DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST PERSPECTIVE

Like every other developed capitalist economy in the 20th century, the Australian economy became dominated by monopoly capital. The rise of monopolies in Australia was promoted by the military demands of World War I (which accelerated growth of the metal and heavy engineering industries) and the establishment in the 1920s of new industries requiring large capital investments (domestic appliances, electrical and rubber goods, chemicals).

During these same decades, the Australian capitalist class began to carve out its own colonial and neo-colonial empire through the acquisition of Papua New Guinea and the economic domination of some of Britain's South Pacific colonies.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Australian imperialism played the role of a junior partner to British imperialism. However, during and after World War II the decline of British power in Asia and its replacement by US imperialism led the Australian ruling class to forge a politico-military partnership with Washington. In the postwar period this partnership was formalised in the ANZUS and other military pacts. While clearly a junior partner in these alliances, the Australian capitalist class retained firm control of the Australian state apparatus, using it to defend its interests both within the domestic economy and on the world market.

Today, the Australian ruling class is a willing partner in the network of imperialist military alliances led by the United States, the dominant imperialist military power. By hosting US intelligence and military communications bases and by providing facilities for US warships and bombers, the Australian imperialist state plays a vital role in the US nuclear terror network.

The Australian imperialist state has enthusiastically participated in reactionary military interventions in Asia (Malaya, Korea, Vietnam). Indeed, the Australian ruling class, perceiving that the victory of the anti-imperialist forces in Vietnam could potentially threaten Australian imperialist interests more seriously than those of the United States, pressed Washington to intervene militarily in Vietnam.

Through its military forces and espionage agencies, the imperialist Australian state collaborates actively with other imperialist powers (particularly the USA, France and New Zealand) in policing the South-East Asia/South Pacific region. At the same time, in the context of heightened inter-imperialist competition accompanying the long-term structural crisis of world capitalism that began in the 1970s, Australian imperialism has sought to assert its own regional hegemony at the expense of French imperialism, and to a lesser extent, US influence.

While foreign capital has a significant stake in the Australian economy, Australian monopoly capital controls the strategically vital sectors of the economy. Like other advanced capitalist economies, the Australian economy is heavily monopolised, with the largest 200 corporations accounting for more than 60% of the turnover of Australian industry. More than half of these monopolies are controlled by Australian capital.

In contrast to the situation in colonial and semi-colonial countries, foreign investment has promoted rather than retarded industrialisation in Australia. The Australian capitalist class has encouraged foreign investment in order to gain access to advanced technology and to finance expansion in areas that Australian capital alone could not support.

Since the 1960s, Australian capital has considerably increased its investments in the Third World, particularly in the neo-colonial countries of South-East Asia, where it is able to reap superprofits by directly exploiting these countries' impoverished labour. Australian capitalism also participates in the imperialist exploitation of Third World countries through the mechanism of unequal exchange on the world market.

In line with the general trend in the period of late monopoly capitalism, a majority of Australian capitalism's foreign investments have flowed to other imperialist countries — the USA and Britain in particular. The largest Australian monopolies have also joined the late monopoly capitalist trend towards internationalisation of their operations, in the process becoming transnational corporations.