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Title: Australian Imperialism Author: Melbourne Anarchist Communist Group Date: 25 April 2010 Language: en Topics: Australia, Imperialism, World War I Source: Retrieved on 12th October 2021 from http://anarkismo.net/article/16408
Unlike the capitalists, the working class can unite across national
boundaries. We can sweep away the capitalists and their State, with its
armies, police and prisons. We can build libertarian communism, a world
of peace and plenty, a world of both freedom and security. We can and we
must.
World War I had bogged down, and Britain was looking for a way to change
the balance of forces. A landing at the Dardanelles in April 1915,
followed by the taking of Istanbul, was planned to open the supply route
to Russia and possibly knock the Ottoman Empire out of the war. The
campaign was a fiasco. Tens of thousands of young men from both sides
were sacrificed in a minor episode of the clash of two rival imperialist
alliances. Rather than being “the war to end all wars”, WWI was a war
for imperial domination, to be reprised on a larger scale twenty-one
years later.
Ever since the 1870s, Australian troops have been sent to help fight the
imperialist wars of a great and powerful friend. Whether in a World War,
a British colonial war, or one of Uncle Sam’s never-ending series of
wars to defend his empire, the Australian military fights in far-flung
places at the side of the larger power. Almost always, the objective is
to cement the alliance, since the issues at stake are rarely of direct
relevance. The pay-off is that Australian capitalism is granted the
imperialist franchise for the South Pacific (and now East Timor as
well), where it operates without the presence of its patron.
The current war in Afghanistan is a textbook case. The United States is
in a bloody conflict with a band of religious fundamentalist cutthroats,
in a country which has never been a nation and has never had more than a
nominal central authority. It backs a corrupt government, mostly of
competing fundamentalists. In this imperialist war of occupation,
Australian troops commit blundering atrocities like the killing of five
children in Uruzgan province last February. In a land where most people
want the foreigners gone and a peasant by day can be a Taliban by night,
crimes like this are inevitable. But support the United States and to
fortify the Australian alliance with Uncle Sam, the Labor Government
thinks it’s all worth it.
Imperialism is part of modern capitalism. Its wars will last as long as
capitalism does and the Australian military is purpose-built to fight
them. Whether it is a pointless sacrifice on a Turkish beach, or bloody
murder in an Afghan village, it will continue until capitalism itself is
ended — and the only way to end capitalism is through workers’
revolution. Unlike the capitalists, the working class can unite across
national boundaries. We can sweep away the capitalists and their State,
with its armies, police and prisons. We can build libertarian communism,
a world of peace and plenty, a world of both freedom and security. We
can and we must.
HAVE GUNS – WILL TRAVEL