Australasia: From Settler Colonies to Socialist Republics?
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Introduction
This book is a collection of essays written during the 1980's and 1990's. The main theme of this work is the ongoing Marxist critique of the Australasian Revolution. Conceived as an unfinished revolution ? the Permanent Revolution -which begins with the Bourgeois-Democratic Revolution and ends with the Socialist Revolution, the Australasian Revolution is part of the unfinished development of global capitalist modernity.
Originating as a bourgeois revolution from above, I outline the history of Australasia from settler colonisation to semi-colonial capitalism blocked by structural crisis. I argue that the attempts to overcome the crisis by imposing a new post-colonial global settlement must founder on the deepening contradiction between unmet Australasian needs and imperialist profits. This contradiction will drive forward the completion of the unfinished bourgeois revolution as a socialist revolution.
My perspective is of the present, looking backwards to settlement and forwards to socialism. I argue that today's crisis is the product of that unfinished revolution and it opens up opportunities for completing that revolution. It marks the historic limits of an exclusive white history of imperialist settlement which allowed the colonies to benefit as protectorates of Britain under the delegated authority of the local bourgeoisie who 'self-governed' the 'dominions' for British finance capital in return for a share in the imperialist booty.
To understand the crisis today we must therefore apply a Marxist analysis to the origins of white settlement and trace the development of the Australasian semi-colonies within the wider global economy dominated by Britain.
Such dependent development was subordinated to the imperialist powers, yet the colonial outposts were allowed to retain a portion of the surplus produced both internally and in the Pacific. Hence the Australasian semi-colonies were hybrid states which combined both a sub-imperialist (the lumpen imperialist exploitation of the Pacific) role and dependent role (paying the national debt to British rentiers).
The result was Australasia as a hybrid semi-colonial or Dominion Capitalist State. As rulers of rich privileged semi-colonies the national bourgeoisie could coopt the relatively privileged European petty bourgeois and working class on the basis of a white racist Australasian exclusivism towards the indigenous peoples and non-European aliens.
But such a national compromise was at the expense of a partial suspension of the law of value, which ultimately became a barrier to further accumulation. Capital had to complete the bourgeois-democratic revolution to override this barrier by means of crisis and restructuring. The national cultural identities founded on a material settlement would necessarily be exploded from below.
The typical bourgeois interpretation of this settlement is to celebrate the myth of Australian and New Zealand 'exeptionalism' ?where due to one or other cause or agency the colonies 'down- under' escape the domination of the motherland. This is the familiar liberal story about the 'lucky' countries that escaped the worst features of European capitalism and eventually formed, or can yet form, post-colonial welfare states, or post-modern civil society, in Godzone.
Its themes are the 'open frontier' of 'new lands' and a 'progressive state' that was able to achieve independence and legislate for an equality of race, gender and class ?the 'historic compromise'. Some post-colonialist 'loose ends' to this compromise are being renegotiated and 're-settled' as part of a de-colonising millennial vision.
But this historic compromise could not last since it was founded on a limited term contract to share the surplus generated by the local market to meet foreign creditors. As Dominion Capitalism outgrew its protected markets it could not longer keep its end of the bargain. It had to break out of the cocoon and release the repressed law of value. The end of the boom years brought with it a common realisation that Australasia had not escaped the laws of the global capitalist economy.
From this standpoint, the neo-liberal 'great experiment' is not a 'counter-revolution' but a revolution. It is a continuation of the unfinished revolution interrupted by 'dominion' capitalism. It is a desperate and necessary attempt by capital to complete its revolution and break out of the barrier formed by the national market.
In this process the material basis of the historic compromise which had partially suppressed competition was exploded. Instead of a fictional white national community which 'shared the rent', at the expense of the rest, the harshly unequal international dimensions of class, gender and racial divisions broke through the crust of the historic compromise.
Not surprisingly, those whose hopes depended on realising the exceptionalist myths, raised them vigorously during the Bicentenary celebrations in Australia in 1988. Aboriginals and their allies challenged the 'whitewash' of Australian history and extracted weak promises to make Australia 'multicultural'.
In New Zealand, the end of the boom in the two decades leading up to the "Sesqui" (sesquicentenary) in 1990 exposed the running sore of the Treaty and other settler founding myths in a new light. But against the earlier charge that the "Treaty is a Fraud" the boycott of the Treaty celebrations in 1990 was a demand to "honour" the treaty - that is, to make real the fictional (bi) national identity as tangible assets.
Thus the liberals fought to realise their illusions by reviving the myth of the (labo(u)rist) welfare states, and to negotiate a post-colonial settlement in which non-whites gained full rights and recompense for colonial wrongs. Yet such bourgeois democratic claims swam against the current of the deregulated and open economies and were opposed vigorously by the tides of global capital.
The 'Dominion capitalist' crisis mobilised a New Right attack on protectionism. The old liberal and labo(u)rist myths of Australasian 'exceptionalism' started to unravel and the complacent beliefs about equality and identity came under increasing challenge. The New Right also exploited the populist centre enraged at the collapse of the historic compromise mobilised to defend the racist, nationalist, exclusivist culture of exceptionalism.
Since no new Australasian settlement can deliver equality and democratic rights for workers and the oppressed, the neo-liberals have attempted to mask the glaring gap between Australasia's semi-colonial lumpen status and global riches by staging culturals stunts. Their new bi/multicultural settlements constituting the post-modern republic are promoted in celebrations and exhibitions of cultural diversity which stand in for the market as the millennial Messiah.
The pace and savagery of the neo-liberal revolution has left the social democratic and radical opposition for dead. Any attempt to debate change has been constantly overtaken by the speed of events so that no thorough assessment of the real causes of these events has yet been made. The attempts at stocktakes on the "The Great Experiment" fall roughly into four standpoints: neo-liberal apologetics, social democratic utopias, neo-marxist critiques and of classic marxist analyses.
The Australasian Revolution began with the colonial conquest of pre-capitalist peoples of Australasia, and remained incomplete for more than a century. It can be completed only as a socialist revolution in which these lands become Australasian socialist republics in a wider federation of socialist republics of the whole of Asia and the Pacific.
My task in this book is to put the case for the Marxist standpoint against the neo-liberal, liberal and radical competitors. I shall try to do this by putting forward their best arguments to shoot down. The Chapters are organised so that the arguments can be looked at in detail and tested against events and theoretical logic.
I am confident that the reader having followed the debates through to the end will see the importance of Marxism as a method of analysis and set of theoretical ideas about semi-colonial capitalism, and its trajectory into the future. For my part that future must be socialist.
The raw materials for this book go back twenty years and through many revisions and re-workings. I am grateful for the collective efforts of students, family, colleagues and comrades, in helping to bring it to its relatively finished state. However, like the permanent revolution of which it is a part, as a commentary it remains unfinished.
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