Australia’s human history commences as an independent country inhabited by black people who lived in conditions of tribal primitive communism.
Its invasion by British imperialism led to destruction of that independence and primitive communism and the development of capitalism.
Struggle by the white working people and sections of capitalists plus the struggle of the surviving black people secured for Australia a measure of independence but by no means full independence.
What remains to be achieved is a new independence, an independence at a qualitatively different and higher level, an independence as part of the movement to socialism and communism. The new communism is several historical epochs advance on the primitive communism with which Australia commenced.
The primitive communism of the black people was destroyed. Its destroyers and their successors will be destroyed by Australian black and white workers, working and patriotic people. The new communism ensures modern technology will come into its own and serve all Australians, black and white.
The foregoing pages have attempted to set out the process of realising this through the stages of independence and socialism.
In the preliminary stage of independence stressed so often in these pages, the state takes on a new shape.
The nature of the coercive state apparatus under capitalism in Australia was described and commented on. It stands on guard, armed, forcible guard, to protect the multinationals and local collaborating monopoly capitalists. It will be overthrown by the united anti-imperialist front.
What then of the new state?
It too is a coercive apparatus. The most important component of it is the people’s army. It has its own police force, courts, gaols, permanent public service. Whereas such institutions served the minority exploiting class and had the character of the supremacy of the minority exploiting class, now the majority previously exploited and oppressed workers, working and patriotic people have their own state apparatus manned by the people themselves and having a people’s character. It is a state apparatus that operates for the vast majority against the tiny minority of the previous exploiters. Certainly it suppresses that tiny minority. It stands on guard to protect the people’s ownership of the means of production and allows other patriotic sections to operate even in a capitalist way. The decisive economic lifelines are socialised in the hands of the people. It rejects the regeneration of capitalism. The decisive organs of indoctrination are in the hands of the people. This is a dictatorship of workers, working and other patriotic people led by the workers. It is a form of dictatorship of the proletariat whereas its predecessor was a form of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.
The democratic dictatorship (“democratic” is contrasted with the minority dictatorship of exploiters) of workers, working and other patriotic people has its own representative institutions which are both representative and executive unlike the “talking shop” of parliament.
The whole thing arises in struggle. Embryonic people’s bodies exist already in the many-sided people’s action that is going on in Australia. No difficulty arises in it. Such bodies are the foundation and forerunners of people’s governmental institutions.
Nor will it be plain sailing. As was said in dealing with the capitalist coercive state apparatus, its existence and maintenance are a matter of life and death to the multinational and local collaborating monopoly capitalists. Likewise after anti-imperialist independent revolution the maintenance of the democratic dictatorship of Australian workers, working and other patriotic people is a matter of life and death for the people.
The old overthrown minority strives might and main to overthrow it. It uses the hangovers and influence of the old society, its experience, its international connections, regeneration of capitalism, corruption of people within the new society, to try in every way to subvert and overthrow the new people’s power.
The people’s power arises on the basis of the workers, working and patriotic people now owning and controlling the main economic lifelines of Australia. On the basis of that ownership with their own state apparatus to protect it, economic crisis with unemployment, poverty, inflation, are all abolished. Similar societies world-wide make war impossible.
An independent anti-imperialist people’s democratic state will ensure independence from imperialist domination. It will ensure genuine democracy in people’s ownership of the means of communication (press, radio, television, halls, streets, etc.); in people’s ownership of the centres of finance such as banks, in people’s ownership of the key sections of industry and the means of distribution; in the expropriation and redistribution of the land of the foreign monopolies and their collaborators; in the expropriation of the means of production and distribution owned by the imperialists and their collaborators; in the strict supervision of the production and distribution of Australia’s natural resources and in adequate living standards for the people.
It will work to abolish the difference between town and country, the abnormal separation of mental from manual labour.
The Australian anti-imperialist people’s democratic republic will take its place in the world community of formerly oppressed people who have either realised liberation, independence and socialism or are in the process of doing so. The present Australian struggle against imperialism is part of a world-wide struggle.
The cause of patriotism serves internationalism and internationalism serves Australian patriotism.
Patriotism means different things to different social classes. To the multinationals and their collaborators who are the real traitors, the Australia for which they demand patriotism is an Australia owned by them, a tiny minority of exploiters and oppressors of the vast majority. To the people, patriotism means an Australia from which those multinationals and local monopoly capitalist collaborators have been expelled.
The useful people, the workers, working and other patriotic people identified with them really love and cherish Australia. They are the true patriots. It is they who will come into their own. They are both internationalists and patriots.
They hold up and fight for the banner of democratic liberty and Australia’s national independence. The great traditions of struggle by the black people and of such struggles as Eureka inspire the present day struggle for a people’s patriotic anti-imperialist independent Australia. A whole new order of society will come into being through the stages of independence and socialism The new communism, communism at a far higher level than Australia’s original communism will arise Australians will be masters of their own destiny.