Ober, Online
Confusion sets in immediately from the headline of Anthony Furia’s article: “US imperialism is beneficial, not detrimental, to Australia“. What exactly is meant here by “Australia”? The Australian state? Australian capitalism? The Australian bourgeoisie and comprador class? None receive much mention in Furia’s article, for it is the Australian working class that are squarely in the crosshairs as the avaricious beneficiaries of Australian imperialism.
To what component of the working class does Furia refer? Again, the article doesn’t bother to differentiate. But surely he cannot mean the bottom half of the Australian working class who hold less than 10% of the nation’s household wealth? He almost certainly cannot be referring to the bottom 20% who hold less than one percent? No matter, Furia’s article makes no attempt to engage in actual class analysis. All Australian workers are thus made complicit in the global system of imperialism.
And what “Spoils of Empire” do these privileged Australian workers living paycheck to paycheck enjoy? We need only look around us, according to Furia. Phones and clothing and food. It must shock Furia then to learn that 80% of African adults in that hyper-exploited continent own a mobile phone and an even greater percentage have access to clothing and food. Perhaps this indicates, according to Furia’s strange metrics, that the majority of African workers are also complicit beneficiaries in their own imperial domination?
Thankfully, Furia’s evidence for the reactionary nature of the Australian working class masses does not stop with their mere possession of things like clothing and food but also includes their access to basic public services like hospitals and roads and schools and potable water. Never mind that these crumbs from the imperialist table also happen to exist to varying degrees in the global south or that Australian workers receive unequal access to these ever-diminishing services depending on their wealth, race, gender and geographical location. Again, the situation warrants no further analysis for Furia, the mere existence of social services represents only a further confirmation of the “blood-pact” between the Australian working class as a whole and global imperialism.
It is not Clarke’s analysis of imperialism in need of correction here but Furia’s. It is the Australian capitalist ruling class and not the working class who are the overwhelming beneficiaries of imperialism. A labour aristocracy exists in Australia, certainly, but it deserves a much more careful analysis and explication than Furia’s irresponsible scattergun approach.
PARTISAN! 