Hope is a scarce commodity in 2023. The threat of military confrontation between the US and China looms large and is fuelling military expansion on a terrifying scale. An aggressive far right is making gains in an alarming number of countries, enjoying both electoral success and gathering support online and on the streets. And the instability in the world economy is condemning ever greater numbers to poverty and economic insecurity, while a minority continue to accrue obscene wealth.
Hundreds of Victorian Socialists volunteers have been staffing early voting polling booths since 14 November, building on the more than 150,000 doors knocked across the north and west of Melbourne during the state election campaign. They are bringing a new style of campaigning to the state election, and have found a constituency of voters fed up with the prevailing pro-corporate, mainstream politics.
Red Flag’s Louise O’Shea spoke to Victorian Socialists Secretary (and former Red Flag editor) Corey Oakley about the socialist campaign in the Victorian state election.
The major parties have finally paid a price for offering nothing in the face of the multiple crises facing humanity. Be it the climate catastrophe, the deadly pandemic which, despite being officially “over”, has killed more than 5,500 people in Australia this year, or an economic crisis that is rapidly eroding the living standards of workers and the poor while the rich set new records for wealth accumulation, neither the Labor nor Liberal parties seem moved by the scale of these threats, nor willing to take the sort of action that is needed.
Women’s rights in the US are at a critical juncture. A leaked draft Supreme Court judgement indicates that five conservative judges support overturning the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision that established a woman’s right to abortion as a constitutional right.
“If they do me in, I ask you to publish my notebook: Marxism on the State (it got left behind in Stockholm). It’s bound in a blue cover ... There are a number of remarks and notes ... I believe it to be important”.