Their Morals and Ours

[The text of a talk given to the DSP's January 2005 Socialist Educational Conference.]

I. The big picture

Morality is an arena of struggle

Today's class struggle poses some very hard issues. Imperialism presents us with an endless list of horrible crimes. Our world is full to the brim with unending violence, pain and suffering. But the struggle against this barbarism also confronts us with some very challenging questions.

At the tramstop

[Green Left Weekly, #608, December 1, 2004]

Waiting for the tram at the busy Melbourne Central stop on Swanston St., I look across at the State Library. It's a lovely building and very easy on the eye. A classic Victorian construction (it was built in the 1850s), one enters it through a row of neoclassical columns; and behind the roof line rises the great dome of the celebrated reading room.

In broad daylight

[Green Left Weekly, #483, March 6, 2002]

Although I am a committed socialist, I must admit there are times when sheer visceral hatred just wells up inside and I just wish one could press a button and the whole grubby, greedy, thieving, lying, vile, shameless lot of them would vanish into some black pit forever and the rest of us could just get on with our lives.

Terrorism: A Marxist perspective

[This is the text of a talk presented to the DSP and Resistance educational conference in Sydney in January 2002.]

I'd like to begin with a juxtaposition of two events — one which took place just four months ago and the other a long time before.