Dennis Glover in an Op-ed in the Australia argues that the Labor Party is making a steady drift to the centre, and that this drift is due to a general shift to the right of the Australian population as a result of success of think tanks such at the Centre for Independent Studies. In response, Andrew Norton at Catallaxy, argues that while the left could learn from the organizational structure of right wing think tanks such as the CIS, the key point is more importantly that many of the big ideas of social democracy have already been implemented and are with us, and new ones have not been forthcoming:
The right doesn’t have ideas because it has think-tanks, it has think-tanks because it has ideas that need promoting. Ideas come first, and then you build appropriate organisations around them. And if the ideas aren’t there, no matter how much money social democrats raise for a think-tank or advocacy centre they won’t be as politically effective as the right.
This view sees social democracy as essentially victorious and, having acheived many of its main goals, it is now a Burkean conservative force fighting a rear guard action against neoliberalism which seeks to tear these acheivements down. Clearly “conservative” is not how most of the left would wish to see themselves but I think there is an degree of truth to it and in some ways something to be proud of. Depite flaws, programs such as Medicare have provided a good level of medical care for all members of society at a relatively cheap price, especially when compared with the US system.
As Dennis Glover mentions, increasingly the “new ideas” coming out of the ALP, such as tax breaks for private school parents, are neither new nor left, but rather just a shift towards the right. In some cases I think that shift in policy position is a realisation that the broad consensus has shifted, and in others a desperate bid to try and recover the perceived middle ground.
I don’t want to think narrowly about the policies that would re-elect the ALP. Rather, in the struggle of ideas, what directions should the left be arguing for in general. From my point of view I think the left should accept that some aspects of what has been right wing policy and it should be no longer fought over. For example, if a free market is the best way of generating wealth, rather than fiddle with the market itself, should we just be relying of the tax and welfare system to deliver equity to those disadvantaged rather than minimum wages or other regulations, and concentrating our efforts here.
To do this it seems we need to have a good sense of what we are trying to achieve and what can be achieved. Questions such as, “should we be worried about inequality, i.e. relative poverty, or merely that the welfare of the poor increases in absolute terms?” seem to be vital to know so that policies can actually achieve those goals.
Similarly if we are going to talk about the need to protect the environment, then the question is what for? Are we protecting it merely because of our own benefit, in that it is necessary to preserve human life and that people derive satisfaction from nature, or because the environment has an intrinsic value external to anthropocentric concerns.
I’m not really trying to articulate a new set of ideas myself, but rather interested in discussing if others think that, in Australia, the left needs a new progressive program building on the foundations of the Hawke-Keating-Howard years rather than an essentially conservative one, concerned with rolling back the changes of the right.
Big questions.
This early in the morning, faced with work tomorrow, the only point I’d make would be that the ALP’s ‘drift to the centre’ as noted by Glover is really only the latest in its 120 years of historical compromise with Capital. Without drawing too much upon Lenin, the Australian Settlement was and remains partly an agreement between labour not to break up the market and capital not to shit too much on labour.
Excepting, notably, the latest round of IR laws, what’s different now? What’s changed in the rightward drift of thoroughly compromised Labor and the not-very-ideological, cartel-friendly Coalition, since the 1930s? To your question;
I answer, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité. I’ll bet the sans-culottes never got op-ed space or think-tank funding.
please, ideas before the material conditions of their emergence and circulation? what does he take the left for? hegelian marxists?
Heh, Glen, nice.
…
Andrew Norton’s point on organisational structures is well made. Unfortunately like many derechistas he’s ignoring the most powerful set of all the ‘leftist’ institutions: the trade union movement, which in terms of dynamism leaves the right-wing think tanks for dead.
It’s one simple, great, inspiring idea being constantly, innovatively, and globally articulated.
Andrew’s post elides ideas and ideology. He writes:
But the ideas promoted by the thinktanks are really just ways of implementing a broad neo-liberal ideology, and the independence of the thinktanks from the government is a function of the government’s electoral populism rather than ideological purity. I don’t see too much difference between ideas on say, tax, between the CIS and business groups such as the BCA. It’s just that the CIS uses more ideological and anti-statist rhetoric. So, despite Andrew’s claim that there’s a dissonance in funding resources, that’s illusory. Historically, most right wing think tanks have survived by business subventions. He’s wrong to think that union research officers are some sort of equivalent – their role really is research in support of industrial claims and campaigns. That’s not always been the case – a lot of the ideas around the Accord did come from unions such as the AMWU, but unions themselves are less ideological these days, and in any case, are smaller and money is tight with them.
Similarly, there are not the social democratic intellectuals around now in universities who contributed to the Accord project.
Those who are working on broad strategic directions tend to be the social work/social policy types whose remit is somewhat limited by a focus on disadvantage and poverty. There are simply few academics who think in terms of political strategy.
That’s the negative side. The positive side is that the social democratic ideal has not been achieved, because equality of opportunity is not there, and the notion of collective and public good has almost disappeared. What the left needs is firstly to fight to reclaim those two central ideas, and then to start afresh in terms of policy. It’s entirely appropriate, as Steve suggests, to discard sacred cows in the process but not for its own sake or without an overarching strategic direction. Such a direction could appropriately be rethought around a positive take on the opportunities afforded for global and regional solidarity which so often are lost by the framing of the globalisation debate as it is.
On the last point, we do need to be a little Hegelian, as glen suggests…
Mark – I agree that the primary job of union research sections is connected to their industrial activities. But they can be serious political players. At least in the Julie Wells/Simon Kent days I regarded the NTEU’s research section as my principal intellectual opponent in the higher education debate, with carefully researched and coherent ideas (from starting assumptions I disagreed with). They were far more sophisticated than the AVCC in their intellectual analysis.
I agree that on issues like tax the CIS is coming from the same direction as organisations like the BCA. But the BCA isn’t a player outside a few business-related issues, and even if we add in their budget (a few million a year?) we still aren’t getting close to parity of spending.
No one (AFAIK) has yet mentioned the Productivity Commission, Treasury and similar bodies, which tipped the balance drastically in favour of the free-market right for most of the late 20th century. The PC in particular, had a large body of economists devoted full-time to doing policy analysis and advocacy from a free-market viewpoint. There was nothing remotely comparable available to the left. The closest approach was EPAC, which was broadly in line with the Hawke-Keating model of market-oriented reform, and was in any case fairly marginal.
The PC has become less visible and also less dogmatic in recent years, maybe because there has been little in the way of new ideas from the free-market side for some time, and the limits of the 1980s agenda have become apparent.
“Dennis Glover… argues that the Labor Party is making a steady drift to the centre, and that this drift is due to a general shift to the right of the Australian population as a result of success of think tanks such at the Centre for Independent Studies.”
The problem here is that Glover (like many others) has the unfortunate habit of asserting that there is a general shift to the right of the Australian population without checking the available social survey data (e.g. the Australian Election Study, the Austalian Survey of Social Attitudes) to check whether this is in fact the case. I have pointed out, here and elsewhere, that on issues of gender/family/sexuality the trend (both in the findings of social attitude surveys and in actual behaviour) is in the other direction. Likewise on industrial relations and economic deregulation, there are not and have never been popular majorities for specific neo-liberal policies; the balance of opinion on these issues is somewhat left of centre, though not radically so. On global warming and other environmental issues, there are large majorities in favour of environmentalist positions rather than the Howard government’s position.
This tendency to unevidenced assertion of a general drift to the right led Glover, in an op-ed piece in The Age http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2005/02/10/1107890342774.html?oneclick=true, to suggest that reopening the abortion debate would be good politics for Howard and the Coalition as it would wedge the presumed large number of socially conservative working class people against Labor. Just over a year later, the RU486 debate and Jackie Kelly’s weekend statement on childcare suggest that on the gender/sexuality/family agenda, the Coalition is at risk of wedging itself.
I think the danger of holding grimly onto old ideas and trying to preserve them, no matter what, is one of the big problems the broader left faces. One wonders sometimes if some of us are much more attached to the ideas themselves than the ends they actually achieve. There are some things that many people hold to be true and continue to do so with almost religious resolve, regardless of any evidence to the contrary or suggestion that there might just be a better and more roundly acceptable way of doing things. This sort of stance is not generally helpful to progressive causes.
Put simply, if there are better and more powerful policy mechanisms out there for achieving the goals that the broader left have been arguing for over the past few centuries, we need to find them and argue the case for them.
Moving on from old ideas does not necessarily mean you discarding them. It just means finding better ideas and progressing, which is after all what the left more generally is supposed to stand for, right?
Well said, Guy. And although I think people on both sides of the aisle can be fairly accused of clinging to old ideas, it applies more to those on the left than those on the right. And no one clings to them more desperately, in the face of evidence to the contrary, than some economists on the left.
Dennis Glover wrote:
“[The] CIS and allied conservative think tanks . . . employ about 40 staff and support about 20 regular contributors to our most well-read opinion columns”.
Plainly, think-tankers do have some kind of “in” when it comes to getting scarce OpEd real-estate in print broadsheets. And IMO, such preferment is not a testament to the quality of their research/writing. Glover seems to allude to some sort of financial incentive for the print broadsheets to run think-tanks’ output. Is this so?
Paul, don’t be silly
You guys are such bad losers. Actually losers too, but that’s by the by. You really think the CIS has money to pay op-ed editors?
I haven’t been published for a long time but when I was affiliated and working part-time with the CIS and got articles published in that capacity, the newspapers had to pay *me*. Same as they pay other op-ed contributors.
“tax breaks for private school parents”
This is ALP policy? So if you don’t use the public system, you shouldn’t have to help support it? Very Labor….
Is the left out of ideas? Nah they just need to think outside the square. http://www.thepeoplescube.com/red/viewtopic.php?t=64
I think that there is no doubt that in general Australian society has become more socially liberal. While there has been some push amongst the current government in the other direction, its effect has been more about slowing the pace of change and as we saw over RU486 the conservatives got comprehensively rolled.
To a large extent neoliberal ideology (as opposed to social conservatism) is neutral to the goals of left wing social policy. Many of its inherents would be for those goals. The area where it is hostile would be the need for action to acheive those goals, and more particularly the involvement of government and regulation to acheive it. Thus its no suprise that the attitudes haven’t shifted despite the success of neoliberalism, even if policy to further those ends many have slowed.
Andrew, I was thinking that your point about unions may have reflected your experience with the NTEU. It’s not typical.
And the BCA’s policy positions (on issues such as skills formation, training and education, and welfare to work) do go outside what might be narrowly classified as “business issues”.
One just has to read the language being used by posters here to understand why the elctorate doesn’t connect with the ALP and the left – what a load of academic tosh! Very helpful in winning votes!!
I look forward to the ALP moving back to the left. I enjoy having a Federal Coalition Government.
Keep up the good work!!
It’s a mistake to think of public opinion in left-right terms. Very few people have coherent ideological positions, and if asked to place themselves on a 0-10 left-right spectrum most put themselves in the middle 4-6 band. What people do have views on is particular issues, which others can then reclassify on a left-right basis. But as Steve E correctly points out, on many of the social and sexual issues ‘neo-liberals’ would be closer to the left than the social conservatives in their basic worldview.
It’s also a mistake to see what Glover is talking about primarily in terms of public opinion. He’s talking about *new* policy proposals, which will only rarely have a pre-existing constituency of any significant size.
the left should love howard.
He spends money like a drunken sailor, he has boosted welfare DESPITE 15 years of economic growth and he loves taxes.
One problem that needs to be addressed to help young people is the radical disjuncture between the future invisaged during the process of education/training/apprenticeships and the reality of the skilled labour/professional milieu in which the future workers have to exist, work and live.
The best case example I have come across is early childhood education where people are taught and learn through an engagement with the professional issues at stake in the actual job.
The worst case example is doing a PhD where it is still framed in the institutional and official DEST literature that I have read and in practice as an apprenticeship for professional academics. Not too many PhD’s become professional academics. This produces a gap in the expectations of training and the reality post-postgrad.
I don’t know about other professions/trades. (And maybe it only applies to over educated motoring journos? dunno! don’t think so…)
But beyond those official moments of training (uni, tafe, school) there is the spectre of constant and ongoing ‘retooling’ of the workforce through re-education and the deliberate production of redundant not-so-skilled skilled workers.
It is a crucial question because of the deregulated nature of the workplace these sort of disjunctions need attention. The problem is that once someone gets a job they forget about their expectations and get on with it. They also forget about the massive number of resources expended in producing such (non-)expectations. Education is not the transfer of knowledge or whatever, but the production of extra productivity. Make it more productive.
So two initiatives:
1) Proper and ongoing research on the post-training/education/apprenticeship pathways and professional trajectories. After people have finished uni, tafe, a course how have they gone with getting a job?
2) Feed this back into the training itself. I don’t mean in a one to one correlation between joe blow did this so all graduates are going to need to be able to do this skill. I mean in a broader sense: a) get the students thinking about it as a profession from the start; b)teach them about the workplace and job market culture of the particular profession, not just once, but repeatedly.
If they are going for some messed up neoliberal third way then they can at least give the kids the best weapons they can, and that is some bloody idea about what to expect.
Most of this comes with experience anyway, but it might be a boost to productivity and the fortunes of young people if they were better prepared.
I think this should be taught in high schools.
Personally I think that trying to be the Liberal party-lite or a policy of just rolling back government changes is likely to leave the ALP in the wilderness for longer than trying to find some new directions.
Paul W – As Jason notes, often they pay us. It’s all about knowing how the media works. If you build relationships and reputations with editors, they are more likely to publish you. If you are reliable – ie you submit quickly and on-time and don’t need much editing – you will greatly increase your chances. If you tie what you write to current events you will have a much higher chance of being published. As I said in my original post, organisational differences explain a lot.
The last comment of mine was addressed to Razor and I would add, as I stated, I’m not concerned about policies that might get the ALP re-elected, merely ideas that promote left wing goals, but through new method or directions. Particularly looking at methods that have traditionally been supported in attempts to acheive goals (minimum wages might be an example) but perhaps should be discarded in favour of better methods of acheiving those same goals and that we should consider them.
I don’t think such directions, if they were to be established, can be narrowly argued by a political party but must argued more generally through broader channels.
Steve Edney, you fit right in with the ALP because they aren’t “concerned about policies that might get the ALP re-elected” either. Or so it would seem.
Keep up the good work!!
Of course the ALP is becoming more conservative (a better term than right, BTW). Because the median voter is becoming more small-c conservative, for the simple reason that he/she is getting older.
If you think the country is full of selfish old stick-in-the-muds now, wait 20 years. This bodes badly for social democrats and classic liberals alike.
Jason Soon wrote:
“You guys are such bad losers. Actually losers too”
I’m more chuffed than insulted here, Jason, by your imputing that I actually have a constituency, of more than just me.
Meanwhile, while I admittedly imputed (although didn’t overtly say) that the CIS (et al) might pay to have OpEds run, you haven’t offered any counter-suggestion of what Glover might be driving at, per his above-quoted words. Here, I have an open mind, so please enlighten me. (But don’t just say that he’s a typical boomer-Left moron, coz that would be joining my constituency!)
Believe it or not, I am aware that newspapers pay the people (whether freelancers or employees) who write the stuff between the ads. You say that OpEds from think-tankers follow the stock-standard rule here, but Dennis Glover seems to suggest otherwise, and you haven’t contradicted *him* so far. More importantly perhaps, Andrew Norton also suggests otherwise:
“Paul W – As Jason notes, *often* they pay us”. (Emphasis added)
I thought you were a law graduate, Paul. How are you getting such a bizaare interpretation out of Glover’s column? All he’s saying is that the think tanks employ a lot of staff and these staff (like Andrew Norton) get paid by the CIS, to among other things, write columns (i.e. it counts as their work-time). Which is true. I don’t know how you get out of that the imputation that the CIS is paying op-ed editors to run their columns. Incidentally I work for a consulting company and I occasionaly get asked to ghost write columns too. And that means I’m allowed to put the time spent doing that on my timesheets. I don’t see how that translates into ‘Dennis Glover is saying people who write columns pay newspapers to run them’. They still collect payments from the newspapers for having these things written.
FFS, why is it always TEH LEFT that has to come up with the new ideas, while TEH CENTRE sits permanently impaled on a picket and TEH RIGHT is allowed to get away with pouring the same old piss and vinegar policies into new bottles?
WorkFarce – that’s a new idea? Hundreds of pages of gut the unions regulation and let’s roll workplace relations back to the glory days of the Masters and Servants Act (NSW, 18 something or other) and if employers are reluctant to behave like bastards we’ll damn well compel them to.
Work for the Dole – a new idea? Back to the susso days of the great depression, tell middle Australia (debt collectors on $50,000 pa plus commission) it’s all for the benefit of the unemployed – gets them work ready again – when your own commissioned research says no such thing. Change the name? No way. Work for the Dole is a well-known name, it’s a good brand for the Government.
The national security state – a new idea?
Misuse of ministerial authority – e.g. s501 of the Migration Act – a new idea?
Gimme a break – there are plenty of old ideas – freedom of association, genuine civic and community values, and civil bloody liberties that TEH LEFT can stand up for. The only radically new ideas we need to bring to the table after ten years of the Stainless Steel Weasel and now Big Kim attempting a pincer movement – moving in on Howard’s battler territory on the economic front while he outflanks him on the right on national security, with his heavily armoured coastguard policy division – is a few bloody facts.
Like who the real battlers are (income 26k and less), where those tax cuts came from (commodities windfall) and where TEH ECONOMY has really been going the past few years (basket case third world commodity exporter with delusions of grandeur and huge private sector foreign debt).
Hah! “Gimme a break – there are plenty of old ideas – freedom of association, genuine civic and community values, and civil bloody liberties that TEH LEFT can stand up for. ”
But despite every opportunity they DIDNT did they!
Freedom of association – compulsory unionism
Freedom of trade – no ticket no start
Freedom of speech – anti discrimination laws
Community values – multiculturalism
The list goes on.
The left failed to perform.
rog – the eternal voice of optimism.
I haven’t given the particulars any thought whilst I’d agree social democrats have moved towards the economic right, just as the classical liberals have moved to the social left – up until Corporations Power induced WorkChoices that failed at 4 referendums
(which is why the Libs are dogging it, they’re scared the people will say no therefore they don’t trust the people or democracy! – ok I’m stretching it a bit but you get the point!)
Mark, I can understand your negativity, having to push a broken down Lada along a busy road must be humiliating.
I don’t have a car, rog, I catch the bus or a cab.
Wot, you are too poor to even afford a wreck?
No, I’m not particularly poor. I don’t choose to drive.
what the rog!
Multiculturalism discourages community? Well I guess it depends where your community ends? Am I allowed in? Iris marion Young,makes a very good argument, pertient to any discussion on ‘left’ values. Community without diversity is not cool. or progressive.
It’s ludicrous to consider complete freedom of speech a possiblity in anything but a completely free and fair world. We haven’t got one. Free trade is not on the agenda of most ‘lefties’ and not mentioned in Gummo’s post; for good reason. As Mark eloquently outlined earlier its about equality of opportunity now and this requires some limits to personal freedoms. Like the freedom to profit from ‘third world’ poverty and dictatorship. I’ll give you the Compulsory union thing, but student unions are bizarre creatures, nuf said. I dont support USU.
I think (as Mark and Gummo have begun to outline)the ideas are there, but they don’t lend themselves to a traditional left movement. The ‘left’ has not been bereft of ideas but of courage: the courage to fundamentally morph itself into a form fit for the 21st century.
Maybe its useful to look to the U.S, where the proliferation of ‘rightist’ think tanks has been noted and partially addressed. try this for size
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=1376283
While I take some exception to the suggestion that neo-liberals are significantly more amenable to ‘left’ social policies than conservatives, it would be interesting to see how the economic liberals among us react to American Progress’ ‘15 big ideas’
Blah blah blah michael G.
When it comes to enforcing the individual’s freedoms you lefties always have a good reason not to – for the common good I believe is the term.
So rog, what’s your big idea? or do you just criticise?
I think that’s a good point, michael. A lot of the left are either defending old shibboleths or have lost the courage to fight. The culture wars have a lot to do with that. It’s about demoralising opponents more than anything else.
Well actually i have only one reason to limit the individuals rights. And Darn it if you didn’t almost get it in one. The right of the individual is subserviant to certain basic rights of the collective.
If this is carried out honestly, then what’s not to like Rog? And I’m asking seriously. It may be the last time i attempt this.
Kim: I think it’s also about choosing battlefields and cultivating allies.
” The right of the individual is subserviant to certain basic rights of the collective.”
I thought history had buried groupism, why does its weak flame still flicker here?
“I thought history had buried groupism, why does its weak flame still flicker here?”
Because even you might change your tune if you rights as a member of the community were impinged upon and you didn’t have the financial means to do anything about it.
you = your
rog, I’m told that for more than 98% of the history of our species we lived in groups of about 30-40 adults. We got to be who we are through cooperation and groupism. It is essential to who and what we are.
The recent experiment of our species with individualism is either the next stage of development or, more likely a dangerous aberration when taken to the extremes of the neoliberals, the libertarians and the right generally.
As long as Brian, rog, pingu, etc are going to talk at the level of generalities rather than specific policies, then this whole discussion is meaningless …
I don’t see that, Jason. Broad directions are important. A preference for markets as allocators is not a specific policy from the right, for instance, but a political/philosophical/strategic stance.
Firstly, I’m a bit confused about what “groupism” is but I can guess.
Also I find the argument that we’ve lived 98% of the species history in some way, and so it must be essential a silly argument.
98% or more of the history of the species we lived with a division of labour on the basis of gender, lived in bare subsistance hunting and gathering but I don’t this is a reason to continue it any longer.
When Brian says stuff like:
‘The recent experiment of our species with individualism is either the next stage of development or, more likely a dangerous aberration when taken to the extremes of the neoliberals, the libertarians and the right generally. ‘
How is that meaningful? What ‘extremes’ is he talking about? A hard-core minority of libertarians want to abolish the welfare state altogether, the majority want to rely more on price mechanisms and competition for delivering public goods and otherwise propose reforms (such as the negative income tax) that would actually be more *ironclad* than the welfare state since they totally remove any stigma attached to redistribution. So I repeat, when Brian talks about ‘experiments with individualism’ he is talking in meaningless generalities.
In discussing Individual vs. Group, it seems to me a distinction would need to be made between collectivist ideologies (“groupism”? never heard of it) and social-contract ideologies. In the first, the individual, and his rights and needs, are indeed “subservient” (ooh, what a giveaway!) to the group or collective, as an earlier commenter noted. In social-contract theories, the rights and needs of both individual and group are respectively acknowledged, and then a necessary compromise is worked out between them, hopefully to mutual benefit.
But I admit it would be a lot more fun to keep rattling on about “groupism”.
Mainstream consequentialist forms of classical liberalism which are frequently erroneously referred to by terms such as ‘neo-liberalism’ and ‘economic rationalism’ are actually ultimately based on social contract theories, which is another reason why this whole bull session on groupism is unproductive.
I’m a bit uncomforatble with the term social contract, JPZ, but I broadly agree with your distinction and implied preference.
Communitarian anyone?
Or maybe we could just have “groupie-ism”: the rule of society by groupies! Who could object to that?
michael G — well, I was just using the term ’social contract’ because I thought that’s what it’s commonly-understood name is. As it happens, I do have an ‘implied preference’ for that one over the other, but presumably that shouldn’t affect my usage of what I thought was just standard nomenclature…
btw, ‘communitarian’ as against the previous two categories: also a very useful distinction. Forgot to include that one, and a far better choice to me than ‘collectivism’.
Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but ‘communitarian’ as a social strategy would seem to be a more organic phenomenon, a natural outgrowth (i.e., one w/o a pre-existing ‘theory’ or manifesto) of a society’s plain old history of figuring out how to function; whereas collectivism is an articulation of a hypothetical, theoretical society prior to its enaction, and ’social-contract’ is an effort to retro-actively describe systems that already seem to be in place. Maybe. I think.
Obviously the terms have problems, not the least that they’ve been used to describe just about anything that is vaguely right wing, but do you have a more concise name for “Mainstream consequentialist forms of classical liberalism”?
Bah, what a bunch of euphemisms.
‘Groupism’, ‘communitarianism’, ‘collectivism’, ’social contract’. What you really mean is ’slave philosophy’.
what did you eat with our taxes, this morning, Liam? why can’t you be more like those supermodels?
Myself, only a few minutes ago: “…because that’s what it’s name is…”
Holy shit, I just made the dreaded its/it’s confusion. And me, a jackass-y stickler on that very mistake…!
Enjoy your discussion, folks. I believe I must now go off and shoot myself.
Well, much as I hate to break ideological ranks, I can’t say that I’m a big fan of the rights of collectives – whether we’re talking about the rights of ancient city states, modern nation states, State governments in a federation, families, corporations or trade unions.
For all its faults, social contract theory has one merit – it opens the question of the justification of collectives and their proper organisation. The abstract model – of individuals coming together in communities to promote their individual interests and therefore sacrificing some imaginary absolute freedom to do whatever they can get away with – is stuffed but, generally, all the justifications point in the same direction. Collectives exist to promote the rights and welfare of their members, not vice versa.
When Phil Ruddock and DIMIA opportunistically deported a number of “criminal non-citizens” under s501 of the Migration Act, they were acting in defence of the imputed rights of the collective known as the Commonwealth of Australia. Something to do with that collective being entitled to law-abiding citizens, or something. But no-one gets a choice about which geographically based nation-state collective they’re born into, or in a lot of these cases, brought into as kids by their parents. So there’s a clear abuse of institutionalised collective power going on there.
You can select your own examples from here on in, but let’s all agree a basic point – collectives don’t have rights, except instrumentally. The problem of political organisation is to put your collectives together so that they continue to operate for the benefit of members, not the benefit of chancers and opportunists who are attracted to political power.
On evolution etc – let’s just stick with Aristotle’s common sense observation that nowhere in the world can we find people who live outside a society. Even complete sociopaths need other human beings, if only to bully, manipulate and exploit them. A sociopath marooned on a desert island would have a very glum and dismal time of it indeed (but I still wouldn’t go out of my way to rescue the bastard).
And if the big goals of social democracy have finally been achieved, there’s still plenty of work to be done defending it against the ideologically motivated idiots who are determined to tear it all down again.
I don’t believe for a moment that the big goals of social democracy have been achieved. In an economy and a society where individual self-interest is given a certain privilege, it’s always going to be a fight just to stand still if one wants to achieve equality of opportunity and collective provision for risk.
Jason Soon, (re 15 May 2006 at 3:16 pm comment)
“I don’t know how you get out of that the imputation that the CIS is paying op-ed editors to run their columns.�
That imputation is mainly yours, Jason. All I said was that Dennis Glover seemed to suggest that there was some sort of financial incentive for the print broadsheets to run think-tanks’ output, and could anyone clarify this. You chose to take only one possible meaning from this.
The score to date, then:
- the CIS (et al) don’t explicitly pay broadsheets to run their stuff (Well, derr – I’d be surprised if they could have kept this under the table for so long, if they did)
– nonetheless, the OpEd marketplace is *not* equally open to all comers (viz Andrew Norton’s comment that thinktank-sourced OpEds are not always paid for. Another way of putting this is that there is an effective market subsidy for thinktank-sourced OpEds. Ker-ching! That’s all I wanted – thanks, Andrew.)
– you have twice personally sledged me, for reasons I truly don’t get. If it were a tit-for-tat thing, I would understand – surely you didn’t think that I was referring to *you* in my earlier comment, that think-tanker preferment (if it existed) would not be justified on objective, quality grounds?
Paul
It is up to the op-ed writer whether he goes to the trouble of asking for his fee which he is legally entitled to.
FYI when in my current consulting job where I have helped research op-eds for managers in my company, these managers AFAIK have never followed up asking to be paid by the newspaper. Given that principals in consulting/stockbroking/investment banking companies that write op-eds on economic/financial commentary earn six figure salaries I doubt they need to. So if there are going to be implicit subsidies they are going to be far more common for articles written by employees of profit making companies than non-profit think tanks. I was a student when I was published under a CIS affiliation and I never chose to forgo my few hundred bucks ,nor did CIS ever discourage me from doing so.
The other factors which Andrew mentions (e.g. repeated interactions, reputation for being timely are *far* more important than whether an op-ed editor has to make a payment that doesn’t even come out of his own pocket but the company’s coffers). Thus you are exaggerating a very minor and possibly inconsequential insight all presumably as part of your grand conpiracy theory of How The Powers That Be Are Keeping Paul Watson Out of the Market.
Mark:
The last comment you made doesn’t really stand upo to scrutiny. I think it was riedman who recently was reported to have made a few interesting coments about whether social Democrats have reached their goals.
He says the late 40’s and 50’s were years when the talk was all gung ho towards Domocratic socialism in the West but without the econmies being that socialized. The talk now is about free markets and deregulation etc. but the economies are quite socialized. I think the old man has a point.
The Thatcher/Reagan “revolution� did not really succeed in my book if the attempt was to get government out of our lives. Of course I am not for a moment suggesting these two giants of the 20th century didn’t have successes. Of Course they did.
However the only measure a Libertarian would use to determine success is the level of Government spending. In neither country did we see any fall. The US has remained at around 30/35% while the UK was 35/40% when Maggie left office. So the best we can say is that they simply walked into the middle of the road yelling, “STOP� while the traffic just slowed down almost ignoring them.
They did cut down on regulations but the aftermath of Exon’s knee-jerk regulatory response has almost taken us back to future.
A very interesting business acquisition was made in the US recently when David Koch of Koch industries made a friendly takeover of a US$23 billion business. It was the largest public company acquisition going private in US history. The reason given was the onerous reporting requirements of public companies these days. Many more are expected to follow. So much for deregulation!
So the idea that we’re walking the walk doesn’t really measure up to scrutiny.
Try privatizing health care or social security in Australia. There is as much chance of the happening as snow in Brisbane in December. Let’s see if a well ensconced Howard would even murmur an attempt to privatize the ABC. Fat chance of that!
I noticed a well-known blogger made the comment that the right hasn’t had any new ideas. That’s true as far as it goes, but that is to misunderstand the economic right by a bigger turning circle than the Titanic. The right shouldn’t have any ideas about how to run the economy with the exception of minimal deregulation and government intervention. I haven’t seen anyone come out and refute the laws of gravity recently. Unless I see a refutation of the law of comparative advantage, the marginal productivity theory, etc positions can’t change. In other words economic laws that the economic right responds to are axiomatic. What bright ideas do the left have to show for themselves?
edit edit
The last comment you made doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny. I think it was Friedman who recently was
I’ll drink to that Gummo.
Individual rights are subserviant to certain basic rights of the collective, understood as a fair and equal representative of it’s members.
But that a bit more of a mouthful, eh? (And Darn, I formulated it much better before, but the little computer munchkins were ganging up on me.) Maybe if we substituted communityfor colelctive? that would seemt to imply the neccesary to-ing and fro-ing
Linguistics aside, earlier in the thread I was basically on your wave length when I referred to Iris Marion Young and her ‘Inclusion and democracy.’ Community without diversity spells danger. So what then is a legitimate basis on which to build a community? Iris says the neighbourhood. I say humanity…and then the neighbourhood.
I would argue that the traditional ‘left’ and the economic ‘right’, both have major unrealised ideas I reckon though, the real good stuff is to be found in Civil Society.
JC, How do you define government?
Yes, there are some valid points there, Joe, and the reality is that we have a mixed economy in effect, but the size of spending isn’t that relevant to me – as you’d know, Howard and Bush are both big spenders. I’d personally like to see a smaller state as something of a libertarian leftie who has a preference for policy solutions which empower people rather than dictate to them. But in any case, I’d argue it’s where the spending is directed that’s important.
In Oz, the budget is stuffed full of rorts and subsidies for special interests – ie rural and certain business sectors. How nuts is it that we spend 10 million bucks to “generate” 200 jobs at a Ford plant. The states are just as bad. And then you get all sorts of ridiculous other examples of business welfare.
Just a very quick comment on communitarianism. Most of it is nostalgic. And most of it has a great danger of slipping into authoritarianism, which is probably why Young (who’s a good political thinker) makes those sorts of remarks.
Well until we achieve the “smaller state” (I always think of the von Trapps exodus to Switzerland where the hills are alive with the sound of music) we have to get the rest of the world into line, half the place has yet to emerge from Jurassic Park.
Mark, the reason for all the pork barrels is the price of political harmony, you will never get the majority of votes if you offend the majority of voters, thats the way it is.
Anybody in favour of the proposed Independent Contractors Act (or should all workers be forced to knuckle under the collective weight of the unions)?
Jason, re my “meaningless” remark, I was responding to rog in kind. While I don’t agree that it was meaningless I do agree that spelling things out in more detail is necessary for productive engagement about ideas.
Partly I don’t have time right now and partly this is not the best place. But I didn’t want to let rog’s statement stand.
Steve, you said this was silly:
It comes from Ronald Wright. He was talking about the small group life of precivilisation times within which we evolved as a species. He claimed that civilisation produces extended hierarchies and powerful elites that become cut off from the basic activity that sustains them – the production of food and the use of environmental resources. He is arguing that the lifestyle of small groups prior to civilisation has a proven record of sustainability while the jury is still out as to whether modern global civilisation is going to be sustainable.
He was definitely saying that the earlier lifestyle was more likely to be cooperative and less authoritarian.
But as I understand him, he’s not necessarily saying that cooperation within groups is essential to our nature. I am. The difference now is that we have greater opportunities to choose and negotiate the groups we participate in.
I don’t think there is anything radical or new in this as I’m not denying the existence of individualism or competition, it’s a matter of valuing and emphasis.
rog,
More on the Independent Contractors’ Act, please. My experience of independent contracting is that you didn’t have to knuckle under to the trade unions – instead you knuckled under to the corporation or “pimp” who was hawking your services around the traps.
rog, what ever happened to “good governance and the rule of law”?
The Independent Contractors’ Act is mainly designed to do two things. Stop truckies being represented by unions, and stop courts and tribunals finding that people have been deemed to be “contractors” to avoid paying entitlements, not because they are providing an independent service.
And Brian, my reading of anthropology suggests that is basically right. As soon as you have a surplus, you have hierarchy and elites. But I’m not sure that you’d want to draw too many conclusions from it other than what you have in your last paragraph, because I’m not sure that the conclusion in the second last paragraph can legitimately be inferred from the premise. Having said that, I agree with it, but I’d ground it somewhat differently.
Getting back to the possibilities of collective action, today in my sustenance breaks I was reading David Peetz’s Brave new work place. He set’s out a framework for collectivism.
Second for collectivism to flourish there must be collectivist attitudes ie common social identity, cooperative values, and a sense of collective efficacy.
Third in order to actually do anything the group must have coordinating capacity through connections or networks and mobilisers.
These then interact with target institutional responses/environmental circumstances.
Peetz admits this model is simplistic but says that if you drew all the connections and interactions you would have a chart akin to the wiring diagram of a small power station.
While he developed this in an industrial relations context it seems to me it could have broader application.
He also points out that the notion that “we are all individuals now� is a boss’s con who on their part have not relinquished collective behaviour. He believes that the collective impulse is in fact still alive in the breasts of the Australian masses.
Thanks, Mark. If I were starting with a clean sheet I’d ground it differently also. I was going to say that it was consistent with the notion of… or similar, but I didn’t want to complicate matters too much.
I’m a bit too buggered to work out how I’d do it at the moment, Brian!
John Quiggin’s take on the substantive issues of the post here:
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2006/05/16/where-are-the-new-ideas/
Mark, I think I’d be inclined to start with that 15,000 word draft you did a few years ago on Merleau-Ponty. You started with Descartes’ cogito ergo sum and the body-mind divide and ended up via Husserl and a lot of others with a social conception of individual identity.
At least the gainsayers would have to do some work to attack your argument!
Thanks, Brian, I must read that again!
So must I. It was very worthwhile and you should do something with it post-thesis.
Now I’m off to bed.
Yes indeed, and thanks, Brian.
And post bloody essay marking!
Brian thanks for the explanation. In the first run it sounded a lot like an argument by tradition.
Trot
JC, How do you define government?
To do as little as possible and not play games with our money. Can’t see much use for govt other than defense and taking care of the bottom 10%. That’s probably even more than they can handle.
And what about the rights for those workers who choose to be independent?
Its no good relying on assumptions, many prefer to work that way, I did so for many years. The left have always had contractors in their sights as they operated outside the union system and are generally performance orientated.
As for entitlements, the law demands that employers must see evidence that contractors are compliant with workers comp, OHS, insurance etc.
Of course the academics always know better.
rog, I’ve done lots of work as an independent contractor, and never been heavied by unions…
In any case, the Workplace Relations Act already prevented agreements from restricting contract work. So as usual, it’s a blunt instrument to solve what may or may not be a problem – no evidence is ever presented but anecdote.
The state tribunals and courts were dealing with cases were employers sacked their cleaners (for instance) and then hired them as “independent contractors” with few of the indicators in common law that they were actually performing a contract of services as opposed to being just employees with lower pay and no rights.
Is that the sort of thing you support?
JC,
Wasn’t me asking how you define government, old son. If you’re going to snark, do try to snark at the right person. Otherwise people might get the impression that your comments are motivated by personal animosity.
Incidentally, that isn’t a definition of government – it’s your idea of the proper role of government. Which could just as easily be achieved under a system of government where supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses as one where it’s all based on some farcical aquatic ceremony.
Democrats, of course, prefer the former, with the attendant risk that the masses might decide that government should take on a few tasks beyond policing and defence.
Thanks for taking the snark for me Gummo.
Fair enough JC, i don’t disagree… that much. But i was asking for a definition of government, not of the proper role of government. Is government, a bunch of people you vote for every 3 years or is it any group of people who get together to make collective plans about how they shoudl organise themselves…or?
How do you feel about Local Gov, for example?
Oh, What Gummo said.
Come on Mark, you can do better than that, you know as well as anyone else that an unlawful dismissal is unlawful.
You ask me to argue against an anecdote (that of cleaners) whilst dismissing the use of what you call anecdote as per the Workplace Relations Act, you are not being consistent.
I dont think you are able to differentiate between an ambit claim and an actual claim.
Trotsky
It wasn’t snarking, actually. It was how I would have answered it to anyone. Maybe it’s just that vivid imagaination of yours. Sorry bout the mistake and should have realized it wasn’t from you.
Government
Define Government
Direct, administer, supervise functions electors have asked it to manage.
Number I function: to protect and always attempt to ensure the safety the people from harm.
The remark about groupthink is laughable when one consider the groupthinkof neo liberalism. Whether as part of the cultural psychopath the corporation, maliciously trying to strip civil society of its very essentials,or in the parallel spin- off of mind and soul numbing expediency exhibited by that limb Ruddock, the same Dalek-like mentality so well unearthed with Gummo Trotsky’s example, as ocurs with third-world neo colonialism or the slave society sought by deadheads like Hendy.
All hail the modern SS!
The right doesn’t have ideas because it has think-tanks, it has think-tanks because it has ideas that need promoting. Ideas come first, and then you build appropriate organisations around them.
Nothing to do, of course, with the fact that the ideas promoted by the Right have an advantage for private companies and conservative governments, resulting in the lovely income streams to establish and maintain said thinktanks.