alasdair MacDonald and Linda Harris, a member of the Communist League and the Australasian Meat Industry Employees' Union.

In his talk, Poulsen pointed to several examples of workers thinking about revolutionary politics. One was the reaction of a steelworker on a picket line against BHP in nearby Wollongong in early June after seeing Cuba and the Coming American Revolution. The worker, a longtime trade union activist here who was previously a member of Solidarity in his native Poland, exclaimed, "We need a revolution everywhere!" Poulsen said a workmate at Port Botany with whom he recently discussed the book told him he felt that a socialist revolution was both necessary and possible in poor, less-developed countries like Cuba but doubted whether it was possible in wealthy countries such as the United States and Australia.

Describing the Australian imperialist ruling class as the "plunderers of the Pacific," Poulsen explained what imperialism is and the concrete ways in which fellow workers, farmers, and toilers in Papua New Guinea (PNG), Fiji, East Timor, and elsewhere are superexploited and oppressed, especially by finance capitalists based in Australia and their government in Canberra.

He went on to describe the resistance by working people that is percolating throughout the region, from PNG to Australia. Here, just-released government figures show a record decline in "lost days" of production due to strikes. "But there are actually many more smaller strikes, mostly short, sharp battles by workers--and the stakes are higher today," he noted.

To take advantage of the expanding opportunities for communist workers, members of the league and Young Socialists have decided to rapidly move to new premises in the working-class district of Campsie, Poulsen reported. "This is likely to be the final Militant Labor Forum here," he said. With the move to Campsie, organizers of the forums "intend to move back to a regular weekly meeting" too, he added.  
 
'Turning point in working-class politics'
Newton described the experiences revolutionists in the United States are having that "convince us of what Cuba and the Coming American Revolution says: We're at a turning point in working-class politics in the imperialist countries."

A key feature of the "increasing working-class resistance around the world," Newton explained, is that a "working-class vanguard in formation" is being tempered. "Whatever the outcome of their particular struggle, these workers come out of the struggle itself more confident, searching for other militants to link up with, and wanting to continue fighting," she said.

Waters noted in her talk the multinational composition of the audience, which included people originally from Fiji, Indonesia, Tokelau, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, as well people born in Australia.

The examples of growing resistance, Waters said, show that "we're talking about what has already happened, not simply what is coming" in politics in the United States and Australia, and in oppressed countries like Indonesia and Papua New Guinea.

Working people whom communist workers are meeting in struggle around the world, Waters said, are asking the big questions: What do you replace these brutal capitalist governments with? Is it possible to have a society where human solidarity is something you can rely on? How would you ever get to something like that?

Unless communists are capable of giving clear and scientific answers to these questions, Waters said, and point to and educate about the revolutionary struggles around the world that can lead to a different class foundation of society, "we will never have the chance to begin to practice real politics--which, as Lenin always explained, begins with the actions of millions," Waters said. "That's why the Cuban Revolution is so crucial," she said, because it is a living revolution where working people demonstrate their capacity to build a new society every day. Waters described the strengthening of the Cuban Revolution over the last decade and new challenges workers and farmers in Cuba are taking on today.

The SWP leader pointed to two fundamental issues which, if not addressed by thinking workers in the course of struggles, will block the possibilities to bring together layers of working people around the world who must join as allies in common revolutionary struggle if there is to be a socialist future. First, communist parties must lead the working class toward bridging the gap between the city and the countryside in order to overcome the divisions between the urban and rural producers.

Second, communist parties need to promote a fighting program that genuinely opens the door to the worldwide struggle for socialism. That means starting with the interests of the world working class on every question without a whiff of the national chauvinism that so marks the loosely defined "anti-globalization" forces in the imperialist countries.

A lively discussion period followed the presentations, with questions, such as did Cuba and the Soviet Union represent fundamentally different kinds of communism? Is there a political program that leads in the direction discussed and where does the Cuban Revolution fit into that program? Is there resistance in Eastern Europe to the expansion of NATO? Given the growth in police and the prison system in the United States, how will the wealthy ruling class react to the coming American revolution?

Waters said the U.S. ruling class "is the most brutal that has ever existed and the revolutionary struggle in the United States will not be a peaceful affair. Working people will have to organize to defend themselves" from that ruling-class violence.

A participant who is originally from Indonesia asked what was being done in the United States to win solidarity for Third World peoples facing the devastating effects of the economic crisis, pointing, for example, to Exxon and Mobil's exploitation of the natural resources of Aceh, an area that is currently part of Indonesia but where an independence struggle is under way.

Waters commented on the importance of making the struggles of Indonesian working people known in the United States where information about them isn't widespread. But this isn't solely a matter of solidarity, she noted, because workers in the imperialist countries can only make a socialist revolution if they act on the basis that fellow workers in other countries are their allies in a common struggle against a common enemy.

Linda Harris ended the program with a fund appeal to cover travel costs to the World Festival of Youth and Students in Algiers, August 8-16. She will be part of a delegation from Australia joining others from around the Pacific.

Doug Cooper is a member of the Maritime Union of Australia.
 
 
Related article:
Communists hold convention in New Zealand  
 
 
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