The following articles were published by The Guardian, newspaper of the Communist Party of Australia, in its issue #2006 16th May, 2022.

 

Reproduction of articles, together with acknowledgement if appropriate, is welcome.

 

The Guardian, Editorial, 74 Buckingham Street, Surry Hills, Sydney NSW 2010, Australia

Communist Party of Australia, 74 Buckingham Street, Surry Hills, Sydney NSW 2010, Australia

 

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CPA General Secretary: Andrew Irving gensec@cpa.org.au

 

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INDEX

 

1. VOTE THEM OUT – CC Executive Statement
2. EDITORIAL – Never forget the victory of the Soviet Union
3. Toothless tiger in the capitalist jungle
4. CPA at protests around the country
5. REPORT: Teachers’ federation rally – Sydney
6. The Communist Party in the workers’ movement
7. Election 2022: where do the major parties stand on housing?
8. Weaponising culture: the CIA’s use of art, literature and music in the cold war
9. The CPA congratulates Kyritsis on his election as Secretary General of the WFTU
10. Responsible and accountable governance in socialist countries

 

 

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1. VOTE THEM OUT

Central Committee Executive Statement

The Coalition Morrison government has got to go. On Saturday 21st May vote them out!

The Communist Party of Australia rejects the undemocratic electoral system that prevents small parties from participating on an equal basis. The two-party system that prevails in Australia and the most recent changes to the electoral laws by the Coalition government and supported by the opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP) are the main reason there are no Communist candidates at this Federal election.

Ultimately universal suffrage does not guarantee the results will express the interests of working-class people.

The Communist Party of Australia demands a democratic electoral system that would allow the participation of working-class political forces like the CPA. The CPA advocates for a compulsory, preferential proportional representation system. The Australian Electoral system must change.

The current undemocratic electoral system promotes the waste of millions of dollars in dirty electoral campaigns mainly sponsored by monopoly capital in the interest of the coal and mining industries to preserve the status quo of the minority.

WORKERS DEMAND CHANGE

The Coalition government has been consistent in its war on workers. Wages and conditions have deteriorated with the right to organise for workers and their unions dangerously undermined.

Working families are facing high and rising living costs. Workers and their families are having to make choices about buying medications, having heating/cooling with some facing food shortages and even homelessness as real wages stagnate or fall.

Workers on JobSeeker cannot afford to live with dignity and the government is steadfastly refusing to increase payments for these workers looking for work or those on the age pension, disability and other social security payments.

The Communist Party of Australia campaigns for a living wage and secure jobs for all workers and a living income for all social security recipients including those on JobSeeker.

The Coalition government has targeted construction and maritime workers and their families with the introduction of special legislation for their industry. The Australian Building & Construction Commission (ABCC) as the cop for the industry undermines the right to organise and has cost millions of dollars in tax payer money to fund litigation against the CFMMEU. The ABCC has not improved the industry nor prevented deaths or serious accidents. On the contrary it has been an obstacle for workers to freely exercise their rights and secure their safety in the workplace. The ABCC must be abolished.

MONEY FOR WAR NOT PEACE

The Coalition government with support from the opposition has embarked on a war-mongering spending spree. In 2016-17 the Coalition announced that it would spend $1 trillion on “defence” over the next twenty years – that is up to 2036-37. Since then, it has committed additional spending.

The support for war alliances like AUKUS and the QUAD will put billions of dollars into military spending with a blank cheque on nuclear-powered submarines, offensive trident missiles, aircraft, drones, preparations for cyber warfare, and military bases for US imperialist plans targeting China.

The Communist Party of Australia demands the scrapping of both treaties and an independent foreign policy in the best interest of the Australian people and its neighbours in the Asia-Pacific.

The CPA demands no cold war on China, Australia’s main trading partner.

HOUSING

The number of working Australians seeking help for homelessness is steadily rising particularly among young Australians where insecure and precarious work is becoming the norm. The returned level of JobSeeker to little more than pre-COVID settings and other income support payments leave many others in poverty and unable to pay rent.  Urgent action is needed to provide long-term housing solutions that will address our social and affordable home shortfall but neither major Party has put forward solutions. One-off cash payments and co-share housing loans will do nothing to address the growing homelessness. This will need to be fought for after the election.

CLIMATE

The Coalition budget in March continued to provide coal, oil and gas corporations more than $37 billion while cutting spending on climate change and energy by thirty-five per cent in the coming four years. The Australian Renewable Energy Agency, Clean Energy Finance Corporation, and the Great Barrier Reef are among the programs being cut. Workers and their communities are again left to do the heavy lifting.

The latest Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change report gives us until 2030 to make radical cuts in greenhouse gas emissions, and until 2050 to reduce these emissions to zero if we are to avoid the worst effects of climate change. The next 10 years will be critical, we cannot afford another three years of the LNP and other climate change deniers.

MEDICARE

The Coalition, if elected, would continue to undermine Medicare and fail to ease the pressure on the public health system. There should be a greater focus on preventative health care and nationalisation of the health system.

HOW TO VOTE

The immediate aim in the forthcoming elections is to defeat the Coalition, to ensure it does not have control of either House.

In the current circumstances, with no communist candidates standing at the federal election of Saturday 21st May, we recommend the following:

The Communist Party of Australia supports giving first preferences to Socialist, left and progressive candidates, then Labor, with Coalition candidates followed by extreme right independents and parties last.

THE SENATE

The Senate is crucial regardless of who forms government on 21st May. There is a strong possibility of a minority government in which progressive, democratic and independent candidates will play an important role.

The Greens have the potential of holding the balance of power in the Senate polling high in a number of states. The electorate will respond positively to candidates whose aims are to save the planet and protect the environment with credible policies and targets for 2030 to achieve zero net carbon emissions.

 

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2. EDITORIAL – Never forget the victory of the Soviet Union

On 9th May, 1945, Hitler’s fascism was finally crushed amongst the rubble of Berlin and the “thousand-year Reich” came to a mercifully premature end. The death blows were struck, overwhelmingly by the Red Army and the ghosts of 27 million Soviet citizens who it carried on their shoulders. In the words of Winston Churchill, the Red Army “tore the guts out of the Wehrmacht,” and he was indeed unstinting in his praise of the sacrifices made by the Soviet peoples in the victory, they celebrated on 9th May this year.

By 1935, with the tacit co-operation of anti-communist Western powers (notably Britain and France), the Nazis had extended their control to Austria, which was incorporated into the German “Reich” at the point of a gun. Spain soon followed as did Czechoslovakia.

A world war was in the making, about which British and French imperialism were untroubled. They smugly thought they were the most powerful countries in Europe (perhaps in the world) and they were totally preoccupied with the possibility the war afforded for getting rid of Bolshevism once and for all.

They had no doubt that a rabble of Russian peasants and workers would be no match for the sophisticated civilised military forces of European capitalism, especially if they could persuade Germany to spearhead the assault. They had a cosy vision of Anglo-French forces mopping up after the Russians and the Germans had worn each other out (although they could also live with a German victory, just so those Bolsheviks got their comeuppance).

So, despite then Soviet Foreign Minister Litvinov’s strenuous efforts to organise collective security for Europe, Britain and France would have none of it. German occupation of Poland was an essential step before Hitler could invade the USSR, so Poland was abandoned to its fate. The Second World War was off and running.

Before it was over it would spread across the world and cause the deaths of tens of millions of people, 27 million of them in the USSR alone.

The Soviet people bore the brunt of German imperialism’s class hatred, facing Germany’s best weapons – its biggest, fastest tanks, its biggest guns, its fastest most powerful fighter planes and bombers, and of course by far the greater part of its armies.

Even against Japan, the USSR’s Special Red Banner Army of the Far East, stationed in Siberia, kept Japan’s elite Kwantung Army pinned in China for the duration, unable to be moved south to bolster Japanese forces elsewhere.

No Russian family, indeed, no Soviet family, did not lose at least one relative in the inferno. But victory was won, and the Soviet peoples’ army wrote their names in the stars and achieved immortality.

An entire generation of young communists laid down their lives for a victory that decisively transformed the course of world history.

Also, we must not forget that after Hitler’s invasion of the USSR, German troops were greeted in Western Ukraine with flowers. SS divisions there had fought against the Red Army.

Local nationalists, led by Hitler’s admirer Stephan Bandera, set about exterminating the Jewish population. In Ukraine about 1.5 million Jews were killed – one fourth of all Holocaust victims. During the “Volyn massacre” in 1944 about 100,000 Poles were brutally murdered in Western Ukraine. Banderas destroyed Soviet guerrillas and burned alive the men, women and children in hundreds of villages in Belarus.

After 2014 Nazi ideology has tried to reverse Ukraine’s history. Day of Victory over fascism on 9th May has been cancelled. Streets and squares are named after Nazis. The Communist Party of Ukraine operates underground. Intimidation and political assassinations of politicians and journalists had become constant. Monuments to Lenin and everything related to the memory of life in the USSR are being destroyed.

9th May has been celebrated every year in Russia and was celebrated again this year including the liberated areas such as Ginichesk.

Recently, everything has been drastically changed in the course of a special operation leading to the liberation of the territory of Genichesk where the acting head of the district decided to restore the monument to the forthcoming anniversary of VI Lenin as well as hanging the Victory Banner on the administration building.

As the current world capitalist depression shows, capitalism as a system is already on its way to the rubbish heap of history. It may take a while yet before it is finally discarded but be assured it will be.

This is the celebration that the West has criticised and belittled as a figment of Putin’s propaganda and chauvinism, while treating this great victory with sarcasm and contempt, missing the lessons of history that liberated Europe.

We must remember the great sacrifice and victory of the Soviet People.

 

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3. Toothless tiger in the capitalist jungle

Anna Pha

The question of the integrity of government has emerged as a major issue in the lead-up to the May 21st federal elections as Prime Minister Scott Morrison runs scared of anything resembling a genuine integrity commission.

The establishment of a federal integrity commission (FIC) was a key election promise by the Coalition government at the 2019 elections and is now in effect off Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s agenda.

PAPER TIGER

The draft produced by the government reads more like something from Yes Minister than a serious piece of legislation tackling parliamentary and public sector corruption. It claims to address corruption but is designed to cover up corruption and unethical conduct.

The government’s model restricts what types of conduct its FIC could investigate and how it could operate.

Public hearings would not be permitted in respect of the public sector resulting in lack of transparency and public accountability for actions. The state Independent Commissions Against Corruption (ICACs) have discretionary powers to determine when public hearings are held. The FIC would not be able to investigate the billions of dollars spent on vote-buying and secretive deals by government ministers.

The Commission could only investigate matters on its own motion in the case of law enforcement corruption. It could not operate retrospectively. The Attorney General would have the power to restrict information requested by the Integrity Commissioner.

The FIC would only be able to investigate matters that constitute a criminal offence. Not all corrupt conduct is a criminal offence. Corrupt or unethical behaviour includes conflicts of interest, and misspending taxpayers’ money on party political campaigning or for personal gain.

The Morrison government’s Sports Rorts would not come within its ambit or other perceived abuses of office or unethical conduct if they did not fall foul of criminal law.

Parliamentarians could refer themselves or staff in their office to the FIC! In other words, they could dob themselves in!

And as if those restrictions were not enough, the Attorney General would have wide powers to gag the FIC’s findings.

EXCUSES, EXCUSES, EXCUSES

Morrison has come up with a series of limp excuses for not bringing his draft bill before Parliament including: refusing to bring it before Parliament before Labor agrees to support it without amendment. The government didn’t do that with its Ensuring Integrity Bill which set out to crush trade unions (See Guardian #1891, “Kill the Bill”). That so-called Integrity Bill came before Parliament in 2017 and again in 2019 and was defeated on both occasions.

The last thing Morrison and his close cronies want is a commission with teeth that can hold public hearings and where members of the public and whistle blowers can raise matters for investigation.

The government emphatically rejects calls for a commission like the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption ignorantly or dishonestly calling it a “kangaroo court.”

HAINES’ BILL

Independent Helen Haines introduced a well-researched bill for a FIC in 2020 and returned to Parliament again with it in 2021. This legislation specifically allows for public referrals to the FIC. It could act retrospectively, hold public hearings, and have the same powers as a royal commission.

It could cover branch stacking, rorting, blind trusts, and other serious behaviour. Its hearings would be public or private at the discretion of the judicial commissioners.

Haines moved suspension of standing orders to allow her private members’ bill to be debated. It was surprisingly seconded by Liberal MP Bridget Archer and carried 66-63 in favour – suggesting her bill would pass through the Lower House. But, the motion was defeated on a technicality: A suspension of standing orders requires an absolute majority of the 151-seat Parliament, not a majority of those present.

NEED FOR REFORM

It’s not surprising that so many people are turned off by the politics and policies of the two major parties and are turning to independents as they seek real change. The stench emanating from Canberra is growing stronger by the day. In recent years there has been a litany of actions by government ministers that warrant further investigation. These include:

• Sports rorts
• Car parks rorts
• Porter’s blind trust
• Leppington $30 million land purchase of land worth $3 million for second airport, from a family with ties to the Liberal Party
• $80 million purchase of water rights from company which Environment Minister Angus Taylor had been a director
• Allegation that Angus’ office forged a document to discredit Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore
• Grants awarded through closed, non-competitive processes.

And so on.

Pork barrelling has become endemic with politicians demonstrating contempt for the public purse and the public itself. Former NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian stunned many commentators when she tried to justify pork-barrelling as “not illegal” saying: “Governments in all positions make commitment to the community in order to curry favour. I think that’s part of the political process whether we like it or not.”

Political donations, $10,000 dinners to access a government minister, lobbying in secret, and revolving doors between big business and government offices all constitute corruption.

An independent ICAC with real power is required, not a toothless tiger in the capitalist jungle. There is also a need for transparency, public accountability, and substantial electoral and other reforms to eradicate such corrupt practices. The electoral system is stacked against smaller parties whose ability to stand candidates and campaign is restricted by legislation supported by Liberal and Labor Parties.

The practice of revolving doors where private sector lobbyists are employed as staffers must end. The practice of MPs and ministers being awarded lucrative six or seven figure directorships or consultancies on leaving Parliament is nothing short of corruption. In the old days their payment came in brown paper bags, but today it is more sophisticated, but none-the-less corrupt. There needs to be laws to prevent this.

An ICAC with teeth would be able to delve into business-government relations and ensure transparency and provide mechanisms for recall of offending politicians.

Political donations from the corporate sector corrupt the limited democratic processes we have under capitalism. One way to curb this is to cap expenditure on political campaigning and have real time exposure of donations.

 

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4. CPA at protests around the country

The CPA fighting for aged care workers in Perth. Around 500 workers rallied at the Perth Cultural Centre demanding respect for aged care workers and the making of age care a priority.

NSW CPA out at the anti-AUKUS rally, protesting the INDO PACIFIC 2022 International Maritime Expo.

 

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5. REPORT: Teachers’ federation rally – Sydney

Naruaki Cann

“MORE THAN THANKS”, the message that over 15,000 teachers had for the NSW government and specifically for NSW Premier Dominic Perrotet at Hyde Park on 4th May. The Teachers’ Federation rallied and marched to NSW Parliament in response to a shockingly low predetermined 2.04 per cent pay rise from the government. Such a paltry sum in the face of the seemingly ceaseless inflation that Australian workers have faced – 51 per cent in the last year.

As the march started a sea of red flooded the streets to NSW Parliament as our teachers donned their “More Than Thanks” t-shirts. Alongside the Teachers’ Federation in sizable contingents were members of the National Tertiary Education Union and Construction, Forestry, Maritime, Mining and Energy Union, an incredible sight of solidarity within our labour movement. Major demands of the day included a 5-7.5 per cent pay rise and extra planning time for lessons. Our teachers deserve much better and this was a great show of force. A “thank you” does not cut it for our teachers who have struggled so much in their industry during the pandemic.

 

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6. The Communist Party in the workers’ movement

Logistics and Manufacturing Branch article

May Day, or International Workers’ Day, is one of the most important days for the working class around the world. It is a day to unite in solidarity and to celebrate the historic achievements of the working class movement. It is also a day to unite and struggle for the demands of the working class, for peace and for socialism. The past two years have seen the position of Australian workers come increasingly under attack. The COVID pandemic has hastened the rise of insecure work, while pay and conditions have been slashed at any chance possible. While companies make record profits, real wages and living conditions continue to decline. Cost of living is skyrocketing while public services are shrinking as the government forces workers to pay for the economic crisis. Capitalism has failed and continues to fail the people. It acts in the interests of bosses against workers. Trade union and civil rights continue to come under attack to try to stop us fighting back. This must change. We must fight not only against the negative effects of capitalism, but for real, systemic change. We must fight for socialism to provide a better future for all, free from exploitation.

The Communist Party of Australia Logistics and Manufacturing Branch Calls For:

• 4 day work week with no loss of pay
• The unfettered right to take industrial action
• Right of entry for union officials
• Right to bargain across an industry as well as in individual workplaces
• Right to secure well-paid jobs
• Right to a safe workplace
• Enforcement of workplace rights with heavy penalties for employer breaches
• Reduced employer surveillance of workers
• Reduced strenuousness of work
• The Australian Building and Construction Commission and the Registered Organisations Committee to be abolished
• Make May Day a public holiday Australia wide

The Marxist-Leninist Communist Party is the most effective and successful organisation for advancing the fundamental interests of the working class and for leading the struggle for socialism. This can be seen in the strength of Marxist-Leninist parties internationally, along with the unsurpassed track records of success found in every country around the world. Numerous examples exist internationally of Communist Parties successfully adapting the universal principles of Marxism-Leninism to their local conditions and adopting forms of struggle that win the support of the people. The international Communist movement is the most successful movement for change in history.

How can we build the Party effectively?

Australia needs a strong Communist Party to turn back the intense slide towards right-wing politics and lead the struggle for socialism. The Communist Party of Australia once dominated the left and enjoyed a position of strong leadership of the working class in Australia for over 50 years. Australian militants must reject the failed counter-productive practices of other socialist parties. The CPA is orientated towards the working-class struggle. Militant Communists must be organised by industry and workplace to recruit militant workers, lead industrial struggles, build the trade union movement, and make militant unions out of weak unions.

LOGISTICS AND MANUFACTURING BRANCH

The logistics industry is one of Australia’s last remaining critical industries in which workers can wield immense power over their employers and society. Our branch aims to establish itself within the industry and contribute to increasing the level of class struggle. Communists must be more than simple “trade union militants”, they must be actively engaged in broader societal struggles as well-rounded “Tribunes of the People,” masters of Marxism-Leninism in theory and practice.

Lenin described trade unions as “schools of class struggle.” Participation in struggles for increased pay and conditions develops workers’ class consciousness and prepares them for higher forms of class struggle. But trade union consciousness is not Communist consciousness. Communists must raise the political understanding of workers to a Communist understanding of society and the consequent tasks of the labour movement. Through effective activity in the workplace that wins credibility and trust, Communists can win positions in the union movement and transform unions from bodies of simple reformism towards revolutionary bodies fighting for Socialism.

 

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7. Election 2022: where do the major parties stand on housing?

B Curphey

Heading into the 2022 Federal Election on 21st May, housing is once again a major issue. The cost of housing increased by twenty-five per cent in 2021, shutting more and more Australians out of the market. As far as the major cities are concerned, the rise has been steepest in Hobart at 26.8 per cent followed closely by Canberra at 24.4 per cent and Sydney at 23.6 per cent. The cost of renting has similarly soared, up twenty-one per cent while the availability of affordable rental properties shrinks.

The sources of the crisis are obvious. Decades of reckless and irresponsible government policy have incentivised billionaires and property developers to buy up multiple properties, ratcheting up the prices and shutting the average Australian out of the property market.

Both the major parties have policy positions on housing, aimed at increasing the accessibility of the housing market. However, the schemes are extremely limited in their scope and fail to address the root causes of the problem.

Both schemes are two sides of the same coin; government subsidisation of home loans to enable buyers to access the to market. In addition, Labor has also committed to building “20,000 social housing properties – 4,000 of which will be allocated for women and children fleeing domestic and family violence and older women on low incomes who are at risk of homelessness.”

20,000 new lost cost homes, twenty per cent of those for victims of family violence and at-risk women are undeniably a good thing. But we need to be clear about the drawbacks of this scheme.

Social housing is not the same as public housing. Social housing is an umbrella term that encompasses both public and community housing. It is a convenient way for governments to offload their responsibility for housing the vulnerable onto – at times unscrupulous, at others simply overburdened – NGOs and community housing organisations.

Community housing is in general lower quality and more expensive (for more on this issue see Guardian #1942 “Social housing scheme only a drop in the ocean”). Not to mention, these 20,000 new proposed properties are barely a drop in the ocean compared to what is needed nationally. Victoria alone has more than 10,000 people on its public housing waiting list.

A couple of new social housing blocks and some loan subsidies are band-aid solutions to a structural problem. For as long as property developers and investors are able to hold housing for ransom – demanding exorbitant prices due to an artificial shortage – no amount of government lending is going to solve the housing crisis.

For all their flaws, the Greens are on the right track with their housing policy. Increasing taxes on billionaires and scrapping incentives and handouts for property developers will help to disincentivise the greed that feeds the current crisis. The extra revenue can then be reinvested into building many more than 20,000 affordable housing properties, reducing the pressure on the market and – hopefully – bringing down prices.

Housing is a human right. None of the major parties can be trusted to deliver on that right. It is time for deeper systemic change to end the crisis at its source – the greed of capitalist developers and property investors.

 

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8. Weaponising culture: the CIA’s use of art, literature and music in the cold war

Graham Holton

Today the CIA has illegal operations around the world, from gathering information on Americans to developing new forms of torture. What is little known is how they weaponised culture to attack Communism, producing misinformation that is still believed to this day. It created such mistrust and hate that it will be years before the damage is rectified. The CIA did this by using art, literature, and music to undermine communism and socialism in the West. These devious propaganda projects were used for over forty years with impunity. The CIA was never brought to account. The recent release of classified documents reveals the extent to which the CIA manipulated public trepidation to create the fear of Soviet infiltration, “Reds under the Bed.”

Congress created the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) under the National Security Act of 1947. The Agency’s website states that its primary mission was to collect, evaluate and disseminate foreign intelligence to assist the president and senior United States government policymakers in making decisions about national security. The CIA doesn’t make policy, but at the president’s request it achieves its goals by engaging in covert action. In 1975 the “Church Committee” (after its chair, senator Frank Church) investigated the legality of intelligence operations by the CIA, NSA and FBI. Since then, the CIA hasn’t been allowed to assassinate foreign government leaders, nor spy on the domestic activities of Americans. It gets around both restrictions through other means.

In 1949 the act was amended to ensure the CIA’s budget, staffing, organisational structure, and salaries were kept secret. The first time this information was released was in 1997. The total budget for all US government intelligence and intelligence-related activities was US$26.6 billion, employing 20,000 people. A third of these were undercover or had been at some point in their careers. What then does the CIA do besides spying? The Office of Policy Coordination (OPC) of the CIA was formed in 1948 to help combat the spread of communism. It created psychological warfare projects to deceive the American public, to win them over to a constructed perception of the Cold War world. It used propaganda to create public hysteria, the “Red Scare.”

Senator Joseph McCarthy used this to manipulate the US government: “I have here in my hand a list of 205 – a list of names that were made known to the Secretary of State as being members of the Communist Party and who nevertheless are still working and shaping policy in the State Department.” The list was soon shown to be completely false but had the desired result on the media.

The CIA website listed its Cold War scandals – the overthrow of Iran in 1953, the Bay of Pigs, Cuba in 1961, and Watergate in 1972 – but fails to mention the CIA’s secret involvement in culture: the arts, literature, and music. The US government used ideas, images, and sounds to win over the hearts and minds of the public. Its sinister methods reveal an insidious behaviour that manipulated everyone from children to adults with a constructed false world of communism and the left, belief that persist to this day.

The Fulbright Program was established in 1946 under the US Department of State bill, the Amendment to the Surplus Property Act of 1944, with the purpose of disposing surplus property outside the US. It hid its true international purpose. Senator McKellar told Fulbright that had he known the implications of the legislation, he would have voted against it: “Young man, that’s a very dangerous piece of legislation. You’re going to take our young boys and girls over there and expose them to those foreign’isms.” This is exactly what Fulbright intended. Other activities were successfully hidden to appear as the work of individuals and institutions acting without government funding. Over the fifteen years the agency “ran” the magazine Encounter it published over 2,000 articles and reviews spreading US propaganda.

The CIA tried to undermine “intellectual freedom” in Western Europe, using prominent American and European intellectuals, to promote American values: free elections, free speech and free markets. The target audience for Cold War cultural propaganda was foreign left-wing intellectuals and avant-garde writers and artists, who were attracted to communism and the Soviet Union, turning them into anti-communists.

In 1946, the US State Department’s newly formed Office of International Information and Cultural Affairs put together a show named Advancing American Art. The division spent US$49,000 purchasing seventy-nine paintings by American artists, who defined “American reassurance, stability, and enlightenment.” It included modernist, naturalist and expressionist works by Romare Bearden, Arthur Dove, John Marin, Ben Shahn, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Jacob Lawrence. The State Department sent the works to Europe, where it was well received. Clement Greenberg wrote in The Nation, that the show was “a remarkable accomplishment.” Even so, attacks from conservative art critics in the US forced the show to be recalled, and the paintings were sold off for US$5,544. Today these art works are worth a fortune.

The State Department next enlisted institutions such as museums, foundations, and arts groups to take over, giving the government a low profile. President Eisenhower thought of cultural diplomacy as a branch of psychological warfare, and his Administration was the first to provide systematic funding for international arts exhibitions. This “Propaganda as Art” especially concentrated on Abstract Expressionism, such as Jackson Pollock’s Lavender Mist. In 1949 Alfred Barr asked Henry Luce, the publisher of Time, Life, and Fortune magazines, that modern art be regarded as “artistic free enterprise,” since it had been attacked by totalitarian governments. The US government had manipulated the direction of the modern art movement.

In 1954 Eisenhower said: “As long as our artists are free to create with sincerity and conviction, there will be healthy controversy and progress in art.” For the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), his Administration sponsored tours of American art, opera (“Porgy and Bess” to counter Soviet propaganda about American racism), musical theatre, dance and jazz. Over the next thirty years, the State Department and the Smithsonian Institution sent hundreds of exhibitions of American art abroad.

The head of MoMA, like the leaders of most mainstream institutions in the US, were anti-Communists and therefore there was no need for any explicit arrangements with the government, as they were very willing to help. MoMA mounted exhibitions on modern architecture and design, and started the museum’s film department, dedicated to Hollywood movies as part of the modern art movement. Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg, who believed that Abstract Expressionism was pure expression, were Left-wing anti-Communists associated with the anti-Stalinist Partisan Review. Their theories attacked Soviet aesthetics, which saw abstraction as individualistic self-indulgence.

The list of CIA covert activities during the 1950s and 1960s is long. The Agency subsidised European tours of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and was behind the filming of George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm. It clandestinely subsidised the publishing of thousands of books, including an entire line of books by Frederick A. Praeger Inc, and the renowned work by Milovan Djilas, The New Class. The Agency bailed out, and then subsidised, the financially faltering Kenyon Review, and concentrated on two famous authors, George Orwell and Boris Pasternak.

Eric Arthur Blair, better known as George Orwell, was believed to hold left-wing views, leading the British police to label him a communist. The MI5 held a very different view and never took action against him, as they knew that the CIA had found Orwell useful for their propaganda projects. While the left saw Orwell as an uncompromising enemy of fascism and imperialism, the right knew he was anti-communist. His study of poverty in Britain in The Road to Wigan Pier is a strange sort of socialism, as was his Down and Out in Paris and London. This can be explained by Orwell joining the Spanish POUM (Workers’ Party of Marxist Unification), the anarchists, during the Spanish Civil War. Later Orwell gave a list of the top communists in Britain to MI5. Other famous British writers were also members of MI5, including Ian Fleming, Graham Greene and Evelyn Waugh.

The CIA saw Animal Farm as perfect for its anti-Stalinist programme, as Daniel J. Leab discloses in his Orwell Subverted (2007). The CIA played a dominant role in financing the 1954 animated film Animal Farm, with its attack on the Russian Revolution. The same was done for the film Nineteen Eighty-Four, constructing an anti-Stalinist warning. Yet neither film reveals who owns the means of production (is there any State ownership?), or mentioned the Great Purges, which were commonly attacked by the Western media at the time.

So what are these two novels really about? Orwell’s first novel, Burmese Days, was set in northern Burma and is based on his days as a British colonial police officer. According to Emma Larkin’s Finding George Orwell in Burma (2006), the Burmese of modern Myanmar (Burma) see this novel and his Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four as being based on Burma, not the USSR. The pigs were Burmese generals; ask anyone and they will tell you who they were. The hardship and corruption reflect the military running the country. The OPC had turned Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four into anti-Soviet propaganda.

Other factors revealed in recent research published in the Journal Clinical Infectious Diseases (2005) and the Journal of Medical Humanities (2019), show that Orwell suffered from severe physical and psychological problems, which are expressed in his Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm. He was dying. He was deeply depressed by his wife’s death, he suffered from chronic tuberculosis, Young syndrome, infertility and severe psychological problems, which are obvious in his “Orwellian” novel. A world constructed just as MI5 and the CIA viewed the world of the Cold War. The main character, Winston Smith, reveals a psychotic view of a world filled with deception and distortion of reality. Someone who believes the TV is watching him, suffers from paranoid delusion. It was written at the time when Freudian psychoanalysis was at its height of influence. Orwell, as a colonial police officer, lived in a world of political espionage and control. His real name was Blair. The title is the reverse of the year in which it was written, 1948. He had turned the MI5 and the CIA’s imagined world of Russia into the dystopia of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Declassified documents show that the other writer the CIA concentrated on was Boris Pasternak, using Dr Zhivago for its “great propaganda value.” They printed hundreds of copies in Russian and distributed them via the Vatican’s pavilion at the 1958 Brussels Universal and International Exposition. The operation was a huge success, with the book being published in numerous languages, culminating in Pasternak winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958. With CIA assistance the book was made into a film in 1965 by David Lean, with the help of his colleague Noel Coward, a MI5 agent. The film adaptation was a great piece of cinema. At the 38th Academy Awards, Doctor Zhivago won five Oscars: Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Score, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Costume Design. By 2016 it was the eighth highest-grossing film of all time in the United States. The film was so popular that its constructed history changed the audience’s view of the Russian Revolution into a disaster. This view is still commonly held.

In 1985 the CIA produced an analysis of the French New Left, an early post-Marxist intellectual movement. The New Left were very critical of the USSR, Marxist philosophy and all overarching ideologies and systems, including capitalism. Many of the philosophers of the French New Left were structuralists, who maintained the same systemic and historicist thinking that Marxists did, and after the Agency used the New Left, it morphed into Postmodernism, which is still essential reading in all Western university humanities classes, to analyse history and literature.

At the time of the collapse of the Berlin Wall the CIA turned to music. According to Radden Keefe of The New Yorker, in 1990 the CIA wrote Wind of Change for the German rock band, Scorpions. The song was ostensibly inspired by the two-day “hard-rock Woodstock” festival in Moscow in 1989, which featured metal royalty, such as Ozzy Osbourne, Mötley Crüe, Cinderella, Skid Row and the Soviet band, Gorky Park. In 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed due to political, economic, and military reasons. How much this was also due to the CIA weaponising culture in the Cold War, we may know when the documents are released.

 

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9. The CPA congratulates comrade Pampis Kyritsis on his election as Secretary General of the World Federation of Trade Unions

The Communist Party of Australia congratulates comrade Pampis Kyritsis of AKEL on his election last Sunday 8th May as the Secretary General of the class-oriented World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU).

The WFTU successfully hosted its 18th World Trade Union Congress in Rome, Italy, on the 6th-8th May 2022. The Congress was held under the slogan: “United, we continue! For the satisfaction of our contemporary needs, against imperialist-capitalist barbarity!”.

WFTU’s congress took place in a historical moment of the COVID pandemic, deep economic crisis, war and a greater attack on working people by capitalist governments that are imposing the cost of the economic crisis on the shoulders of workers – men and women – worldwide. The Congress was attended by 490 delegates from 110 countries from all continents.

The 18th Congress paid tribute to comrade George Mavrikos who guided WFTU into a more democratic and dynamic labour organisation over seventeen years from the time of his election in 2005.

In his first speech comrade Pampis acknowledged the work of his predecessor comrade Mavrikos and pledged to continue developing the class-oriented organisation in the interest of the more than 110 million workers affiliated to the WFTU.

Despite the attempts by the imperialist forces to assimilate or dismantle the class-oriented trade union federation, WFTU has survived and developed into a powerful force capable of continuing the struggle for workers’ rights, collective bargaining and to oppose privatisation and the destruction of the welfare state.

An important task ahead is the unity of the labour movement to diminish the influence of social democracy.

The CPA wishes comrade Pampis Kyritsis and all the comrades elected to WFTU’s presidential council success in their tasks for the period ahead.

Long live the World Federation of Trade Unions!

 

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10. Responsible and accountable governance in socialist countries

Roland Boer

It would be difficult to find a citizen of any country who does not want clean, honest, and accountable governance. As the 2022 election approaches in Australia, this question has come to the fore in debates around a Federal ICAC. In these debates, it is one thing to criticise the hesitations and stalling by the bunch in Canberra, and to lambaste the institutionalised corruption of bourgeois political systems. It is another thing entirely to offer a coherent and alternative position. One way to is to consider the practices of honest and clean governance in socialist countries. I will use the example of China, since I know that country best, but we may also study the practices in other socialist countries.

By now it is well known that after Xi Jinping was elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in late 2011 and then President in early 2012 a comprehensive anti-corruption campaign was launched. The reason for launching the campaign was that a significant gap had grown between the CPC and the common people, leading to corruption, lack of knowledge of Marxism even by leading cadres, and so on. I recall many, many posters about stamping out corruption, and daily news reports of yet another crime gang busted, a Party member disciplined, and so on. The gap between the CPC and the common people had to be closed, trust had to be restored, clean and accountable governance had to return. Much of this has been achieved.

However, anti-corruption campaigns are only half of the story. These are necessary but negative. The other side is resolutely fostering responsible and clean governance throughout the Party and throughout all of the state organs. These are positive measures, which began with the absolutely vital local Party branches.

In the last seven years, a whole series of new regulations have been promulgated. Initially they appeared in “trial” form, to be implemented rigorously but also to provide feedback from practice so as to produce the final regulations. I would like to focus on one of these texts: Regulations on the Accountability of Members of the Communist Party of China. A trial version appeared in 2016 and the final version in 2019.

The regulations emphasise the need for strict accountability and responsibility of all Party members. There is a distinction between accountability and responsibility. Accountability refers to disciplinary procedures relating to a number of failures in Party branches and committees, including laxness in organisation, inadequate ideological education, improper work style, and more serious problems. Most of the regulations stipulate in detail the procedures to be undertaken, mitigating factors, appeal, and types of discipline. Notably, the whole process is focused on “learning from past mistakes to avoid future ones, and curing the disease to save the patient.” In other words, where possible wayward comrades need to see the error of their ways, correct these errors, and return to their roles as fully functioning Party members.

Responsibility, by contrast, concerns what is expected of Party members. Those with greater roles in the Party have higher responsibilities. Indeed, the rights as a Party member are as one with responsibilities. The clearest way to ensure responsibility is to engage in collective decision-making. Most notable of all is the need to ensure the “combination of strict supervision with kindness, and give equal emphasis to encouragement and restraint.” How does this work? Allow me to quote from the regulations concerning the work of Party branches: at monthly group meetings, comrades should engage in “political study, heart-to-heart talks, criticism and self-criticism.” Further, “Heart-to-heart talks should frank and sincere, seek to exchange ideas and opinions, and help comrades improve.”

In a socialist country under the leadership of the Communist Party, if the Party has clean and honest governance, so also does country’s government and its state organs.

 

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