The swirl of protests against the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Melbourne beginning September 11, like those in Seattle against the World Trade Organization (WTO) last year, target "globalization," "world trade tyranny," "the multinationals," and "Third World sweatshops." Despite anticapitalist sentiments by a range of protesters, the economic-nationalist thrust of these protests not only deflects political fire away from the capitalist rulers of Australia but also pushes the deadly trap of an alliance with them.

Globalization is not new. For the past three centuries or more, the capitalist system has been expanding to every corner of the globe, dragging humanity into the advancing world market and increasing the numbers of workers and farmers exploited by capital.

Globalization creates not just the economic misery of an exploitative class society, but also an expanding international working class, the fighters who will dig capitalism's grave.

Today there is growing confidence and willingness to resist among workers, farmers and youth around the world. Australia is no exception. From paper workers and hotel workers to strikers at Joy Mining Machinery and RNJ Sicame, working people are standing up against the relentless assaults of the bosses on our dignity, our health and safety, our unions. Protests are growing: against the government's antiunion legislation and gutting of safety on the job, against divisive attacks on refugee and immigrant rights, for Aboriginal rights, and by dairy farmers against milk deregulation.  
 
Chief enemy is at home
Focusing protests on "globalization," "multinationals" and other supranational targets steers people in the direction of supporting the capitalist exploiters and their system in each country. Capitalist corporations and banks use the monetary and military power of nation-states to protect their interests. The main enemy of working people in this country is the government based in Canberra, and the capitalist ruling families it serves.

The anti-WEF protests are being channeled towards protectionism. This nationalist framework is backed by the Democrats, Greens, middle-class leftist groups, union officials, and others. It is no coincidence that the "Australia First" thrust of the protests is also backed by One Nation ultrarightists.

The renewed campaign of the officialdom of some unions for "fair" trade, not "free" trade to supposedly defend "Australian" jobs is reactionary. It is a nationalist campaign, of a piece with efforts by the boss class to get us to "Buy Australian-made." Far from defending jobs in this country, this pits workers and small farmers here against fellow toilers from other countries whose low wages mean superexploitation. What is needed is an internationalist perspective, drawing on the capacities of working people of all nationalities to struggle against the common enemy.

Australia Firstism chains working people to our exploiters: the Australian industrialists and bankers who grow fabulously wealthy off the exploitation and superexploitation of workers and farmers here, and who join in plundering the Third World's human and natural resources.

The campaigns against sweatshops and child labor in other countries, far from advancing solidarity with fellow workers super-exploited in these conditions, at best treat them as helpless victims of the system, and at worst as competitors, against whom we are supposed to align with "our" exploiters.

Boycotts or union bans against "sweatshop-produced goods" are the thin end of the wedge for this nationalist protectionism. These campaigns serve only to protect the profits of some bosses, while ignoring sweat-shops and superexploitation of layers of workers in Australia, such as outworkers.  
 
Their government, not ours
Canberra's military interventions in the Asia-Pacific region are part of the war drive, alongside its imperialist allies, especially the United States, to try to police an unstable world for capitalist exploitation. The immediate targets are the "rogue" states that refuse to bow to imper-ialism's dictates. Ultimately, the war drive targets places where there have been revolutions by workers and peasants to overturn capitalism like Cuba, north Korea, China, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, and Russia.

The economic nationalism of the protests from Seattle to Melbourne are grist to the mill for this renewed war drive by imperialism. This war drive abroad is connected to the rulers' war at home against working people.

The WEF, the WTO, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank are the creations of the imperialist powers, especially Washington, to serve their interests. Communists call for the abolition of these multinational bodies, in opposing all imperialist economic and military alliances. But at the same time, we act on the understanding that the capitalist system and nation-states of the wealthy and powerful ruling families, not the supposedly supranational WTO bureaucracy or the WEF meetings, are the chief enemy of working people and of all humanity.

Most of those involved in protesting the WEF however take a completely different tack. Many claim that the WEF and WTO violate "our" national sovereignty. But the opposite is true. It is the imperialist powers from the United States down that largely dictate policy to the WTO. It is Australia's military and political interventions that have trampled on the sovereignty of countries from East Timor and Bougainville to the Solomons and Fiji. The labor movement needs to expose and oppose Canberra's imperial designs and militarization drive, instead of promoting trade and other sanctions and union bans, which only fuel economic nationalism.

The solidarity amongst vanguard fighters with the metalworkers at Joy Mining Machinery needs to be extended to every other proletarian battle here and on a world scale. This is the way to begin to answer the relentless attacks by the employers and their governments as the crisis of their profit system deepens. As Cuban president Fidel Castro explains, globalized solidarity is the heart of working-class internationalism.

Gigantic class battles will result in the coming to power of workers and farmers governments here and in other capitalist countries, in the spirit of the Cuban and Russian revolutions, which can forestall the march of imperialism to fascism and war and put humanity on the road to build a worldwide classless society without exploitation, oppression or war.  
 
 
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