International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

Good riddance to Morrison, time to fight Labor

Tom Bramble — 2022-05-24T07:19:53Z

“Nor can we expect to see Labor take serious action to deal with climate change. Labor is committed to the fossil fuel industries and its carbon emissions targets are a joke.”

- IV568 - May 2022 / Australia

Trump's China aggression drawing Australia closer to war

Tom Bramble — 2017-02-09T13:55:09Z

The Trump administration appears set on a confrontation with China sooner rather than later, and the Turnbull government has given every indication that it will be riding shotgun with the US when that happens. These are dangerous times.

- IV505 - February 2017 PDF / United States (USA), Australia, China

A tale of two South Africas

Tom Bramble — 2016-06-02T07:26:03Z

Twenty two years after the fall of apartheid, and South Africa is still a country highly polarized between the haves and have-nots. I could cite the Gini coefficient, which measures inequality between rich and poor, which tells us that South Africa is in a hot contest with Brazil and China for the title of most unequal society in the world. I could point to the fact that the top South African bosses commonly earn 200 times the average wage of their employees. But a better way to understand the sheer barbarism that is capitalism in South Africa is to take a simple 45-minute drive from Johannesburg to the township of Tembisa, which I did on May Day.

- IV497 - June 2016 / South Africa

Stock market crash shows madness of the market

Tom Bramble — 2015-07-14T06:47:21Z

The Chinese stock market plunge over the past three weeks confirms that no matter how much the champions of capitalism pretend that it generates riches for the many, it remains an anarchic system responsible for the ruination of millions.

- IV486 - July 2015 / China

Australian imperialism in the "Asian Century"

Liam Ward, Tom Bramble — 2012-11-14T15:00:00Z

It was only appropriate that Prime Minister Julia Gillard launched her Government's new Australia in the Asian Century” White Paper at the Lowy Institute, sponsored as the Institute is by Australia's wealthiest businessman, Frank Lowy. This White Paper is a manifesto for the 1% written, fittingly, by a team headed up by former Treasury Secretary, now National Australia Bank director, Ken Henry.

- IV454 - November 2012 / Australia, Asia

Australian imperialism and the rise of China

Tom Bramble — 2012-04-06T14:50:15Z

The rise of China has been of enormous significance for the Australian capitalist class. The Sydney Morning Herald's Ross Gittins outlines three major reasons why the East Asian giant now matters for Australian capitalism. First is its sheer size. With a population of 1.35 billion, it has 20 per cent of the world's population and is 11 times larger than Australia's second largest trading partner, Japan. Second, the Chinese economy has grown by 10 per cent a year for three decades, roughly doubling in size every eight years.

- Features / Australia, Economy, China