Thereâs a debate happening in the blogosphere at the moment regarding the differences between so-called âclassicalâ? and âleftâ? liberals. (Yay! Labels!) Don writes at Club Troppo:
Liberalism is constantly under attack for being a hypocritical ideology. When people defend liberal institutions against attacks by religious fundamentalists they are accused of being ethnocentric and intolerant â in other words not liberal. After all, say the critics, if members of all faiths and traditions have and equal right to practice their beliefs why arenât Catholic MPs allowed to speak out against abortion and gay marriage? Why arenât they allowed to ban them?
If liberals fall for this argument theyâll find themselves actively campaigning for illiberal government. After all, if circumcising girls or hating Jews is a part of your culture or belief system then it would be intolerant and ethnocentric for liberals to tell you to stop. So, rather than be guilty of intolerance and ethnocentrism, these liberals invite their new illiberal friends to write their beliefs into law â they call this âdemocracy.â And in a democracy, MPs should feel free to legislate for morality. As long as democracy is doing the repressing then itâs not really repression at all.
Jason provides a follow-up post at Catallaxy in which he argues that:
I would argue that only left-liberals or social democrats are really vulnerable to this kind of argument, not classical liberals/libertarians; hence the latter is the more consistent application of liberalism. Libertarians want to limit what any democracy can do – regardless of whether itâs done by Muslims, Christians or Jedi Knights.
Left-liberals whose underlying premise is some form of act-utilitarianism rather than the rule utilitarianism that underlies classical liberalism from David Hume down to Friedrich Hayek, donât understand this. They wonder why libertarians could possibly be against applying anti-discrimination law to private clubs or laws against vilification of religions and races when these are clearly *bad* things that there would be an *immediate* benefit from discouraging. And they would say if itâs done democratically surely the democratic process is enough. They donât see past that into the long term political dynamics and so accuse libertarians of being pro-racist or anti-democratic.
While not for a moment wanting to suggest that any sort of âliberalâ? is as consistent and thorough as any of these debates assume for the sake of argument, itâs my view that the differences between the two liberal groups are not as distinct as Jason thinks they are. While he sees the differences between the two groups as a conflict of ends, I think that what weâre really seeing is only a conflict of means to the same end: individual freedom.
The libertarianâs politics can be summed up as basically: âleave me aloneâ?. But is being left alone an end in and of itself? I doubt it. Being left alone is the means that libertarians believe is the most effective at achieving individual liberty. They argue that people should be allowed to decide for themselves what the âgood lifeâ? means for them, and so we should as far as possible leave people alone to get on with this. They will usually differ from the anarchist in supporting legislation that prevents others from impinging on the rights of others to achieve this end: the enforcement of property rights, for instance.
Left liberals generally agree with the end: that people are the best judges of their own interests, and should be left in charge of deciding what the good life is and how to live it. Often, however, we differ in means. We often believe that being left alone is not sufficient. That there are far too many factors beyond the control of the individual for such a minimalist state. Factors such as: parental income, religion skills and level of interest in rearing a child; place of birth and childhood and services and influences available; natural skills and talents; the price the market puts on your particular skills; personality; health⦠Whether the product of nature or nurture or both, many of these factors are often largely out of individual control.
Neither group would seriously suggest that the individual is completely free of outside constraints or advantages; nor would either group argue that itâs in anyoneâs interests to somehow find a way of eliminating, or compensating for, all of them. But where the libertarian draws the line at actual physical restraints, the leftist liberal draws a more blurry line, and is more willing to look at ways that society/ government can help remove or compensate for some of the factors that prevent an individual from living their own âgood lifeâ?.
The straw-leftist tries to impose her idea of the good life on everyone. In the example Jason uses, the leftist supports anti-discrimination laws because she believes itâs bad to discriminate. And yes, she usually does believe that. But she supports the law because of the effects discrimination can have on individualsâ freedom to live their lives based on factors completely beyond their control. Now, the left may be mistaken on the issue of the effectiveness of anti-discrimination laws, but this is a disagreement of ends, not means. Seen in this light, the debate seems much easier to resolve: it is a debate about whether such laws increase or decrease the freedom of all concerned (or more importantly, whether a particular example of such a law does so â some are effective, many are not).
Again, with union rights and minimum wages. The libertarian is often more concerned with the âleave me aloneâ? approach. Let people negotiate such things privately. The left-liberal sees many external factors that make this approach seem wanting. The fact that the employee does not have equal bargaining power â for those who can only seek low-skilled jobs the choice is usually starvation or employment. The potential employee cannot simply reject an offer that is too low without the risk of losing his unemployment benefits. If his skills and natural talents are not great, he canât just turn down a job at the local factory and get a computer-programming job the next day. And for jobs that donât require the ability to read and interpret contracts, how on earth can one assume that the employee or potential employee is capable of negotiating an equitable deal?
Yes, the libertarian will, as Jason does, argue for the removal of another of these constraints â the forced acceptance of a job contract by those on unemployment benefits, and an alternative way of ensuring an income enough to live on. So then the argument becomes one about which is more politically achievable: a decent minimum wage or a genuinely non-coercive job market. But the debate still comes down to individual liberty and how best to ensure that everyone has it.
âLiberalsâ? on both sides of this debate would do well to consider the similarities we share, and to focus on the ends that we have in mind. Small governments, minimum wages â these are not what we are fighting for. If others can point to more effective means to achieve our real goals then we should listen. We actually have a good common ground on which to base our arguments with each other.
A focus on this would also, as Don argues, help clarify the leftâs view on some of the culture war issues that keep popping up. This is the basis for our support of multiculturalism, for example â we support the right of individuals to come up with their own idea of a good life and then be free to live it. I am not so arrogant to assume that the way I live is the right way for everyone to live. But I do think the way I live is a good way to live; I have chosen it, and I donât intend on letting anyone stop me from continuing to do so. So it is not illiberal to tell Catholics or Fundies First or Muslims to stop trying to take away my reproductive rights. You arenât exposing my âliberal hypocrisyâ?; youâre just demonstrating that you donât know what liberal means.
It is not illiberal to support Muslim feminists working to bring human and democratic rights to those who want them; it is not illiberal to stand up for those who donât want fundamentalist religion imposed on them. The confusion arises when the (non-liberal) right assumes that because we don’t agree with their means (ie bombing their countries into freedom), that we don’t support the end of helping people overcome constraints on their freedom. Means and ends again – they’re not the same thing.
I agree that there are some on the left who find themselves caught up in such debates. But itâs my view that this is their confusion, their lack of consistency. There is no balancing act between respect and liberalism â the right to determine oneâs own life is not the right to impose it on others. It would be nice for libertarian/ classical liberals to recognise that this is a belief that they share with the liberal left. But it would also be nice if everyone who calls themselves liberal left could remember it too.
Thanks for the lengthy response. Good piece. And in case you’re wondering about my non-participation in my thread, I haven’t been ignoring your comments, just waiting for a critical mass to build up before I write a response and when I find time I might just spin it into a new blogpost.
It seems Club Troppo is doing a Catallaxy and has vamoosed for the moment, so I can’t refresh the contents of Don’s post. Yes, there is a similarity – I do think it’s important for liberal democrats to realise that far more unites us than divides us – a point John Humphreys made over at Thoughts on Freedom with great skill.
That said, I do not think it is possible to regulate in such a way as to remove these fundamental inequalities. Rather, all we can hope to do is give people tha maximum amount of choice (and, as a corollory, give mutual obligation the boot). As I commented at Catallaxy:
Don sets up a false dichotomy in the passage quoted.
Liberals, left or otherwise, don’t object to anti-choice people expressing their objection. They object to the passage of illiberal prohibitions on behaviour.
One would disqualify one’s self as a liberal were one to ban others from merely expressing anti-liberal views. Moreover, the only liberal method in a democracy of achieving change is by legal, parliamentary means, one of which is the right to express dissent.
There’s nothing new about this debate. The tension between individual rights and the common good were recognised in the French Declaration of the rights of Man and Citizen in August 1789.
This debate is simply one more echo of the debates that swirled around these tensions.
Perhaps unfortunately, Europe, but not the US, became captivated with Rousseau’s ideas of virtue and the general will. Rousseauvians became enamoured with the maximalist state, with dire effects. Both fascism and leninism/stalinism/trotskyism borrow much from Rousseau.
This is an important point:
Napoleon attacked Europe in the name of the principles of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen. It is true that these sentiments often decayed into French chauvinism.
Napoleon’s arrogance provoked an alliance of reactionary forces with cultural nationalist forces wherever he marched his armies. The enemies that Napoleon provoked denied that all men were born equal. They discovered rationales for asserting that their nation or ethnicity was inherently better than any other. This was another scary consequence of the French Revolution. Napoleon chose very counter-productive means to achieve his proclaimed ends.
One could easily substitute Bush’s name for Napoleon’s in this scenario.
Anna Winter, you quoted Don at Club Troppo saying
That is as good a description as I’ve heard of the disease infesting Australia’s political, governmental, academic and religious life.
SkepticLawyer:
Oh yes you can. The mass-graves of the world are crowded with the corpses of those who died for somebody else’s high-and-mighty Principles; there has to be a better alternative ..
Great post, Anna.
what I don’t understand is how Jason and whoever supports such a right wing libertarian position can possibly argue for the imposition of anti-discrimination laws when proper liberals pursue a society where the question of discrimination or any other form of totalitarianism (micro- to macro-political) is simply nonsense.
Jason’s position basically involves imposing a regime of force to counter another regime of force, with the end goal to simply prolong conflict. Surely the correct response for a mature and confident democracy means instituting a proper education system based around questioning and problems rather than indoctrination, with a goal to enlarge people’s world view rather than arguing about who has a license for some stupidity over another. Identify the problematics and understand tyhe positivity of ‘both’ sides (or the multiplicity of conflicting positions) and not simply choose one as correct. I think right-wing libertarians forget that societal time frames are much larger than one or two human generations.
Skepticlawyer’s remarks about “costs” are also silly in the context of the current reactionary political and media apparatus that not only survives but thrives on expressions of conflict over ‘values’. The cultural politics of this spreads into consumerist practice as markets of “good little aussies” are created for everything from Holdens to heaps of other shit. Look at the ads on TV. It is sickening.
Grow up Australia!!!!
SL:
My personal preference is for the kind of anti-discrimination law that can be used to challenge a sacking, or a refusal to hire, but which needs to be argued in an Industrial Relations Commission or a Court (which is basically what we have now/ are in the process of losing).
I agree that it’s difficult, but that’s not a reason to remove them completely. I think the current (well, previous) system of having to argue each individual case is the best solution; to decide if it’s clear that unfair discrimination is the only reason or if there are genuine reasons of skill or performance. There do need to be safeguards so that people (particularly those in low-skill jobs that can be done by anyone) aren’t constantly afraid of simply being human – making mistakes, speaking their minds – for fear of losing their livelihood.
Thanks Jason, but I didn’t think you were ignoring me! I assumed you were off having fun on the weekend! But I’m interested in your response when you have time.
This is arse backwards. Jason and I are arguing against the imposition of anti-discrimination laws.
‘Costs’ and ‘values’ are also two completely different animals, in that the first can be measured, but the second cannot.
Ah liberals, so full of everyone’s rights without the counterbalance of their obligations. Those obligations are of course determined carefully over long periods of time, with the benefit of hindsight of past generations’ hard won experience. You ignore that at your peril.
Observa:
I think most of us a pretty clear about differences between rights and obligations; privileges and duties.
And it is not a one-way street.
Now, when a government or a corporation avoids its clear duties and its manifest obligations is that then fraud, welching, theft, robbery or oppression?
The argument that the costs of discrimination laws outweigh the costs of discrimination is
a) predicated on ill-defined methods of adding up costs and benefits. How do you quantify the benefit to society of protecting someone’s freedom to get a job on their merits, rather than the employer’s prejudices? What I’m getting at is that the costs of the law’s failure when formulated or applied badly (e.g. Catch the Fire ministries) are much easier to add up, and much more likely to garner attention than the benefits of success (e.g. Johnny Darkskin getting a job and feeding his family – hold the front page!).
b)
only everusually advanced by people who are unlikely to be the victim of serious discrimination.Of course, (b) is an entirely ad hominem reason to doubt the argument, but a seductive one for my money.
And to think those stupid Americans chucked all of this away when they turfed George III’s governments out of America.
And what did they put in place of all of those traditional English obligations and hierarchies? A Bill of Rights!
Obby must reckon the whole American project is doomed!
But wait! If that’s so, Obby must hate those American values that make up his famous Beacon of Light.
Verdict: You’re weird Obby.
It is a common misconception, recently promoted by John Howard by the way, that secularism means freedom of religion. That is incorrect. The basic principle of secularism is that religion is a private good but a public evil, if I may use religious language – though I am not religious. That means that a person is free to practise their religion in their own home but not in a public place, as that amounts to imposing their religion on other people – even though the practice of religion in public is less likely to offend an agnostic or etheist than it is to offend a member of a minority religion. The problem arises as to the identification of private vs public spaces. A public school is a public place, and therefore there should not be prayer there, but what about a private school? Is that a public or a private space, and therefore should prayer be permissible in a private school?
Silkworm, most people equate secularism with a system of government which is kept separate from religion. What people do, in public of in private, as individuals is nothing to do with whether a society is secular. It just means you’re not a religious state.
oforI am elucidating the fundamental principle of a secular society. Confining secularism to the activities of government is what the constitution does, only because the constitution confines itself to the functions of government. It is up to society to define its own nature.
Another way of putting the fundamental principle of secularism is that there should be freedom of religion in private but freedom from religion in public. This principle makes for good public order.
Those who proclaim that there should be freedom of religion in public are either ignorant of the secular principle, or they are acting out a religious agenda.
That’s quite wrong, silkworm. There’s no notion in liberalism that people shouldn’t be “offended”. Quite the contrary – freedom of speech (and indeed association) imply that much that takes place will offend some. There are much better reasons that can be argued for prohibiting religious symbols in public institutions. All you are doing is betraying your own narrow obsessions and prejudices.
Anna – excellent post. Sums up my politics as well and it’s always great to see social democracy related to the liberal tradition.
Anna
I have had one too many to expand further, so it shall have to wait for the morrow. BUT, you really need to slap yourself immediately to disabuse yourself of this absurd delusion that YOU are a “liberal.” You are not. Not even close. You are a common garden variety leftist. There is nothing wrong with that. Heck, even I was once a Marxist.
Your balletic “liberal left” shtick is more incoherent than Kevin Rudd talking in tongues!
Oh! I absolutely cannot wait!
I can see where JG is coming from.
“Factors such as: parental income, religion skills and level of interest in rearing a child; place of birth and childhood and services and influences available; natural skills and talents; the price the market puts on your particular skills; personality; health⦠Whether the product of nature or nurture or both, many of these factors are often largely out of individual control.
Neither group would seriously suggest that the individual is completely free of outside constraints or advantages; nor would either group argue that itâs in anyoneâs interests to somehow find a way of eliminating, or compensating for, all of them. But where the libertarian draws the line at actual physical restraints, the leftist liberal draws a more blurry line, and is more willing to look at ways that society/ government can help remove or compensate for some of the factors that prevent an individual from living their own âgood lifeâ?.
This seems to argue for massive government interventions and “compensatory” regulation in almost every sphere of life.
In a word, as John says, classic leftism.
It’s only an argument for “massive government interventions” if you just make up what I’ve written, Rob. I’m sure we disagree on enough without you having to invent things.
I said we were more willing to look at these issues. I neither said, nor implied, anything about what measures we would support, but please don’t imply that I’m so stupid as to think that a government-controlled life increases freedom in any way.
It gets hard to follow you when you use a double negative like that.
People shouldn’t offend other people, because it is offensive. Isn’t that what “should” means?
Yes, I was overstating it. But it still seems to be that there is a potential for massaive interventions in that philosophy.
There’s a potential for massive abuses of any political philosophy, Rob. I don’t see how that’s very useful to point out.
My point is that both groupings of liberals should remember the actual goal, which is individual freedom. So I’m already agreeing with the argument that some of us don’t. But I’ve argued that it’s due to two things: inconsistency of thought, and a focus on the means rather than what those means are meant to achieve.
Just a little!
In fact you don’t need much government intervention at all to equalise opportunity in the classic social democratic system of governance.
silkworm, to clarify:
I can’t see any difference in principle in this argument from one that says a gay couple shouldn’t walk down the streets holding hands, still less go to Mardi Gras, lest someone be offended. You know, keep your lifestyle to yourself, I don’t care what you do in your bedroom but don’t blah blah
Both are fundamentally illiberal.
“There’s a potential for massive abuses of any political philosophy, Rob. I don’t see how that’s very useful to point out.”
No, I said the potential for massive interventions – which would not be abuses, but rather deliberate strategies under this construct.
Rob, British left liberalism in the late 19th century provided for things like state education and public hygeine, and then in the early 20th century the rudiments of social security. The idea was to provide the basis for equal opportunity. If you read people like L. T. Hobhouse and other “Modern Liberals” of the time, all these ideas were well grounded in J. S. Mill. The size of the British state and indeed the volume of legislation and regulation did not expand much until WW1.
Following German models, under the energetic leadership of David Lloyd George, up to the outbreak of WWI, indeed British public policy did amount to quite significant repudiations of the classic laissez-faire model.
Nevertheless, it would be ahistoric to argue that Lloyd George regarded his own reforms as a positive good. To a large extent he saw them as a necessary evil. Thus, he was a classic liberal who perceived the dangers inherent in classic liberalism. (J. M. Keynes, the last great British liberal, shared LG’s sense of the preferability and fragility of classic liberalism.)
LG perceived three weaknesses of classic liberalism:
1. Illiberalism from the Tory right. Tories threatened to use the state to establish patterns of social patronage with sections of the newly enfranchised working class that were profoundly illiberal.
2. Illiberalism from the nascent working class movement.
3. Short-sighted industrial relations practices of British employers.
The first two represented threats from illiberal political philosophies.
The third represented insensitive and politically inastute application of a liberal political philosophy.
The Great War foreclosed this debate. Liberals suffered their “strange death”. Tories toyed nervously with liberal principles which they refused to adopt as official policy until the Thatcher era. The BLP intensified its love affair with corporatism.
Thatcher abolished these agendas at the expense of making the Tories unelectable for a generation.
Between them, Thatcher and Blair have wound back state corporatism, but the political economy of both of them could hardly be described as a triumph of liberal principles.
Mark :
Very good points that are often forgotten …. but the size of the state and its regulation & legislation you refer to back then was only for the British Isles and not the British Empire as a whole … or did you mean the the British Isles alone?.
FDB and Rob:
One of the problems we have in Australia is in the piecemeal and inappropriate way the whole issue of discrimination has been handled. Effective measures against discrimination on the basis of place of residence (the notorious “postcoding”) do not yet exist, nor those on basis of previous employment or service (of which anti-veteran adverse discrimination is only one example) nor those on the basis of age without regard to capability (whether “too young” or “too old). Nobody seems to be able to deal with adverse discrimination in a holistic way. And there is shyness when it comes to speaking about the inefficiencies and unnecessary costs of allowing adverse discrimination to continue.
Graham, I’d suggest that “piecemeal” is, as Anna suggests, the appropriate way to address these issues. And that many of the worst problems come from attempts to construct one-size-fits-all legislation.
What anti-interventionists often complain about, for example, is the resort to claims of discrimination (because the letter of the law says this or that about certain groups and their representation as a proportion of the population) by people who are just not right for the job (for example).
“It’s because I’m black/a woman/over 50/a muslim/a veteran/from Frankston isn’t it?”.
Perhaps it’s not. Perhaps you’re just shit.
You see the problem. Piecemeal has the potential to address this.
Skeptic Lawyer says:
“And he [Humphrey's] is correct that the state tends only to get in on the act once private citizens have already initiated change (something well documented in the case of the Civil Rights movement and later legislation).”
Sorry, but this is feeble on a number of levels. If the State hadn’t acted to curtail discrimination in the American Civil Rights era, blacks would have deserted King’s peaceful protest, bloody riots would have erupted all over the place and militant groups would have scored thousands of recruits.
The supposed profundity of “private citizens already initiating change” is beyond me. Perhaps nice Mr Smith in Hicksville Mississippi let “niggers” drink quietly in a corner of his bar every Tuesday, but they were still banned from the other pubs and restaurants, were prevented from registering to vote and their kids were confined to segregated schools that got one-twentieth the funding of white schools.
Also, as I said at Catallaxy, laws can change cultural attitudes and beliefs. Changed attitudes to smoking in the workplace subsequent to its legislative prohibition is one example.
A moderate sized government with comprehensive and enlightened laws will enhance freedoms whereas the minimalist government favoured by right libertarians would enhance freedom for just a few at the expense of the majority. Such a minimalist government would result in “private tyranny”.
I also note that SL is perfectly happy to threaten to use an instrument of the State, namely the civil courts, when she is allegedly a victim of private tyranny.
How does this differ from a black person using an Industrial Court to resolve a case pertaining to racial discrimination in the workplace?
Maybe so, but as I’ve already said, as long as the focus is always on the main goal – individual freedom – then just saying that an intervention causes freedom doesn’t make it so. Lying about intentions would be an abuse.
I’ve previously said that a good law that is carefully sold to the public can change community attitudes and thus behaviour. Here is a research paper demonstrating my point: http://tc.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/13/1/87
As the abstract notes: “Previous studies have shown public opinion changes after public health laws, including seat belt use, drunk driving, and smoke-free dining, took effect.”
All these types of laws reduce “private tyranny” and accordingly enhance freedom- with the possible exception of seat belt laws if we are to believe Jason Soon.
getting it arse about clearly explains why I couldn’t follow the position. my apologies, i thought it was bloody weird.
However, you have failed to understand my second point is this is the assumption you think I am working from:
“‘Costs’ and ‘values’ are also two completely different animals, in that the first can be measured, but the second cannot.”
However, there are ‘costs’ associated with using conflict over ‘values’ as a resource to perpetuate idiocies in the public domain. Neo-cons, the reactionary political and meida apparatus thrive on cultural conflict over values. They make money from it, and in the case of politicians appear as if they are being political, ie working, when they are not working at all. They don’t want to get rid of conflict, the causality of which is distributed across many parties, they isolate particular groups or identities and target these groups or indentities as the cause of conflict.
If someone was to take heed of the other thread running at the moment on mathematics they might discover that some of the most complex maths at the moment (in material sciences and other places) ionvolves modeling things like crack propagation in composite materials. The models are organised around modeling the distribution of force that causes cracks. If we actually had some real mathematicians instead of bloody accountants moonlighting as sociologists they might be able to do something interesting with this.
I finished up batting ideas back and forth with Steve over at the Cat – sorry bout that Anna.
The values conflict you cite does indeed exist, Glen, but apart from keeping members of the punditariat entertained (and occupied, in some cases), it’s still impossible to measure, unless one considers it a species of deadweight loss
I wanna know who the hell supported all those stupid anti-discrimination laws that extended the franchise beyond white male property owners. Things have just gone downhill ever since. Now any clown can vote for any clown.
Here is Nabakov with his usual no-substance clever-dick frivolities.
I made it very clear in my post that the hypothetical was about anti-discrimination laws applying to private clubs and organisations. Discrimination by governments is a different issue and all liberals are in concord on that – simply because government has a monopoly on the use of force and is the Leviathan to which we delegate such powers, we don’t want it to have too much discretion as to decide who can use its facilities and certainly not on who can vote for it. No taxation without representation.
Um Jason, I wasn’t responding to your post but to the overall tenor of thought expressed by some that Government has no business beyond ensuring negative rights. Still it’s late and if you feel like trying on the shoe to see it fits, go for it.
“No taxation without representation.”
Well that used to be seen as a positive right, until little things like the Reform Acts and some colonial revolution across the pond.
My point here is that the definition of negative and positive rights has been an evolving and rather slippery thing. And one thing we can learn from history is that drawing a line over rights often means daring some to cross it.
A liberal (proponent of the Open Society) is ideologically obliged to embrace both individual liberty and social equality. An institutional authority that complements these two ideals will maximise several individual autonomies.
The fundamental liberal civil goal is l-egality ie the Rule of Law where individual autonomies and institutional authority are bound by the same general rules. The etymology of legality evidently encompasses libertarian and egalitarian notions ie freedom and fairness.
Liberty without equality leads to elitist exploitation.
Equality without liberty leads to populist oppression.
So a consistent liberal is inevitably driven to a social-democratic position, which combines negative rights to liberty with positive entitlements to equality.
This is in fact how classical liberalism evolved (see the change from Marshall to Keynes).
Quite so, Jack. This is why 20th century social liberals and social democrats managed to agree closely on means (i.e. policies) whilst agreeing to differ on the relative priority of liberty and equality as ends.
Hey Everyone,
It is humble little Tim, a fairly new blogger on Sat forum.
I feel a bit out of this refined political scene as I’m from the ‘burbs of Melbourne’s south-east, Springvale, where left realism replaces left thought. No-one seems too politically aware out here, all too common in the lower social demographic zone. For all that don’t know, Springy (local speak) is part of a major factory/migrant belt that flows along from Oakleigh to Clayton, out to Springy onto Noble Park and Dandy (Dandenong). Now it kicks out further towards Cranny (Cranbourne) and Pakenham. Don’t worry there is a broad bunch of unionists out this way, shattered amongst all the ethnic groups, but nothing like a common poltical unity or awareness. More like poltical isolation with a mixed blend of rightist major media inspired left fear fodder, general political disgust, disempowerment, apathy and then the odd ethnic political focus; for example amongst the Cambodian community.
Got the picture? Poorsville! N.S.W. people think Wollongong, Cabbramatta or something, given that I’ve never been to Sydney.
Then there was the emphatic police response to the traditional, informal drag racing down Dandy Rd in Noble Park last week. All of the sudden the young blokes are coming out of the cupboard and trashing the place, confronting the authorities and being generally revolutionary. It is a response to :-
1)The ‘special’ attention and resources that these kids get, in terms of police intimidation and harrassment. Get ‘em young seems to be the theme. I can remember the treatment meted out here when I was a young fella. So the local paper is quoting 21 year olds saying “yeah its good the cops got a bit back” and stuff like that.
2) “When you’ve got nothing you’ve got nothing to lose” Bob Dylan. Need I say more?
Now most people find that all archaric and scary and I wonder who can get the message to these young people that to unite politically and cast a well aimed vote rather than a stubbie or a burn-out may just serve better.
So anyway, in conclusion, the socialist’s and radicals seem to be all in town, inner city, while the real ‘revolution’ is out in the factories and streets of the ‘burbs’. Different worlds.
P.S. The views expressed are my own and well hopefully not too ‘working class inappropriate’ for some of you refined types.
“…hopefully not too ‘working class inappropriate’ for some of you refined types.”
The cheek of this prole! Don’t you know you working class types should just be obscene and not heard. If we want your opinion, all the right and left wing pundits, theorists and hand wavers will give it to you. Otherwise just carry on being comfortable and relaxed.
“…the emphatic police response to the traditional, informal drag racing down Dandy Rd in Noble Park last week.”
So I gather VicPol have retired Smokey One? It was getting it’s arse whipped too much? Wish they’d retire Code Blue instead or at least buy them better uniforms.
And oh Tim, just in case you got the wrong end of my schtick above, I thought your comment was well written and clearly presented an interesting point. Always room for more of that here.
Also, where is Springvale?