The paper argues that taxing economic rent is at the heart of the Henry Tax Review in Australia. Economic rent arises from monopoly. The tendency to monopoly is built into the way capitalism is organized. Competition leads to monopoly. The ongoing monopolization of the global economy and...

This draft paper looked at the then proposed introduction of a mechanism to impose a carbon price in Australia from 1 July 2012. (It has now been introduced and came into effect on 1 July.) It argues that the compensation package to ameliorate the impact of the carbon tax will prove illusory...

In this paper I use Marx's analysis of rent to try to understand the complexities associated with the attempts to tax resource rents in Australia. My aim is to dissect ground rent (what the landlord expropriates in capitalist society by virtue of being the owner of land) into its constituent...

Peasants, workers and other ordinary people have shaped our world. In this paper I look at their mass struggles over tax, often escalating into broader rebellions, revolts and revolutions against the status quo. This can start as battles within the elite, and end as solutions within the elite....

In this paper I use Marxist analysis to examine certain aspects of tax in Australia as a way to help understand the meaning or essence of tax reform. I argue that because of stagnant or declining profit rates globally progressive tax reform today can only be built through and on the back of...

Tax reform in Australia is a battle between a band of hostile brothers. This band of hostile brothers includes productive capital, finance capital, commercial capital, landlords and the state, fighting among each other for their share of surplus value in the form of profits, interest, commercial...

Taxing the rich will only be on the agenda, and using the extra money to improve public health, education, transport and address climate change also will only be on the agenda with a resurgence of class struggle by workers in Australia.An upsurge of class struggle will be about workers improving...

This paper argues that even a free market is only free in a particular country because that state allows it to be so. Of course it goes without saying that the pressures of the market, together with the institutions of neoliberalism like the austerity wavering IMF and the World Bank, plus the...

This paper looks at the political economy of tax reform in Australia and argues that without an upsurge in resistance to neoliberal policies the ongoing shift of wealth to capital from labor in Australia will continue. The first part of the paper looks briefly at some of the social ferment going...