Psychology

Australia is a highly developed country with a level of economic progress comparable to those of the major industrial nations in Europe, if not the world. It has a free market economy, a description which is largely based on the social relationships hinged between the producers, the products, and the consumers.  However, this would not have been possible without the basic relationship that lies behind the superficiality of the free market system.  Had there not been the interaction of owners of the means of production and the productive forces, this would not be case. The description of Australias economy should be based on the most essential factor, the relationship between capitalists and the working class.  To define economy according to distribution of the products alone blurs the reasons why despite the abundance of production, many still cannot have their equal share. This denies the fact that Australian society is basically stratified.  Australia is a capitalist society and this means that class exploitation exists.

Marxs critique on capitalism very much applies to Australian society.  The fact that Australias trade union movement is one the worlds most consolidated only proves that the working class consciousness in the country is still at levels susceptible to advancing Marxs theory of socialist transformation of a capitalist society.  Currently, unionism is not as strong as it was in the sixties, owing to the succession of governments that have constantly made it an unwritten policy to clip the powers of genuine labor organizations (Bramble p.239).    Nevertheless, the potential of growth still exists as the basic conditions for a dynamic and more militant workers movement for socialism are still very much around.  Unemployment, low wages, inadequate housing, rising costs of basic services, and the state and the capitalists violations of the workers rights to organize and to strike still haunt the unions.  Behind the trade unions are the existences of several communist and socialist parties who uphold different shades of Marxism. This proves too that, as long as capitalism exists, the capitalists cannot avoid creating its own grave-diggers from the working class that it exploits (Marx p.233).

With its developed market economy, Australias gross domestic product is nearly 1 trillion USD.  Because of this, it has been regarded as one of the largest national economies in the world in terms of nominal GDP (CIA).  Its level of economic development made it earn enough credentials to be included in international organizations involving top powers in world economy.  It is a member of the Group of 20 and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.  Even as it participates in multilateral trade agreements, it establishes bilateral economic relations with countries in Southeast Asia, Chile, and the United States.  Its proximity to New Zealand made it possible to integrate the two countries economy through the Australia New Zealand Closer Economic Cooperation (Austrade).

Unlike many of its co-members in the OECD though, Australia is not an industrial country.  Its service sector, which composes more than 70 percent of the GDP, is dominant.  The service sector is generated by financial institutions, such as banking and insurance, entertainment, mass media, tourism, and food and beverage manufacturing.  Its industrial activities are mostly mining and the manufacture of machinery and equipments for transportation.  This is only about 25 percent of the economy.  Australias agricultural sector is small at 3.8 percent (Australian Government Data).  With small industrial and agricultural sectors, the country depends much on imported products for most of its consumer and capital goods while it exports mostly raw materials and minor quantities of finished products.  As a consequence to low-value exports and high-value imports, the Australian economy is continually beset with trade deficits.  In order to cover the imbalance, the government has increasingly relied on foreign loans.  The country is not yet much affected by a foreign debt problem, an unsustainable current account deficit can have serious repercussions for the Australian economy (Saulwick).   In February 2010, the total amount of imports reached 21.8 billion AUD while exports dropped to 19.9 billion AUD (Heath).  The imbalance between exports and imports, and the lack of growth in the industrial and agricultural sectors, which are supposedly more labor-intensive than the service sector, provide the picture that employment opportunities in the country are not increasing in number.  The lack of employment will affect the wages and salaries.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics, however, seems to paint a different picture.  It reported that by February 2010, employment has increased to 10,991,900 while unemployment dropped to 611,000.  It summed up its data by declaring that the unemployment rate during the said period is only 5.3 percent.  However, it also said that out of the total number of workforce, only 65.2 percent were actually participating in actual labor.  Even with that number of workers though, the total monthly hours worked has increased to 1,540.5 million hours (March 2010 Key Figures).    The ABS presentation can certainly mislead one to believe that unemployment is absolutely not a problem in Australia.  The unemployment rate at 5.3 percent does not automatically translate that the remaining 94.7 percent of the workforce are permanently employed. In fact, many Australians are still looking for jobs while others still want to go into second or part-time employment.  The reason for this is that the employment rate was not based on the number of persons having full-time jobs.  Instead these were based on man-hours worked.  Therefore, employment rate did not take into account whether for those individuals involved this was full-time or part-time, or whether it was permanent or temporary (CPA-ML).  The ABS admitted that there had been a growth in the quantity of people searching for an eight-hour work and a part-time job.  It considered this data erroneously as a basis for saying that participation rate has increased.  This conclusion ignored the fact that there are many young people and women who actually want to be employed but have not made any effort in applying because they have been discouraged by the lack of opportunities, they have decided to pursue their studies, or they are still dependent on their families.

Nominally, the wage rate in Australia may be relatively bigger than those being provided to workers in neighboring countries.  The current minimum wage is 543.78 AUD per week as fixed by the Australian Fair Pay Commission.  Merely focusing on the wage rate, will only result in the belief that workers in Australia suffer less.  Hidden behind the sizable wage rate is actually the higher rate of exploitation that Australian workers suffer in the hands of their capitalist bosses.  Marxs theories on value and wage explain that as production increases in a capitalist system, the rate of exploitation also increases.  The workers create new value when they process raw materials into finished products.  This new value, however, is not totally given to them in the form of wages and benefits.  Instead, they have to work more in order to produce surplus value, which the capitalists appropriate in the form of profits.

Therefore, in order for the profits to be raised, the capitalists have to intensify the exploitation of their workers by reducing the value of their wages.  Flexible methods can be applied such as prolonging the work hours, utilizing contractual or part-time labor, or merely not paying some hours of the labor employed.  According to Marx, the rate of surplus value, all other circumstances remaining the same, will depend on the proportion between that necessary to reproduce the value of the laboring power and the surplus time or surplus labor performed for the capitalist (Wages, Prices, and Profit p.50).   This explains the ABS figures about the apparent lack of employment participation despite the fact that a million and half of work hours have been spent according to its March 2010 key figures report.  In the macroeconomic point of view, Australias economic development is a gauge in the rate of exploitation that its working class experiences.  There are three major factors for this observation.  First, the prices of commodities continue to increase while the wage increases do not.  Second, while production output is improved in order to minimize the trade deficits, the wages are pegged at the same values.  Third, cases of lay-offs, unpaid overtime, outright wage reductions, and sexual and racial discrimination in the workplace have risen.  In the fiscal year 2007-2008, the share of wages in the GDP was merely 53.4 percent while that of profits reached 265 percent. The wages share was the lowest since the Australias worst recession in the 1970s.  On the other hand, the profits share happened to be the highest since the 1960s (CPA Political Resolution p.18).    What remains of the GDP are from taxes and corporate debt payments and these come from the surplus value created by the workers.  If it takes eight hours of work to produce a GDP per day, only half of it is actually paid because the workers only get a little above 50 percent from the fruits of their own labor.  Capitalist exploitation exists and is serious in Australia.  It is only logical why the countrys labor movement remains to be dynamic and influential despite some setbacks in the past.  It is only expected too that the working class would become politically conscious and would establish their means of ideological consolidation and of strengthening their political base.  Currently, Australia has many leftist formations that uphold ideologies opposing capitalism.

The establishment of communist and socialist parties in Australia is a proof that its working class can no longer rely solely on the power of the trade unions as a means of emancipating themselves.  They have realized that the struggle to achieve economic and political liberation from capitalism can never be totally won by just forming unions and launching strikes to pressure governments and corporations to give in to their demands.  In fact, as Australia embraces neo-liberal globalization, its government since the time of Prime Minister John Howard, has been systematically implementing measures, such as the Workplace Relations Act of 1996, to reduce the trade unions influence on the working class and the entire population and protect the capitalists from them (ABC News).  

Currently, the Rudd administration is amending such policies while at the same time threatening the workers and the Australian people with drastic economic reforms that only spell retrenchments, lower wages through longer working hours, and privatization of key utilities.  However, even as the strength of the unions has been significantly reduced, the workers have become more conscious of their class interests.  A number of them have begun espousing Marxism as the only ideological foundation for liberating themselves.  Currently, there are two large communist formations in the country namely, the Communist Party of Australia and the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist).  Despite ideological and tactical, both maintain that the country is a bourgeois democracy.  They also affirm that the government is essentially subservient to the interests of the capitalist class.  Given this analysis of Australian society, the communist parties uphold Marxs revolutionary theory that the working class must no longer be contented with trade unionism but must seize political power with the most appropriate strategy and tactics depending on a particular countrys objective conditions.

Marxism is still relevant in Australia.  Australia is a stratified society, with the elite few of the capitalist class reigning over the others and the majority of the population, which is composed of the working class.  This parasitical class of capitalists survives and becomes wealthier at the expense of the masses of workers.  The capitalists have the state as its political instrument.  The government sees to it that the interests of the capitalists are served and protected.   The working class, however, has increasingly become more aware that they can no longer just fight for their rights and achieve token economic victories through trade unionism.  They are disillusioned with mainstream political parties who have not represented their interest as well as that of the Australian people.  In view of this, they have organized and strengthened, the communist parties, as their own political machineries.  While the unions have been defanged by the state, the communist parties are gradually being recognized by the working class and the entire people as the genuine alternative to the political parties of the capitalist class.  It is clear that the class contradictions in Australian society have become sharper.  The essence of Marxs social theory is that the antagonisms in class society are the bases for its destruction and the construction of a new and progressive one. The labor movement in Australia and its political parties are now at the helm of the inevitable struggle for the socialist transformation of their society.