Internationalist Communists Oceania

The COVID-19 pandemic has left the entire working class living with a new level of uncertainty. There have now been cases reported on every continent after researchers and military personnel on Antarctica recently reported their first cases.

The COVID-19 pandemic has swept across the world, infecting tens of millions, killing over a million so far and leaving many survivors with recurring or permanent health conditions.(1) The region of Oceania has had tens of thousands of virus cases and around a thousand deaths. However, it has been hit even harder in the form of other pandemic related factors, such as border closures, unemployment, and a rise in mental health issues and domestic violence.

2019 finds humanity in an increasingly dangerous place. The consequences of global economic stagnation, itself the product of a much deeper crisis of profitability, can be seen in the rise of nationalism, racism and xenophobia. These in turn threaten not only to add to the increasing proliferation of unending wars around the world but to the possibility of more general conflict further down the line. Not unconnected to the current wars are the environmental disasters which the pursuit of profit has already inflicted on millions across the globe. If allowed to proceed unchecked capitalism threatens, in one way or another, the very existence of the only home humanity has.

Since the 2008 economic crisis, the ballooning global debt has increased from $20 trillion to over $240 trillion. With this exponential growth of indebtedness and an unresolvable crisis of accumulation, capitalism is losing its grip. The effects of this crisis are felt no more clearly than within the maquiladora sweatshops on the northern border of Mexico. Here sub-assemblies are pieced together for the struggling US automobile industry north of the Rio Grande.