Bubble trouble: Australia’s free market housing failure
To understand the scale of the current property boom, consider that the number of fixed cranes atop dedicated residential projects in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane is greater than the combined total of New York, Boston, Washington (DC), Chicago, Toronto, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco,...CONTINUE READING
The ALP, pioneer of neoliberalism
Former treasurer Wayne Swan denies that the Hawke and Keating governments of 1983-96 and the Rudd and Gillard governments of 2007-13 were responsible for the introduction and maintenance of neoliberal policies in Australia. While accepting, indeed boasting of, Hawke and Keating’s “economic...CONTINUE READING
How to get mental toughness like the filthy rich
Steve Siebold talks to rich people. A lot. A founder of the US-based Siebold Success Network and publisher of the Mental Toughness blog, Steve teaches people about “the secret they call Tiger Mentality”. His 2010 book, How Rich People Think , based on hundreds of interviews with millionair...CONTINUE READING
Women, class and the Bolsheviks
Most accounts of the Russian Revolution of 1917 rightly emphasise the role of women workers in Petrograd on International Women’s Day (IWD), when their strikes sparked the mass movement that overthrew the tsar. But then they disappear regarding the rest of the year – except for the women’s...CONTINUE READING
A new world disorder
Things used to be different. For more than 70 years, the generally accepted position within the United States ruling class was that the country would stand at the apex of a Western order governed by treaties and institutions that advance the general interest of all states involved, the US...CONTINUE READING
How workers won penalty rates
The Turnbull government’s backing of the Fair Work Commission’s decision to slash penalty rates for Sunday and public holiday work is the latest round in a long battle over a key working condition. The struggle for decent penalty rates in Australia goes back at least as far as the campaign...CONTINUE READING
Paul Robeson’s extraordinary life
On 12 June 1956, Paul Robeson faced the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) as part of an investigation into the use of passports “in the furtherance of the objectives of the Communist conspiracy”. Things did not go quite as the committee intended. In round after round of “verbal...CONTINUE READING
Was Lenin a despot or a democrat?
The cliché of the authoritarian Lenin has become so common that the vast majority of writers repeat the mantra without feeling compelled to cite any evidence at all. Recycling a few hacked up, decontextualised quotes suffices. The mirror image of this caricature is the Stalinist conception...CONTINUE READING
Russia 1917 A radical workers’ democracy comes to life
The outbreak of revolution throughout Russia in February 1917 brought millions of people who previously had little say over politics right to the centre of political life. Historian Rex Wade describes how masses of people “burst forth with a dazzling display of self-assertiveness, public m...CONTINUE READING