The response of the banks and big business to the intensifying economic breakdown centred in Asia will be to demand an ever-deepening assault on jobs and conditions, and the further dismantling of the welfare state. The problem is not globalisation and the integration of world economy. These are fundamentally progressive developments, associated with far-reaching technological achievements, which have the potential to provide plenty for all the world's people. The issue is that these vast resources remain in the grip of the inherently exploitative private profit system, increasingly dominated by competing transnational conglomerates. Against the global operations of big business, workers can only advance their interests through a unified struggle, across national lines, guided by their own international strategy.
Australian workers are part of an international class.
Economic hardship, declining living standards and mass unemployment affect workers in every part of the world, regardless of race, ethnic origin or nationality. Transnational corporations are constantly seeking to exploit divisions in the working class in order to lower costs and undercut their rivals. Inevitably a defeat for workers in one country or region becomes the basis for a fresh assault on workers elsewhere. Workers must reject all forms of racism and nationalism and give their unstinting support to their class brothers and sisters engaged in struggles around the world. All immigration controls and discriminatory regulations must be abolished so that all workers have the right to live, work and study in whatever country they choose with full citizenship rights, including full and immediate access to social benefits and democratic rights.