I’ve been reading a lot lately about the history of the British Liberal Party from its Gladstonian zenith to its nadir after the failure of Lloyd George’s last serious campaign for office in 1929. In part, I’m interested in parties in decline (and I suspect that there might be some relevance here for the Australian Liberals and the US Republicans, though it’s too early to make that call) and I’m also interested in the transition from parliamentary politics to mass electoral politics. But I won’t say anything about any of that now.
What struck me in reading the latest tome I got from the library was the way in which British Liberals attempted to handle the emergence of the Labour movement as a sectional interest group from the 1880s - before its gradual turn towards a parliamentary party (a drawn out process which lasted from 1900 til 1918). The Liberal thinkers of the 1880s and 1890s were desperate to avoid or forfend the age of class politics and to rebuild a party which could realistically claim to represent a national interest transcending class. To that end, some advocated symbolic attention to labour issues (like the agitation against Chinese indentured labour in the Transvaal in the last term of the Tory government before 1905) while scrupulously maintaining a “balance” between the interests of employers and labour. That was also, of course, coloured by a long British tradition of seeing employment as a private and extra-political matter - which has left its stamp on British industrial relations to this day and also influenced the classical political economists of the ninenteenth century in large measure. But while some concessions could be made (for instance the payment of MPs) many politicians warned that if the balance tipped too far towards labour, the state should intervene to bolster the position of capital.
I couldn’t help thinking about the Ruddian parallels.
Of course, the labour movement is a movement (at least ostensibly) in decline now, while it was a rising interest in the British politics of the late nineteenth century. But I suspect Rudd is pitching the Australian Labor Party towards a sort of nineteenth century national interest reformist Liberalism. That’s not necessarily a new thing for the ALP. It could be argued that Whitlam (oddly now portrayed as a hero of the left) also sought to transcend what he saw as labour particularism - but the difference of course is that the trade union movement was much stronger back in the Whitlamite day and thus the field of manoeuvre much narrower.
Australian political analysis tends to assume that parties, and their ideologies and practices, are fairly stable if not immutable. It’s questionable how true this is. The best analyses of the Howardian Liberal Party, such as Judith Brett’s, highlight the consistency of claims to represent a national interest. However, the practice of Howardian politics has been a highly sectional government, even if All of Us are a different mob than the sectional interests Keating was flayed for being supine to. Howard’s big government conservatism and his constitutional centralism should not be underestimated as key innovations in the Liberal tradition. Their legacy will continue to shape the political contest, even after he is gone. Similarly, there’s definitely a whiff of Gladstonian sound finance around Rudd Labor. And perhaps, though we’re yet to see the reality in office, a turn towards federalism rather than Whitlamite centralism.
I’ve been interested, therefore, to read many of the contributions to an online symposium the British magazine Soundings is holding on the future(s) of the left.
I’m particularly struck by this contribution from Jeremy Gilbert:
So what can we do about it now? Well, not much, obviously. But what we can do, we vaguely social(ist?) (Radical?) democratic intellectuals, is at least to stop talking - to ourselves, each other, and others - as if it was still the case the policies like full funded, fully-socialised, health-care, decently-funded universities and civilized provision for the aged were still reasonable, moderate objectives, implementable by decent clever people of good intent from Whitehall and Westminster. Let’s at least admit that if we want those things now, we will have to fight for them in a way that many did not think we had to 30 years ago.
There are many antipodean parallels here with the Blairite acceptance of much of the Thatcher settlement. Much ground has been conceded on private health insurance, marketised universities and the privatisation rather than socialisation of risk. Many aspects of social policy have been turned over to profit-making enterprises - such as the Job Network. Labor shows no inclination to reverse these trends. Perhaps it will “civilise” them.
So I think, in Australia too, it’s becoming an increasingly radical thing to be a social democrat, and I suspect that under a Rudd government, if that comes to pass, we might have to start thinking seriously about how we must begin to fight for aims which would have been seen as centrist orthodoxy thirty or forty years ago.
Note: This post has been republished at On Line Opinion.
IN MEMORIAM
Telecom
Medibank
Qantas
State Bank of SA
SGIC [SA]
Engineering and Water Supply
Electricity Trust of SA
Australia Post
Public Buildings Dept.
Commonwealth Bank
Trades Unions
Airports
…..and others
Much loved and sorely missed
oops
I highly doubt LPers are familiar with it, but there’s a party called the Democrats and they still do social democracy beyond flinging the Fair Go about for doorstop points.
Mark wrote:
“Much ground has been conceded on the privatisation rather than socialisation of risk.”
Former Deputy Prime Minister Brian Howe, in his book “Weighing Up Australian Values”, rejects the emphasis on personal responsibility and morality heard in much of current social policy discourse. He contends that society needs to give more attention to anticipating risks as they confront people across their life course.
Mark, of all the “social democrat” ideas, this is one I’m willing give a fair and thorough hearing to.
I believe a synthesis can be found that integrates the thinking of Brian Howe with other disciplines of strategic thinking. Or at least, having not yet read Howe’s book properly, that is my initial impression.
…From Justin
At the turn of the 20th century, the two opposing political forces in the first Australian Parliament were the Free Traders and the Protectionists.
At the turn of the 21st century the same basic divide exists.
The fundamental issue was and is how a capitalist economy survives globalising forces, and manipulating social arrangements to support the economy (hence the evolution of Lib/Lab) was and is the pathway to electoral power.
Plus ca change?
While you are looking at these issues, Mark, you might find it interesting to compare also with the NZ Muldoon government and the subsequent Lange government. Two political forces that were so extreme that they over overlapped to occupy each other’s traditional territory.
Well, yes, once you consider how few were willing to settle for the Wilson-Callaghan settlement. Just because a fair bit of time has elapsed since then is no excuse for failing to come up with a response for the pressing issue of the day: if this (the Wilson-Callaghan settlement of high-cost low-outcome government) is social democracy, you can stick it. To quote a popular refrain from that time: nooooo future, nooooo future, nooooooo future for you!
OK, so I’ve heard of the Democrats, now what? Nothing? Thought so. Interesting that the last Democrat to do doorstop points (Natasha) was also the last successful leader the party had, given that doorstop points was all she had left once Meg Lees sold them out.
I’d be fascinated to see how much of what Lees was promised in return for her vote has actually been realised, not just in terms of announcements but actual money spent etc.
Well the shifting of ‘risk’ to households and individuals is always popular, with capital for obvious reasons, and for a while tolerated by the population at large, so long as the real implicatons aren’t felt. I suspect however that the move to download risk, while shifting political power and influence ‘up’ has about reached the limits of tolerance in anglo democracies. The Iraq war’s influence on people’s thinking about the competence and honesty of contemporary political elites has some way to go to unravel in my opinion and pity help the gpvermnem,nt holding the reins if and when some stock market somewhere ‘corrects’ in an unseemly fashion, or inflation breaks out, despite falling shares of output going too employee remuneration.
Hannah, I’m looking at your list and not seeing too many things there to mourn.
State banks? The Commonwealth Bank? Qantas? Airports? The state electricity providers? Telecom/Telstra maybe, but only because the crucial monopoly infrastructure was converted to a private monopoly without being split from the retail half.
I think it’s important to distinguish between what things the government needs to fund (education, aged care, and so on), and does better organising itself (health), from things that really are more efficiently run by the private sector.
I’m much more concerned about the continuing rise in income, and especially wealth, inequity in Australia, than whether my bank is run by the government or not.
I’m much more concerned about the continuing rise in income, and especially wealth, inequity in Australia, than whether my bank is run by the government or not.
What’s wrong with that?
Robert Merckel
There also needs to be a lot more awareness that just because it might be good social policy to FUND this or that activity (be it health, education….) that does not mean, ipso facto, that it is good social policy for government to run and/or provide the infracstructure and on-going management of those activities.
The rise in income, I mean, not bank services.
Income inequity. Specifically, the very rich are getting richer much faster than the rest of us.
So what?
I apologise for the terseness, but it’s just that I can’t see why inequity is a problem: some people in society not having enough money is a problem, but that’s different from people having variable incomes but still having enough to get by - which is by and large how things are in Australia.
Tim, you’re just being obtuse.
Because I don’t accept the libertarian contention that disparaties in income and wealth are irrelevant. Because I think the net benefits of giving $100 to a million people are greater than giving $100 milllion to 1 person. Because I don’t buy the argument that making the very rich even richer is in any way making the rest of us better off. They’re just a very small but disproportionately influential interest groups whose bleatings should be treated with the suspicion they deserve (for instance, when they blather on about the unfair burden of the top marginal tax rate).
On your in memorium.
This is a very opportune time to be remembering state run businesses, and how the came about, and very importantly the divestiture process. We are at a point in time when it may be very important for the state, on behalf of the people, to underwrite capital ventures that are necessary for our overall well being. Rapid reaction to global warming will, I believe, require a new era of public/private enterprise partnership. The governments role in this is to create global guidence on the direction then create the stability in which the process can mature. Howard has tried a Nuclear/Coal leadership approach which I feel is in the process of being rejected by the public, business, and the science community. If it is rejected by vote of the people then we will next see a Solar based Renewables direction offered. It will, next, be very interesting to see how government and business blend to bring this to reality in a short period of time.
Tim, you’re just being obtuse.
No, I’m not. The assumption that inequity in itself is a bad thing is wrong. I don’t care if someone earns millions of dollars more than me, any more than I care if the rise in their income is quicker than mine. But it’s essentially a side issue to this thread.
Mark, I wouldn’t say that social democracy is dead - even the Coalition, who are nominally right-wing, balance their free marketers out with agrarian socialists (ie, the National Party), and while they have privatised a number of services, this hasn’t been a blanket approach.
The approach to welfare for out-of-work people is a particularly interesting example. It’s arguable that they suffer from an excess of socialism - ie, the Government drive to get people off the dole through ‘mutual obligation’, wherein Government decides what the obligations are and then forces dole recipients to take part in it. Of course, if they didn’t have mutual obligation, many people would feel disinclined to even look for a job - resulting in a class of permanent unemployed who are a permanent drain on public resources.
Labor of course could do something to change the unsatisfactory ‘mutual obligation’ if they got in power, but I don’t think they will.
Robert Merckel
Unfortunately your last post highlights THE key wrong road taken by many Leftists; the road to irrelevance. Money is not GIVEN to anybody, except those on welfare.
Wealth is CREATED.
While your section of the Left continues with its conception of the state as nothing more than a gigantic St. Vincent’s de Paul, you will remain irrelevant in public discourse.
Hmmm. My other comment seems to be caught in moderation…
TimT, a somewhat different tack on the question would be to look at the argument John Quiggin has made that the Howard government practices social democracy by stealth because of its high tax take and the redistributive nature of some of its spending. However, I don’t concur with this argument for a number of reasons:
(a) The size of government in OECD countries has shown a continued expansion over a long period of time, which more or less reached a plateau in the early 70s. Thatcher, for instance, wasn’t able to reduce the public share of GDP, merely to restrain its growth. So I think here we see longer term secular trends at work which operate regardless of the political colour of governments;
(b) The important thing for a social democrat is not the degree of redistribution but the targetting of the redistribution.
As to Robert’s point about public vs. private ownership, I’d generally agree in principle but suggest that he look more carefully at individual instances.
Queensland still has state electricity providers in public ownership. It would be instructive to compare the prices charged to consumers here with those in Victoria under Kennett and SA under the Liberal governments.
Similarly, the nonsense of competition in Melbourne public transport - with private interests running particular train or tram or bus lines in a geographically bounded area doesn’t give much comfort to the “private is always more efficient” argument.
And I still believe there is a case for government owning enterprises in key markets which can influence the structure of competition in that market because they’re not oriented solely to return to shareholders.
Of course, that doesn’t apply when governments behave like the owners of capital - one example being the disastrous ideologically and management fad driven experiment of purchaser-provider splits within the TAFE system introduced by Santo Santoro when he was a Queensland Minister.
But I just don’t think there is a case that private enterprise is inherently more efficient than government.
Okay, it’s out now, thanks. John, I more or less agree, though it’s exceedingly optimistic to think that this major issue of dispute between right and left will be resolved in this comment thread!
from Mark:
“But I just don’t think there is a case that private enterprise is inherently more efficient than government.”
The key word here is ‘efficient” which carries a specialized meaning within a capitalist system that is actually not within the meaning of the word itself.
We say somebody or some organisation is efficient when it carries out a task competently, or even more efficient if it does so better than another person/organisation.
And thre’s the rub, we need to compare apples with…guess what….apples.
And publicly owned organisations do not have the same aims/tasks as do private aka capitalist organisations.
Capitalism is geared to maximising profit as it primary aim, perhaps it’s only aim.
Public enterprises can have a much larger range, inherent with their charter, that includes aims that capitalist enterprises will probably not even consider unless they are subordinated to the maximisation of profit.
Aims can include long range research and development, an aim capitalists do poorly and public enterprises better eg the far more ‘efficient’ performance of Woods and Forests Dept. in SA in establishing a timber industry and all related to that.
Aims such as providing services to communities that would under a capitalist system be ignored and the controversy of Telecom/Telstra illustrates that.
Banks with public ownership can efficiently satisfy aims eg providing low cost mortgages, as the State Bank did, when capitalist banks do not have such on their list.
SGIC can provide low profit insurance eg 3rd party, when capitalist companies refuse to do so.
There are many other examples, from my list, that public enterprises are far more efficient than private simply because the private does not even attempt to satisfy such aims.
And, finally, I remember when direct comparison of a public vs private enterprise was possible back in the days when TAA aka Australian Airlines had a better eficiency rating in all relevant indicators than its rival Ansett.
Its the loss of all these “efficiencies” that I mourn.
Hannah: CSL — now that was a shocker…
You miss the point here. Policies have been devised which depend for their efficacy on income inequality growth. These policies convert political and social power into instruments for preserving income inequality, irrespective of how ‘hard’ a person works. There is no necessary connection between overall GDP, and overall well being, in the absence of policies designed to ensure that the growth in output and wealth is spread around. When policies are devised to block or prevent that happening, it is not unreasonable to complain. Since people are working both longer, and generally more intensively when they are at work, an explanation of the falling share of employee remuneration as a proportion of overall output does not seem unreasonable.
I wonder, per Gittins in Saturday’s Australian (p45), just how the ‘crisis’ would be framed, if the relative shares of output going to wage and salary earners was going up instead of down, and if the gains made at the top had been spread around a bit more? I doubt we would be reading things like ‘I don’t care how little I earn, I just love working for its own sake’ from CEOs and their professional cheer squads in business pages and business schools.
Poppycock, John.
More sophisticated analysis: yes, entrepreneurs and managers can create wealth, and the incentive of being able to use it for your own purposes is a necessary incentive for doing so.
What I am suggesting to you is that the evidence that letting them hang on to an even greater proportion of it is going to result in better outcomes for the rest of us, or change their lifestyles noticeably, is thin to nonexistent.
Furthermore, there is the issue of inherited wealth. Has James Packer actually created any wealth, or just managed the wealth gifted to him in an inferior manner than, say, just sticking the money in an index fund on the ASX?
Leinad on 4 June 2007 at 1:20 pm
“Hannah: CSL — now that was a shocker”
You’ve lost me…please explain.
Just on the point hannah and I have been making about privatisation, I understand that the health plans being advanced by Edwards and Obama in the States both make provision for a government owned insurer to compete within the insurance market in order to put downwards pressure on costs and profit-gouging. Both candidates have been advised by health economists from places like Harvard and Princeton.
John Quiggin’s recent discussion of the politics of economics is interesting in this regard - orthodox economists who aren’t also blinded by ideology (and most of the push to privatisation is just ideological) are able to analyse real world policy issues in ways that produce solutions which often favour public involvement in markets.
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2007/06/01/heterodoxy-is-not-my-doxy/
hannah: You were listing privatisations before, for mine most pale in comparison to the privatisation of Commonwealth Serum Laboratories — the monopoly supplier of blood products to Australian hospitals. Google it and weep…
I would like to suggest a guiding rule in the private versus public management thing. The public sector is better at managing a scarce or fixed resource in the public interest. The private sector is better at managing dynamic resources. That is resources that incorporate significant scope for intelectual input. Two examples to consider, water and communications. The public sector also has a role in securing resources in the public interest when the private sector has failed to perform reliably, ie electricity.
Mark, would you mind elaborating on what, exactly, “particularly struck” you about this passage? I’m in complete agreement with it, but it also seems to be at odds (if only in certain respects) with what, on other occasions, you’ve suggested “vaguely social(ist?) (Radical?) democratic intellectuals” should do.
So, could you specify your reading of the significance of the passage?
I think I specify my reading of it in the succeeding paragraph, Captain. Perhaps you could assist me in explaining why you think I’m being inconsistent.
Let’s forget the question of inconsistency for the moment; I’m just trying to work out what you see as the significance of the passage.
I see in the Gilbert passage a call or an injunction: “stop talking as if it was still the case” that the policies “we” (i.e. we vaguely social(ist?) (Radical?) democratic intellectuals) “were still reasonable, moderate objectives, implementable by decent clever people of good intent from Whitehall and Westminster” and “fight for them in a way that many did not think we had to 30 years ago”.
Judging from the suceeding paragraphy, though, what you see as the significance is that the list of things “we” want but which are no more is similar to the list of things “we” (social democrats in Australia) want but which are no more — is that right?
So what you’re working with in Gilbert’s piece is the description rather than the injunction? Is that right?
No, the injunction.
As well.
Speaking of privatisation, Australia Post is back on the agenda, courtesy of CommSec, or whatever they call themselves. Its chief economist was on the radio this morning spruiking the elleged benefits of a sale ‘moving forward’.
As one caller suggested, never trust anyone who repeatedly uses that ghastly phrase.
Firstly, where there’s greater benefit to consumers in having a service provided privately than publicly, it should be in private hands.
Qantas and ComBank are better enterprises for not having to go cap-in-hand to the taxpayer. There is no call for a people’s airline - and if there is, you should be able to turn a buck from it (I Still Call Australia Home, anyone?). Telstra will be too - they suffer from poor leadership and having the framework for their privatisation stunted by successive (and equally clueless) governments.
Secondly, where there’s greater penalty to society as a whole for not having a service than having it, the service will be provided by government. This is why government runs rape crisis centres, and public transport (yeah, so they don’t in Melbourne - and aren’t Connex shareholders taking an absolute bath copping the sort of shit that politicians seem only to happy to wade into public life especially to cop).
Sydney Water would be no better as a private entity than a public one. Many other entities on the private-public cusp are in a similar position, requiring massive injections of capital before you can even think about innovation. Pacific National is another example.
The lesson from Telstra is not some stale bullshit from Gramsci or whatever - it showed the market that if government is selling something, it must be a dog of an investment. Where is the public entity sitting on massively unrealised gains? That carnival is over. Never mind calling on government not to sell something, the real trick would be encouraging Teh People not to buy. Remember mobilising the masses? Gorn, if you were real socialists rather than risk-averse coffee-shop heroes, you’d give it a go or die trying.
When you have vast wealth going to the private sector, you occasionally get a Medici but more than a few Borgias. When you have the economy controlled by politicians you get the occasional FDR or Nugget Coombs, but more than a few Francos or Stalins. You are, as the old philosopher once said, fucked either way.
Its occurred to me, and it has for some time, that the real division in society isn’t now between capital and labor, or ‘big business’ and small business.
Its between the majority of us, whether worker or boss, who struggle along in the free market, and the well connected ‘insiders’ ; government backed businesses, overpaid consultants and law firms, media monopolists, property developers etc etc etc
In other words, the real driver of income inequality these days, IMO, is the rise of market failure. Fund managers and investment bankers creaming off millions from managed funds, company directors getting huge rises, consultants doing work at $400 per hour for their mates in government - from both parties.
Both major parties are in favor of big government, just for different sectional interests.
If we want to attack income inequality, we’ve got to attack its cause - market failure and the moral hazard of when people aren’t spending their own money. Its the only way.
I was ready to tolerate this blog and its posters until a TimT mentioned the unemployed and then other rants about welfare made me realise,how limited again blogging can be.As a recipient of Centrelink payments for a long time and in my teenage years and twenties as a baby-boomer,the bludger thing came up.All this hypothesizing of this and that Publicly owned bodies or organizations,and, well they never really served me,and I would suspect they hardly served anyone else here.Having a bank account offends me,no end, even more when I receive advice from Centrelink that its been putting money in it ,and well, fly away St. Peter fly away Paul Keating. Most of the opinions here are smug bunnies in a rug.The hark hark hark of Left Right serves no useful purpose if the citizenry cannot handle public or private enterprise in any form as they blandly falter into an argument of those days these days.Give it up.Be consumers and if someone ,anywhere,in Australia is producing something or working on something admirable,support it with money or not.Let the individual who has a sense of relationship with all shine through this maelstrom.The failures of political theory ,economic theory and Entity,are many and known.To be really competitive today requires more than shouting Enterprise from whatever seems a rooftop.Because the TV antenna may get in the road.And ragged trousered Philanthropist are possible still because they are saving money by wiping the paint on their old clothes as rags,before they buy some new ones.. secondhand from a charity. There is always a potential to form new Government owned institutions if the legal mechanism allows it,and who runs it has to be able to manage it according to the laws of the day.Therefore much could even be achieved in the future,that doesnt find itself on the hark,hark hark..Left Right groans and moans.
Correct. But perhaps an historical antecedent for Howardian political practices can be found not within British Liberal politics of the last part ofthe Long Nineteenth Century, but in British Tory politics.
Randolph Churchill’s Tory democracy pandered to clients in sections of the British working class (Howard’s “Battlers”) and beat the sectarian drum loudly against Irish influences and the threat of Home Rule (Howard’s dogwhistles.)
Churchill is rumoured to have died of syphilis. Howard my catch myxo from his Akubra.
Any news in the East re Newspoll for us Sandgropers in the West ??
Mark on 4 June 2007 at 12:52 pm
There is no case that capitalism is more efficient than statism in all circumstances. Or vice-versa. Its horses for evolutionary courses.
Efficiency is typically a function of the degree of voice and choice principals exert over agents in a given institutional forum. This is the foundation of an Open Society’s responsible accountability, making due process conducive to good progress.
Social democracy simply combines the economics of the firm on the productive side with welfare economics on the distributive side. In competitive markets it is obvious that catallactic firms have the edge over the dead hand of bureaucratic agencies. Conversely, in monopolistic arenas democratic states have it all over wastefully competitive firms.
Likewise soc-dem in principle supports progressive taxation. But regressive changes to the tax scale could in principle be justified if they improved overall productivity, along the lines of Rawls mini-max theorum.
There is no final answer on the right balance between private and public economy. It depends on the shape of functions which are always curving in unpredictable ways. That “unscrupuous opportunism” is what gives soc-dem its scientific edge.
Phil Travers, I was on Centrelink payments for about five years (in the last year or so while doing part-time work). I know people rort the system because every time the time came around to fill out the dole diary, I inevitably rorted the system.
About the fourth year on welfare payments, I heard friends - who worked in Newcastle Council admin - discussing someone they knew who had received ‘the golden handshake’ - he’d been on welfare for so long that Centrelink had just given up on trying to find him work. It horrified me that I could be on the track to be just like that; and it horrified me that Centrelink could just give up on a person like that, as a routine bureaucratic decision. And it horrified me that something like this could be so normal and routine as to be a joke amongst administration.
So I admit, I am prejudiced, but I’d say some of those prejudices at least arise out of direct experience!
Mark wrote: “No, the injunction.”
In that case, I’m a bit confused. Maybe you don’t interpret the injunction in the same way I do….
Here’s how I read it: Let’s stop acting as though our parliamentary representatives, and especially our executive branch, operate on the basis of dispassionate reason and general, non-partisan goodwill. Accordingly, let’s stop acting as though we could convince those who are in power (or who have power) by speaking to them via ostensibly reasonable, objective and civil forms of discourse. Instead of trying to convince others through reasoned debate, etc., let’s admit that we will have to fight for the policies we want via other means.
What those other means might be remains, of course, unspecified, but I read the injunction as one to suspend, not speaking or arguing as such, but rather our investment in the model of debate implied by the view that “policies like full funded, fully-socialised, health-care, decently-funded universities and civilized provision for the aged [are] still reasonable, moderate objectives, implementable by decent clever people of good intent from Whitehall and Westminster”. Consequently, the injunction calls for us to fight via forms of discourse (among other means and other forms of action, obviously) that do not necessarily seem reasonable, objective and civil.
My reading of the injunction, however, seems (as I said earlier) to be at odds (if only in certain respects) with what, on other occasions, you’ve argued. So I’m surprised that the passage from Gilbert struck you so — which leaves me wondering how you read the injunction…
Hm. Seems the spam-killer doesn’t like me very much…
Oh, ok, I get what you’re saying.
No, I didn’t read it as a call not to use “reasoned debate”. I read it as pointing out that we can’t expect the British Labour Party (or by inference, the ALP) to stand for social democratic policy and thus to imagine that the election of a Labour/Labor government is sufficient to ensure a turn to social democratic policy. Probably you could have with the Whitlam Labor party. On the whole. Therefore we need to explicitly fight for those objectives. How you do that is surely a matter for reasoned debate and I can’t imagine the methods wouldn’t include reasoned debate.
The next set of articles in the Left Futures debate at Soundings have been posted.
Well worth a look.
http://www.soundings.org.uk/
Mark
You are kidding, right!!!???? Dude, get ye to a “History of the 20th century century” course toute de suite. Then for the love of god, take Micro 101 and put us out of our misery.
What possible argument or evidence could you use to justify such a bone-headed statement?
What next? “Hamas! The Face of 21st Century Feminism?”
Mark’s post has been republished today in On Line Opinion:
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=5941
John, have you examined the US health system lately? A privately run system that is clearly less efficient than either the limited public run component, or that of any other developed nation.
That counter argument alone is enough to make Mark’s case that private systems are not inherently (ie inevitably) more efficient, although of course there is plenty of evidence they are in many circumstances.
There’ve been some interesting comments on the OLO discussion forum:
http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5941
Mark, you said
On the contrary, Bush, Thatcher II and Howard have unadventently arrested the decline of the labour movement and - being slightly closer to the action - the Aust. Labor Party are probably better prepared to take advantage of this change in the tide.
Immutable? What a joke! We’ll all see just how immutable the parties are when the A.L.P. brings out its own compulsory defence duty program. [Not “National Service” but a better, fairer training program so we can all defend ourselves against terrrorism …. and the word “conscription” nowhere in sight].
H&R:
Sadly. the Democrats, since the loss of Janine Haynes, have become narrow …. although they still have outstanding individuals, like Queensland Senator Andrew Bartlett, who strive to keep it relevant, up-to-date and a long way ahead of the pack.
Graham, I’m not as sanguine about the decline of the labour movement being arrested as you are. There are some very promising signs of life, but too many unions are still top down in approach and more concerned with factional politics and perks of the job than really organising workers and facilitating workplace and political action.
The Democrats still have some residue left over from their small l liberal origins - for instance Lyn Allison’s recent support for AWAs.
Mark:
The Unions, and especially the quasi-Unions or faux-Unions of the Hawke-Keating era, have had the royal order [self-administered, I might add]. Employer-front organizations pretending to protect workers will attract only the most gullible and the desperate. Very few workers can afford to have their own pet lawyers on call. Nor can the majority afford to flee overseas with their talents and experience. So the way is now open for workers’ mutual protection and collective bargaining associations [funny, haven’t we heard of similar groups arising in the 19th Century? :-)]. The need for such associations is becoming urgent as more and more workers, in all categories, come up against rapacious and callous employers and manifestly unfair pay and conditions. The Coalition encourages these abuses - and Labor, despite all its bluster and ballyhoo, won’t be much better.
I do think the labour movement has already hit rock-bottom and is now rising …. but it’s much changed; it’s no longer a labour movement dependent on the current unions. That’s my guess, anyway.
“You are kidding, right!!!???? Dude, get ye to a “History of the 20th century centuryâ€? course toute de suite. Then for the love of god, take Micro 101 and put us out of our misery”
and you’d find that in the two two supreme moments of crisis, WWs 1 & 2, all the democracies, the second & third reichs, the tsarists and obviously the soviets turned to central planning as the only efficient way to marshal each countries resources. that during those years there were phenomenal peaks in economic growth and technological advancement, far greater than in ordinary peacetime conditions. in tsarist russia there was more capital investment over 1914-17 than in the entire preceding century of crude proto-capitalist investment
that in WW2, the centrally planned soviet economy comprehensively and utterly crushed the less centralised, more capitalistically oriented third reich, possibly by itself. a staggering achievement for a country that had itself dissolved into dysfunctional anarchy under the impact of total war only 20 years previous.
you’d find that the postwar boom, the longest single period of sustained growth in western history, was buouyed by the development of the social democratic / social market / consociationalist / social contract (etc) - that still enjoys public confidence everywhere
its amazing what people can do when they believe in the collective enterprise.
you would find that even thatcher couldn’t get rid of the NHS, that howard learned to love Medicare, that albrechtsen and coulter can scream abuse at the left only because courageous leftwing feminists in the 20thC won them the right to be unchained from the kitchen sink (clearly a mistake in these cases, but hey its the price you pay)
that to cling to power the supposedly laissez faire right must pour money into socialised childcare, UB, disability, housing subsidies, educational subsidies, social-agrarian subsidies of all sorts, socialised health and medicines, the list goes on and on - just read the budget. a 1930s conservative would faint from shock, or hopefully, die from apoplexy.
yeah, polish up on your 20thC history. and check out the satanic mills of the 19thC too. the laissez faire right showed its true colours then - the whole course of history since has been to make sure they never get the chance again.