| Letters
by Clyde
Cameron
Printed in Issue:10 February, 2001
 Manifesto important
Sir,
I
applaud the decision to publish a Special Edition of News
Weekly
(January 13, 2001) against the economic rationalists who favour the
globalisation of corporate capitalism, thus enabling foreign
multinational corporations to shift Australian industries to the
cheap labour costs of Asia.
Not only has this resulted in
mass unemployment, but globalisation is allowing 60 per cent of
multinationals operating in our country to pay no tax, and 40 per
cent to pay very little tax and merge with other multinationals in
order to eliminate competition.
I recall that in 1936 Bob
Santamaria wrote an editorial for the newly-launched Catholic Worker
linking monopoly capitalism with the evils of Communism and
saying:
"Communism is NOT our greatest adversity. The
position of Public Enemy No 1 is reserved for Capitalism, not
because it is a system which is intrinsically more evil than
Communism - they are both equally false, and equally fatal to human
personality - but because today it dominates the world. Capitalism -
that is the enemy!"
That was in 1936.
In 1992, the
late Bob Santamaria drew attention to the fact that the top one per
cent of US households were worth more than all of the assets owned
by the bottom 90 per cent which comprise 84 million households
(Weekend Australian 2 May 1992).
Not surprisingly, he saw
such an unfair distribution of wealth as a recipe for economic
disaster and he kept up his pleading for reforms until he passed
away.
In December 1995 Bob reminded his readers that the
great French philosopher, Alexis de Tocqueville, declared that the
terrible, bloody French Revolution of 1789, stemmed from the
enormous benefits enjoyed by the French nobility and bourgeois which
had added to the burdens placed upon the peasantry. He went on to
quote from an article published by the French newspaper Le
Figaro
likening the 1995 scene in France to the events leading up to the
French Revolution and wrote:
"If for 'the nobility' one
substitutes today's major corporations which dominate the economy,
and for 'the peasantry' the middle and working classes who have seen
their taxes increase while the quality of their social services
diminish, Le Figaro's comparison may not seem improbable" (Weekend
Australian, 16 December 1995).
On 9 January 1996, I sent Bob
a copy of my paper on the CIA warning of international terrorism and
on 22 January, he replied saying:
"Your article is
absolutely first class ... Have you thought of getting it published
in one of the dailies? The information is indispensable. l suppose
that as the media are monopolised by the tax-evaders, it will be
difficult. But do what you can".
I did as Bob recommended,
but received a two-line reply from the editor of the Sydney Morning
Herald reading: "Please find enclosed your unsolicited work which we
are unable to use on this occasion." It was also rejected by The
Advertiser.
I wrote to Bob again on 16 April 1996, saying:
"It has been your articles in the Weekend Australian that
have helped me to believe that the fight for a better Labor Party
will one day produce the desired results.
"You question: 'Why
should a man not do what is now within his power to do? Can one
establish a morality which really works over all, other than on a
religious basis?'
"They are great words ... Keep up the
fight! You are a really great advocate; and in the meantime, l shall
continue to remain, Yours very sincerely."
Bob Santamaria
did, indeed, become the political idol of the millions of
traditional Labor voters who derived comfort from the knowledge that
the true Labor Party had not passed away. On the 25 February 1998,
we lost a hero whose soul was not for sale.
In a six-page
valedictory I wrote for The Australian, l said:
"No other
person had such an influence on the political scene as Bob
Santamaria during the last fifty years of his life; and no other
political figure engendered the same devotion from his followers, or
fear from his opponents ...
"In a letter dated 4 May 1990,
he told me that from the Seventies, the internal divisions in the
Communist Party had led many to turn 'King's evidence', and as a
consequence, 'the inequities of the banking system during the last
decade, gained a new lease of life, and I have returned to my
original position (i.e. that Capitalism and not Communism is the
worst enemy) ..."
I wrote that
"I shared Bob's
sadness over the way politics have deteriorated to a position that
is now a contest between the rich and the poor; the privileged and
the underprivileged; the exploiters and the exploited; the tax
avoiders and the taxpayers; the greedy and the needy; the buyers of
labour and the sellers of labour, with the odds always stacked up in
favour of the first party ...
"For the past eighteen years
Bob Santamaria has been warning that the whole Western financial
system would face a major crash.
"He made the point that
international banks are not concerned with whether the governments
they help are Communist or anti-Communist. Their only concern is
with profit, not ideology."
I know News Weekly's Special
Edition exposing economic rationalism and the globalisation of
corporate power would have received the wholehearted support of Bob
Santamaria.
Hon. Clyde Cameron AO,
Tennyson, SA
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