Kulak: the proverbial class of Ukranian/Russian peasantry who speculated profits on grain by hoarding it from a starving nation.

Such too does it seem that in Australia, we have our own ‘Kulak’ class.  The situation in which the census argues there is approximately one million houses in Australia left vacant, being hoarded by the bourgeois whom many of Australia’s founders campaigned against before Federation.

William G Spence wrote in 1909: “Land monopoly increases and the unemployed multiply, but Ministers are too busy scheming to get into and hold on to office to do anything for the good of the people as a whole. The lands are alienated and locked up. The minerals are being extracted. The national debt is rapidly increasing. Ten millions borrowed, ten millions paid in interest, ten millions owing. The squatters had cut wages. This was bad enough, but when they were going to fill white men’s places with Chinese, and further insisted on “freedom of contract,” shearers and shed hands had no alternative but to go on strike. ”

Just like the Australian fighters and agitators of the old day, we sit in the same shoes ; a rootless cosmopolitan elite own all the land, they only care about their own re-election, they export all our resources, our debt is spiraling, our wages are falling and our seats are to be filled with Chinamen. The parallels between 2018 and 1888 are frightening.

The solution of the founders was to establish trade unions, radicalise the masses and mobilise White Australian workers against the financial elite, the land-barons of the day.  What is the solution for today? It almost seems insurmountable..

Time will tell.