DEMOCRATIC SOCIALIST PERSPECTIVE

The Australian capitalist class fraudulently presents its military forces as a socially neutral force that defends what it calls ``national security.'' In fact, the military forces of the Australian imperialist state do not defend the security of the majority of Australians. They defend the security of the Australian capitalist class — its property and profits — against working people both within Australia and abroad.

The Australian military machine has been used to break strikes at home and to suppress national liberation struggles abroad. Through its alliance with Washington, it plays a supporting role in US imperialism's system of global nuclear terrorism.

The security of Australian working people is not enhanced, but undermined, by the continued existence of this imperialist war machine. Our lives are imperiled by imperialism's nuclear arsenals and by being involved in conventional wars to maintain imperialist domination of the Third World. The war machine wastes resources that could be used to defend our economic and environmental security. War and the threat of war are used by the capitalist rulers to restrict our democratic rights.

In the face of nearly unanimous scientific opinion that a full-scale nuclear war would destroy civilisation, if not the very physical existence of humanity, preventing imperialism from unleashing a nuclear holocaust is a task of the highest priority.

The party supports the building of a broad, non-exclusionary movement for nuclear disarmament in Australia. The party seeks to encourage direct mass actions focusing on concrete demands directed against the role of the Australian government in the US-led imperialist nuclear war machine. Such demands include:

• Dissolution of the US-Australia alliance.
• Immediate closure of all US military and spy bases on Australian soil.
• Denial of access to Australian ports and airfields for US warships and warplanes.
• An immediate end to the mining and export of uranium.

The struggle for nuclear disarmament is crucial not only to humanity's survival but also to the improvement of the living conditions of working people. Nuclear and conventional arms production, while immensely profitable to monopoly capitalism, are socially useless and waste enormous material and human resources. The billions of dollars consumed by Australian imperialism's war budget should be reallocated to help meet the social needs of working people. The first step in that direction should be a 100% tax on all profits from armaments production. War industry plants should be nationalised and placed under the control of workers' committees charged with retooling them for production of socially useful goods.

In order to fight its wars, Australian imperialism has repeatedly sought to introduce conscription. In the face of the capitalist economic crisis, sections of the ruling class have raised the idea of compulsory military or quasi-military service for the unemployed. The party opposes any and every attempt to draft the unemployed or anyone else into the imperialist army.

In the context of large-scale and permanent unemployment, particularly among young people, the ruling class seeks to boost supposedly voluntary recruitment to its military forces by presenting them as a means to acquire technical training. At the same time, it denies decent pay and full civil liberties to the ranks of the military forces, and secure and adequate accommodation to their families. The party demands a massive increase in the availability of civilian technical training programs; provision of decent housing and adequate pay for rank-and-file military personnel and permanency of residence; and recognition of their right to exercise every democratic freedom enjoyed by other Australians.

War and preparations for war threaten the lives and welfare of the overwhelming majority. Decisions related to war must be taken out of the hands of the capitalists, their political representatives, and general staffs. Working people and rank-and-file soldiers have a right to know all the real aims and commitments of the government's military and foreign policy. All military and diplomatic treaties and agreements should be made accessible to the public. The people should have the right to vote directly on the question of war.

While the party seeks peaceful social change, it also recognises that privileged classes usually do not hesitate to resort to violence to preserve their unjust rule. While society remains divided into antagonistic classes, there will be armed forces. In their own defence, the oppressed classes must have armed forces under their control.

Nor is the party indifferent to the question of defending Australia's national sovereignty. For the capitalist rulers, however, national defence does not mean defence of the nation, that is, of the interests of the majority of the population. On the contrary, for the imperialists, national defence means defence of their property and profits at home and abroad. The Australian military forces are recruited, trained and structured in a manner that guarantees they will defend these predatory interests.

A genuine policy of national defence is only possible when the armed forces are no longer a weapon for the defence of capitalist exploitation, that is, when the working class has state power and the armed forces are recruited, trained and structured so that they defend its interests. As a first step on that road the party demands the right of workers' organisations to establish voluntary military training associations, with free election of instructors paid by the capitalist state.

The struggle against the imperialist war machine cannot be separated from the struggle against imperialism in general. The Australian imperialist war machine is only an instrument for the defence of the interests of the imperialist capitalist class, particularly the defence of its ability to exploit the workers and peasants of Asia and the Pacific. The party opposes Australian military intervention abroad and all forms of Australian military aid to pro-imperialist Third World regimes, in particular the training of their military personnel and police.

The ruling class recognises that Australian capitalism is an integral part of the world capitalist system, and is affected by the outcome of struggles between the exploiters and the exploited internationally. It therefore extends moral and material solidarity to the forces of imperialist reaction throughout the world. Working people in Australia need to be just as class conscious about their international interests and extend solidarity to struggles against exploitation and oppression in other countries.

The party regards the promotion of international solidarity as one of its major tasks. It does this by helping to educate Australian working people about the importance and development of progressive struggles in other countries and by building campaigns and solidarity committees that can provide political and material aid to those struggles. In carrying out its international solidarity work the party gives priority to struggles that are in the frontline of the fight against the imperialist system in general, and to those directly threatened by the Australian imperialist state.

Racism, xenophobia, and nationalism are powerful ideological tools of imperialist foreign policy, supplying implicit justification for imperialist war preparations and military intervention in the Third World. The fight against nationalism and racism at home is thus closely linked with the fight against imperialist aggression abroad.