On Saturday, I penned some thoughts on the series in The Australian on the Australian left, riffing off the first article by Tim Soutphommasane.
Among other things, I queried the practice of addressing a discourse about left politics to the presumed centres of power, describing those who do that sort of thing as “court philosophers”. I also suggested that labourism might be a better place to look for an explanation of how the left has shaped Australian society and politics than social democracy.
Guy Rundle has taken up the torch, reviewing the full series of articles in today’s Crikey, and going where none of the “left thinkers” dared to tread – propounding an “idea of what the left’s basic principles are or should be, and what sort of positive programme, rather than reactive policy, they should propose.”
Read his piece (reproduced with permission) over the fold.
Guy Rundle writes:
For the past week, The Australian has been running a series entitled ‘what’s left’, with people they nominate to be ‘key left thinkers’ articulating a left vision of politics and society.
Well that was the stated intent anyway. With The Oz you have to assume the purpose is other — and with all due respect to some of the people involved, it seems obvious that the real purpose is to make the left look rather bereft of ideas (not, it must be said, a tough call at this juncture).
The first and most essayistic was a large piece by Tim Soutphommasane, arguing that the left should reclaim patriotism, a piece of brand refashioning that David Goodhart has been arguing in the UK for years. Subsequent contributions (run in a strip down the Op-ed page, about as marginal as they could get without being pushed out entirely) were less inspiring — Julia Gillard’s was without interest of any sort, Dennis Glover’s piece talked of the “mystery of social democracy”, David McKnight had a piecemeal defence of the family, and CFMEU supremo John Sutton defended Marxism by saying it was about restraining corporate power, which suggests he has never understood Marxism.
What was missing from all of these contributions was any idea of what the left’s basic principles are or should be, and what sort of positive programme, rather than reactive policy, they should propose. Not surprising when all the people who could and do this were excluded from the series.
Off the top of my head one could have chosen from: Lindsay Tanner, Bob Brown, Peter Singer, Eva Cox, Mark Latham, Mark Davis (of Land of Plenty), Geoff Boucher, Germaine Greer, Boris Frankel, Mark Bahnisch, Geoff Sharp and others from Arena, Evan Thornley, J.K. Gibson-Graham, your ‘umble correspondent, Jeff Sparrow, and many others — many of whom I’d seriously disagree with, but all of whom have a greater ability to relate the “is” to the “ought” — to offer an analysis of how society is changing, and offer an alternative of how it might.
To be fair to David McKnight, probably the only one of that group capable of making such an account, the room provided — 700 words — was derisory.
However, while we’re on it, it’s worth saying a few things about what the left is or could be, such as didn’t make it into the series. What was common to all the contributions was that they saw their role not as outlining a view of how society worked, how it had changed, and what a better society could be — but outlining a series of micropolicy and strategy initiatives (support the family, reclaim patriotism etc,) which barely acknowledged the profound change in the idea of ‘the Left’ over the last generation (a point to which I’ll return in Part Two).
In Australia, articulating a Left vision which might have mass support is difficult because of one paradoxical fact — labourism (sometimes Left sometimes not) has won. Comprehensively. For a century it has seen off challenges to the arbitration system set up by the Harvester decision — and more importantly the principle behind it, that the public, as represented by the state, should tell the economy how to set its wages.
Whatever limits or transformations have been made to it, its core principles have survived — and, the 2007 result would suggest, been cemented into the culture, even as the industrial era that generated it passes away. To that has been added Medicare, public broadcasting, equal opportunity laws etc etc — all institutions the political right has had to accept in order to regain power. The left may look a bit ragged, but the single greatest failed movement in Australian political history is classical liberalism, if judged by results.
The problem for any greater transformation within a Left framework is that, as Marxist historians have noted, labourism freezes social relations in such a way that certain types of powerlessness and inequality are also cemented into place. Australia may congratulate itself on being the land of the “fair go”, but for groups outside of the mainstream, it is shockingly backward and unfair. Educational opportunity is some of the worst in the OECD, class mobility — especially from welfare-dependent groups — is terrible, daily life for those groups is one of perpetual poverty, pensions are derisory, services are over-priced, public healthcare is limited in application, and indigenous Australia suffers all of the above at once.
But labourism has been so successful at separating the fate and destiny of the mainstream from the marginal, that the latter have no political clout — and the former have no real feeling of common cause, beyond (politically insufficient) human compassion.
Thus one can see why so many of The Oz’s authorised “left” thinkers would take on, as Mark Bahnisch remarked, “the courtier role”, whispering in the ear of power, rather than talking to a broad audience. Suggesting a genuinely Left social democratic programme — transitioning large public utilities to part or total public control and/or ownership, schemes for social banking and finance which would make housing affordable, the use of super funds and other worker-derived capital for social reinvestment, public bond issues as an alternative means of infrastructure funding, defunding the elite private schools while increasing funding to community and smaller public-private schools, assisting the development of local economies and post-capitalist production systems in both urban and rural settings, and so on and so on — thus has the air of being futile.
It certainly appears to be well beyond the imagination of the figures that The Australian chose.
Such a programme would be one whose proposed changes are not piecemeal, but are based around a common principle — that economic power and control has to be transferred to social and public control (in forms better developed than old processes of nationalisation), as an expression of right (not rights, right). That is, these institutions — from Telstra to the universities, to mineral resources and the finance sector — are social and commonly owned by their very nature, that their management should be put to social ends.
That may involve managing them within the market, and gearing them towards returning a certain rate of profit/surplus — but that would be the means to an end, of social return, not private shareholder return as an end in itself. That is the basis for a genuine Left, that sees itself as something more than putting limits on the Right.
The thinkers that the Australian chose for its left series weren’t leftists, they were labourists – submitting their intellectual abilities to the pre-ordained goal of selling a stunningly unambitious political programme, and thus reduced to a mixture of PR spruiking (“try new Left patriotism!”), personal anecdotes, waffling about the ‘mystery of social democracy’, sucking up to social conservatism (“defend the family”!) or presenting a defensive and reactive unionism (“limit corporate power”!) as a positive programme.
On Monday, in Part Two of this piece, I’ll suggest why the world is about to take us far beyond the anodyne prescriptions of The Oz’s authorised left — and even beyond the more robust programme I’ve sketched out above.
The Oz meanwhile, will feature a series on the Right, and one can safely assume that more impressive theoretical guns will be wheeled out, with more space — thus giving the impression that the Right has more intellectual firepower, which was the purpose of the exercise all along. Silly, and irritating, of no great import — and very, very, The Australian.
Update: Rundle writes a sequel.
Update: Quadrant piles on.
Good piece, Rundle makes some excellent points, though as usual he prefers not to leaven the bread of his points with the yeast of actual facts – something that would surely not be that hard to do, and would elevate him above many of his contemporaries (that is, when he’s not writing gossipy speculative bullshit).
I would question the fundamental premise, however. Does “the left” need a singular intellectual base or framework from which to operate? I would argue, in this regard, the left itself is an illusion. Or rather, it is an ever-changing myriad of opinion and voters, coalescing briefly around some issues only to dissolve and reform on others.
So, for >em>one issue, at one point in time, you may find a group of people you could categorise as ‘the left’. However line them up on a range other issues and watch the division and divergence (as LP itself often demonstrates).
I believe the tendency – not just to think in the binary like this – but to posit a range of voters marching in lock-step wrt to many issues is an unconscious reaction to the shape of our largely typical western two-party-ruled democracy. But to pretend that those voting Labor (or Liberal, or Green or whatever) are doing so because the party acts in accordance with a voter’s own crystalline set of beliefs is a bit reductionist I think, if not naive.
I wouldn’t have thought that the future of the family and the left’s relationship to nationalism were “micro-policy” issues.
I agree with patrickg. I know that many contributors here write “teh Left” to make fun of their opponents who argue that there is a monolithic Left. Now someone who sees himself as of the Left is arguing that there is, or should be, a Left.
So do contributors think that we are in a post-ideological age, where the political parties are judged on essentially pragmatic criteria?
Terry, I think there is an ideological, for want of a better word, aspect to how many people allocate their vote. I just don’t think that there is a big enough ideology or one that can cover enough of the issues that people care about to be able to say that if someone thinks this way on a particular issue, then they will also think this way on another particular issue. It can get even trickier when there is an expectation on people to think a certain way if they want to be considered a proper member of the Left.
Rundle is right. And Bahnisch. Current political left/right debates being staged in The Australian, The Monthly and elsewhere are tiresome, repetitive and boring, still pegged around with old notions like privatisation, protectionism, individualism, working families, blah blah.
Our newspapers should get back to reporting the news, as objectively as possible, instead of engaging in cheap manipulative propaganda exercises designed to kick some life into discredited political debates that bore the tits off most of their readers anyway.
It would appear that the architecture of the current world order is undergoing some sort of serious transformation over there in america right now. Its all very interesting, and to some degree, new and surprising.
But hey, let’s report on Kevin’s hair, his potty mouth, where he is sitting and who is ignoring him, and the football, and more football…anything but what is really happening.
People might get ideas.
I think that Guy Rundle misunderstands the motivations of the Australian in giving oxygen to leftist spokespersons.
Rundle’s implication is that his prescriptions for thoroughgoing social democracy as opposed to labourism (a very useful distinction, let me say) is that Murdoch’s mouthpiece is wary of giving voice to Rundle’s preferred model of leftism because the editors are frightened of encouraging popularity of those ideas. I think that Rundle vastly overestimates the power of his prescriptions to jolt Australians out of their century-old labourite rut.
I note that Rundle promises an earthshaking polemic:
Perhaps Rundle will prove to be the Abbe Sieyes of the noughties.
But I doubt it.
Just because you’re on the centre-left (as I am) doesn’t mean you have to sever all contact with radical ideas and thinkers.
Indeed, that’s generally how progressive change works – radicals come up with strange new ideas and eventually (after a making a lot of dismissive noises and excuses and amendments) Labor adopts those ideas.
That’s what too many to the Left of social democracy don’t understand: don’t expect a Whitlam to always be there, acting as an ideas factory, churning out serious change on his/her own initiative; but equally don’t underestimate the ability of social democrats to respond to pressure from the Left and to bring about serious change and innovation.
And there is very little space given to any intellectuals on the Left – social democratic or otherwise – in the media, so I guess we should be thankful for small mercies.
Ginja, but that’s surely Rundle’s point – unions restraining corporate power, concern for the family, “left patriotism” – these are policy approaches which Rundle rightly suggests are entirely banal in the context of what Labor could plausibly do. To go back to the point in my original post, surely they’re mostly techniques for refining Labor’s electoral appeal. None, it seems to me, are steps to a radical social democratic transformation which might later gain acceptance by Labor after pressure from the left.
Someone should also add the bleeding obvious point, OK I will, that while Guy and Mark are right, about transformative thinking as opposed to tired old hash, we need to hear the voices of women too.
And to put it more pointedly, the voices of the majority of women, those who care for children, and the elderly too, while holding down a job and a mortgage. I thought it was funny that Guy could only come up with Eva Cox and Germaine Greer in his list of able thinkers. Most women indeed have no time to blog.
There is a massive load being born by working women with children in our society that is occasionally acknowledged in passing reports and research (as in, women are not happy, how amazing is that), but never enters the heart of the political discussion.
I watched ACA the other night (yeah, by accident) and it was amusedly clocking the miles run by women (and one grandad) driving their children all around town to activities like sport and ballet, in people movers. And apparently, these were not even working women. What do working parents do with their kids after school? Its a very big question, worthy of our attention.
Of course reengineering our society through reversing privatisation of social and physical infrastructure is a jolly idea but how about starting with keeping public schools open from 8 to 6 pm, and allowing community organisations to teach sport, ballet etc in the school facilities after hours. That would give working parents a huge break, utilise empty buildings, give our kids a sense of local community, revitalise a competitive public school system, etc. And its a leftie idea, and would drive the rightards nuts.
I know, I have wandered off topic….going on holiday now, see y’all.
grace, couldn’t agree more.
I think this is a point related to Grace’s excellent one at #10. Quite along time ago ‘feminism’ ( = Teh Left) had to acknowledge that the dream of a a united movement actively worked to marginalise and exclude women in marked identity categories. There’s no core. Painful as it usually is to practice, intersectionality is the only solution. Isn’t left or progressive politics in the same position?
I too was very struck by Guy Rundle’s naming of so few women (though JK Gibson-Graham is two women collaborating), and no non-whites, in that top of head list. Also, Mark Latham wtf.
So, its a set up to make the RWDBs look good in a series of articles that presumably are going to analyse the Right, soon to be published? Why does that not surprise me?
I tend to agree with the idea of Guy’s that the left’s, dare I say, central concern for a realignment of economic power back to the state to achieve socially desirable outcomes as opposed to purely financial windfalls for the privileged elite is something that has long since lost any traction in australian politics. And with respect to grace and laura I think the question of economic power incorporates other social issues, exploitation of people for financial gain because of their gender is still exploitation. While we may achieve a social revolution by resetting gender inequities, we also and I think more importantly need to address the base of economic power that continues to dominate every other agenda, such as the social or environmental.
Umbrellas that give shelter to a disparate and sometimes mutually incompatible range of leftish sympathies seem to be the formula for winning political office for Labor but I think Labor’s explicit failure to address the central issue of economic power ultimately undermines their fitness to rule. A even more radical idea is that the entrenched two party system offered by our democracy has actually been subverted by the same economic power base that remains untouched by any government agenda.
I’m with Grace. The left right paradigm is a useless way of seeing modern society. It is useful in the brain dead expanses of The Australian only as a whipping boy for people they disagree with. Remember its editor in chief is the man who allowed the disgraceful order of lenin libel to run against Manning Clark.
To paraphrase old Herman Goering every time I hear the phrase left and right I reach for my gun. When you are thinking of your positions on things you find yourself wandering all over the landscape.
Being liberal on some things does not make you left being conservative on somethings does not make you a right winger whatever that means.
My belief system is based on a idea of balance of a society in harmony with as little gap between rich and poor as possible. How you achieve that is what the debate is about. I happen to think that Australian society was at its best when there was strong unionism and the difference between the salary of a top worker and the head of a company only differed by about a factor of four to one The obscenity of corporate salaries has come at the expense of the majority and for what benefit? certainly not consumers who suffer daily at the hands of these entities whose executives are paid astonishing figure and we are consigned to seeking help in call centres whose sole purpose is to get rid of you.
Anyone who flies Qantas and jetstar where you sometimes have to beg to travel to your father’s funeral after the airline has inexplicably cancelled your flight knows where they stand in the scheme of things. And yet the CEO for five months collects $11 million in salary.
A little Buddhist balance in all we do is my credo fight for the middle ground. The extremes are only for extremists
Fair point, Mark. I get a bit depressed when things always degenerate into a discussion of electoral tactics. That, surely, is the point of intellectuals: to let their minds wander a little wider than a party tactician. It wouldn’t hurt for Left intellectuals to occasionally talk specifics, to take risks, stick their necks out. If you out yourself as a leftist The Australian will inevitably distort your views and try to make you look ridiculous. They even tried to paint Robert Manne as an apologist for terrorism – Robert Manne! So Left intellectuals need thick skins and have to be prepared to defend themselves – in pithy sentences!
Looking at the trouble Obama is having with his “public option” for healthcare – which is no more radical than our Medibank Private – I’m struck by the relative freedom and decisiveness with which Labor is able to act here. Introducing Medicare mark 2 was a little controversial, but nothing like what the Democrats have had to struggle with.
Indeed, Ginja, and it goes to show that political culture matters. What is perceived as a basic social right here is seen by many as state intrusion in America.
I’d also reiterate the point about labourism in the context of gender hierarchies. What we have is a set of arrangements (cultural as well as political) which are based on a vision of the wage earners’ welfare state, and the putative gender of that wage earner still has its effects – ie fewer women with kids in the workforce than almost every other OECD country, vertical and horizontal pay inequity, etc. The whole point is that add on policies do very little to disturb the existing structure of inequalities. Julia Gillard’s arguments about equality of opportunity, for instance, would be much better addressed through support of radical social democracy than a ‘social inclusion’ agenda.
Guy Rundle says:
The big problem I have with Rundle’s and Mark’s approach to political philosophy is…you guessed it, their concepts lack of predictive utility. Concepts such as “Left” or “conservative” or “liberal” should predict which way an agent will jump when given freedom to do so. Vague shopping lists of ideological goodies aren’t much use in predicting real world behaviour.
Rundle’s denotation of Left-wing as the party that delivers the shopping list of progressive goodies does not predict conventional political party behaviour. Plenty of notionally Left wing parties have not delivered them. Whereas some notionally Right-wing parties have delivered them.
I hate to rain on Guy Rundle’s ideological parade but this notional “Left-wing” economic program could have easily been lifted straight out of Nazi or Fascist economic programs. There is a real sense in which the Nazis and Fascists were “Left-wing” in their economic project. They were surely concerned to ensure that “economic power and control has to be transferred to social and public control”. But I am guessing Guy and Mark would not want to be identified with Benito’s and Adolf’s governments.
This shows the limitation of defining political movements by institutional means. I have argued that they should be judged by ideological ends. As I previously commented:
My notion of Left-wing favouring lower status groups with progressive policies and the Right-wing favouring higher status with regressive policies accords with common sense and general practice. The Left-wing in initially emerged in France to advance the interests of a low-status group – the urban bourgeoisie – seeking empowerment. This group subsequently rose in status and, consequently, is now aligned with Right-wing political parties.
It is preferable to nominate social interests (classes, clans, colors, creeds, cohorts,) rather than philosophical ideals (liberty, equality, community, etc). The latter are notoriously rubbery and “essentially contested”. Any given ideological program can be examined for its effect on the distribution of income for a nominated group.
Of course there occasions, such as the Culture War, when lower-status populists are identified with the Right. And higher-status elitists are identified with the Left. But these exceptions prove my rule. See below.
a couple of points in reply:
1) first it was Mark B who made the point about labourism and the left in Oz, here, earlier than I did in Crikey, so should have made that a bit clearer, tho of course it’s an argument with a long history
2) as to Australian women and non-white writers who tackle the core political-economic questions that distinguish left from right – as opposed to important but more specific questions of gender, race, culture, law, etc – please suggest em. Noel Pearson of course could be slotted in to write on either left or right, but I think it’s reasonable to put him on the dexter side of the ledger these days, and the oz’s series was leftists writing about the left. This isn’t an episode of Australian Idol, you don’t choose one of everybody. To name-drop people for their intellect who don’t work on this specific topic – eg Larissa Behrendt, Alison Croggan, Sheila Jeffreys, Meaghan Morris, Gary Foley, Mick Dodson, Liz Grosz, etc – would be pointless and insulting.
The suggestion that women are under-represented because of child-raising and household duties is absurd. Humanities academic output by women is higher than men per capita, these days, they’re just writing about different things.
And anyone criticising their absence does need to stump up their own suggestions
3) as to mine and others’ exclusion from the Oz, no i don’t think it’s because they fear an 800 word piece above ‘the wry side’ will bring down capitalism. but they are interested in shaping the limits of the mainstream political sphere, and of what ideas can be spoken of as part of the discussion. and they also shit their pants regularly at the thought that rupert or james will be on the fone asking why they gave this or that commie page-space
The rule that Left empower the lower-status whilst Right establish the higher-status has general validity. But there are exceptions.
One is where status-rankings change (by evolution or revolution). That occurred with the bourgoisie who when they were lower-status were initially aligned with the Left. Subsequently when they rose to higher-status they finished up on the Right.
Another exception is where status-rankings are “essentially contested”. This is pretty clearly the in the Culture War, which is a conflict between traditional (modernist) and fashionable (post-modernist) status-group rankings. Through the modernist era traditional higher-status groups – Caucasian, Christian, male, married, straight, constitutionalist/monarchists – were automatically considered higher-status. Only now in the post-modernist era is their status ranking under contention.
It so happens that the majority of citizens in developed societies still accept the legitimacy of traditional status-group rankings. Whilst a minority of citizens feel that these rankings are illegitimate.
This causes a reversal of electoral positioning between ideological partisans. Right-wing parties find it expedient to adopt (or “dog whistle”) a populist posture towards the somewhat degraded “silent majority”. Conversely Left-wing parties are quick to take the elitist high moral ground by appealing to the somewhat elevated “noisy minorities”.
Obviously, the “essentially contested” nature of status-rankings gives rise to bitter status-anxieties amongst those who feel their position is threatened or thwarted. Hence the emergence of civility taboos (“political correctness”) which serve to dampen the amount of ideological bitterness amongst contestants.
There are also intra-status-group political paradoxes. An individual whose education status exceeded their income status would tend to vote Left (eg university professors). An individual whose income status exceeded their education status would tend to vote Right (eg self-made businessmen).
It all fits within the News Corp formula. Contrast the Uber All-American in Sean Hannity with the wimpish servility of his side kick Holmes.
News limited always seeks to hold a show trial and give it an air legitimacy.
I also would prefer to see debate around issues such as those raised by Grace Pettigrew, rather than the right-left thing, which is a playground for punch-drunk culture warriors sifting through the bones of old, dead political ideals, arguing over who killed which one.
(Nor can I be stuffed remembering which faction believes what, when there are other issues that are so much more interesting)
Before I make some kind of point I just have to ask the bleeding obvious question: where is the Australian’s series on conservatism or Right-of-centre political thought in this country? Does one exist? Maybe they should pull Imre Salusinzky off the NSW Turnbull pardy factions beat to write about small l ‘liberalism’ (as he calls Oz conservatism). That’s if they can’t drag Windschuttle away from whatever it is he does.
Wot, too painful for them to go there?
I’m glad that G. Rundle sees Australian laborism as being extant, and is apparently happy for it to be lead by parliamentarianism, & not by resolutely extra-parliamentary tribalists. That said, if he only knew how much his forgotten people advocacy sounds like Menzies ‘forgotten people’ I wonder if he would be making this argument.
Because the FP was Menzies’ go at populism.
I just don’t see where the Leftwing version is supposed to head…
I agree with Guy Rundle that the space made available to people genuinely on the Left – and not just sorta progressive-ish – is tiny or non-existent. As I’ve said many times, defending trade unions seems to rule a person out for employment as a regular columnist – with either Murdoch or Fairfax.
I was actually surprised by the people The Oz chose. There’s a well-known pattern in the Murdoch empire of employing limp-wristed progressive-ish types whose main purpose is to make their right-wing loudmouths look good.
But if they really wanted to show our side in a bad light for this series they would have picked a nutty Maoist spouting indecipherable Baudrillardese (the kind of academic who will be editing Quadrant in 20 years time). Instead, The Oz chose a level-headed bunch. In fact, their idea of the best of the Left and mine are uncomfortably similar.
And while I’ve got a bit of time for Guy Rundle, Robert Manne’s piece today had a nifty retort. I don’t care what some say, Manne can still cut to the core and be devastating – thankfully most of that is directed at the Right nowadays.
I have my own personal discomfort zone as an Australian,and as an individual when it comes to matters of assessing matters of how I would like to see outcomes turn.Schapelle Corby and many matters Indonesian in context seem so very difficult,that there must be simpler options to keep a relationship up that is based on some simple processes of trying to make relationships work.But the real problem ,I have every time something specific like Indonesian relationships come up,I honestly don’t think the expertise is reliable enough to feel, through contacts, to try to see if a result could happen.Murdoch is a bloody cheat,and anyone who seriously digests his influence by people working for him a very limited human beings.I say give that Gate-Keeper as many back hand swipes as the need to do.To grovel to that family by the foment of one’s own reason is to see it turn to being called rabies!Instead,stake out a claim of above even the Rabies Caller.I have seen some videos on the Pittsburgh matter,as U.S.A. Police attacked University students who are plainly and easily seen as just observing what it going on with no mal intent.To see a Military like machine in the street and a robot voice about declared Police action,is just stupidity at its worse from the Philadelphia Police.It is like they have given up themselves to be some strange attitude and reinforce matters,that don’t need to be enforced.The only way to stop Australian Police from buying into this nonsense,is to challenge them now before it is too late.Do they really want to be like that!?If so! Do they expect people to vote for anyone who will claim they are there to represent!?Is it at all possible to say,as honestly as one can,this country doesn’t need the Murdoch Family making money out of us,and by law crush them now!? Because even if the Murdoch’s had an attack of conscience,they would want to monopolise it and claim everyone else had to live up to their standard.Stop your even handed shit here,they dont give a stuff!
How about to a society where people are not overwhelmingly destined to either success or failure by birth? Check out the stats on social mobility and intergenerational mobility in this country (or rather the lack thereof…) Rundle was explicit about what sort of transformation he would like to see. It has nothing to do with some sort of ‘forgotten people’ argument a la Menzies – which was a right populist appeal to the petit bourgeoisie (John Howard’s father was precisely one of them – and that explains a lot about Howard…) – what is it about proposing social control of institutions that apparently fails to signify? The language could hardly be plainer… why is it so misunderstood?
In what way, Ginja? I thought it was just his old red baiting schtick (“far left”, he went to a conference on communism!) recycled and polished off from his Quadrant days.
The word “left” has long since ceased becoming anything other than a empty slogan except when applied to a “wing” where its remains a useful and intuitive label to describe that half of the people who generally vote for Labor, Green and Marxist outlier parties and candidates. The Liberals love to call themselves a broad church but it is no more religious than the sinister side of politics.
This would support Rundle’s charge that the Aus’s series is simply designed to be their way of gatekeeping the limits of allowable argument from that side of the aisle. As for anyone who still thinks The Australian op-ed pages matter, I would borrow from their current advertising strategy and say “think again”.
I’d be interested for Guy or Mark or anyone to explain how “social control of institutions” leads directly to progress on poverty and inequality.
Having the government own banks or mines or telecoms, as Guy proposes, seems to me to be the epitome of labourism. It would lead to more secure employment for the lucky workers in those industries, and might have some other spin-off benefits for middle-income workers — eg if the ‘social banks’ make housing more affordable, as Guy suggests.
But it will do bugger-all for the really underprivileged. The seriously poor don’t want “affordable” housing — they couldn’t afford it at any price. They want public housing or more generous rent subsidy.
Now I know Blairism is on the nose at the moment, but nonetheless I believe that Tony Blair had the right idea. Having billions of dollars of capital locked up in railways and telecoms and so on, doesn’t do a thing to relieve poverty. You relieve poverty in the standard way of increasing the spending on welfare and health and education and so on.
But for some reason the left is obsessed with public ownership of assets. The ranting about Anna Bligh’s asset sales illustrates this perfectly. Will it be an enormous blow to the underprivileged in Qld to have government pine plantations sold off? You’d think so, judging by the fury in these parts.
Let me wrap up with one little suggestion as a counterpoint to Guy’s massive wish-list for social transformation. A few months ago a proposal was floated for extending Medicare to dental treatment. It got some coverage in the media, but then just disappeared as quickly as it had emerged. This is the sort of thing the left should be focussing on. This would provide much greater tangible benefits than any of Guy’s dreams about social ownership of the Blue Sky Mining Company.
I’ve been ingnoring this series as part of me is convinced it’s just a round of setting up strawmen in the field to be taken out.
Rather than looking at something hard like why the free market failed and how we should move forward.
Paulus@28: Sue Bradford in NZ is a good example of an MP focussed on those issues. And now is a good time to look at her insomuch as there’s a lot of media coverage of her now that she has resigned. She had some good wins but the vilification she faced was totally out of proportion to what she did, and perhaps serves as a warning to others who might be tempted to violate the rules set up by bodies like The Australian.
Mark, the question is how anyone on the Left could possibly manage to get themselves red baited nowadays. Honestly, it’s quite a feat. There has been – especially since 1989 – a deluge of books on the horrors of communism. These books are available in every bookstore and library (not just for that select group who actually were interested in the truth). Each time I’ve read a history of Stalinism or Maoism I’ve felt almost ill by the end of it – and depressed at the depravity humans are capable of.
Manne writes:
“The Western far Left took an intolerably long time before it grasped the truth about communism. Its reputation never recovered from the dismal decades-long failure of moral courage and practical intelligence.”
With some honourable exeptions, the far Left have a lot to live down from the previous century. By contrast, social democrats can hold their heads pretty high. That’s why I’m willing to cherry pick one or two ideas that originate on the far Left, but taking them seriously is another matter entirely.
But what I liked best about Manne’s piece was his neat encapsulation of the failure of neo-liberalism, and why its central tenet – faith in markets that never fail – it shouldn’t be taken seriously either.
Guy at #19:
2) as to Australian women and non-white writers who tackle the core political-economic questions that distinguish left from right – as opposed to important but more specific questions of gender, race, culture, law, etc – please suggest em. Noel Pearson of course could be slotted in to write on either left or right, but I think it’s reasonable to put him on the dexter side of the ledger these days, and the oz’s series was leftists writing about the left. This isn’t an episode of Australian Idol, you don’t choose one of everybody. To name-drop people for their intellect who don’t work on this specific topic – eg Larissa Behrendt, Alison Croggan, Sheila Jeffreys, Meaghan Morris, Gary Foley, Mick Dodson, Liz Grosz, etc – would be pointless and insulting.
I agree it’d be pointless and insulting so why did you just do it?? lol
More pertinently, what I was trying to suggest by remarking on the white and male character of your off-cuff list there, was not necessarily that you had left off some eligible writers – rather, that if political, progressive public intellectuals who happen to be raced and sexed are choosing not to “tackle the core political-economic questions”, then those questions can’t be considered ‘core’, can they?
“This isn’t an episode of Australian Idol, you don’t choose one of everybody.”
ha ha orly?
And Paulus, I’m usually against privatisation, but you make a very good point. You’d think the Left would be falling over themselves to support an extension of Medicare for dental health. But nup. How many have been jumping for joy at the huge efforts Rudd has put into social housing and creating affordable private housing? Stony silence – especially from the far Left.
Ginj@33
Rudd has done some stuff on public housing? Really? It must be one of those well-kept secrets. Either that or purely symbolic.
Fran, people who actually know something about social housing are extremely impressed with Rudd’s commitment and new federalist approach. Its making a real difference to outcomes – the states are onboard because its working. Ginj is quite right – its surprising how little the left has picked up on the sea change here.
After 11 years of Howard is sometimes difficult to spot policies that dont come with self-promotional bells and whistles. It aint like the schools program in that sense.
Two questions LeftyE
1. How many extra dwellings or beds have been added to public housing stock
2. to what extent has FHOS subverted public housing?
Laura
I made the list to show that there were plenty of women writing who weren’t silenced by domestic duties – they just weren’t writing about the political-economic matters, which remains at the base of left and right, in the way that the Oz series was constructing it.
To be fair, you’re right – a thinker like Liz Grosz could talk about the politico-economic questions as framed within a wider cultural-philosophical sphere, and that the left should work from that pivot. I didn’t suggest it because I’m simply glad they didn’t allow the cultural ‘left’ a guernsey, which might have made things conceivably worse.
I don’t really buy the idea that what’s core and what’s partial is simply a matter of perspective. At the centre of any human social system is the manner in which it reproduces itself economically (including of course, fertility, child-rearing etc issues) – and I know that there is then an issue about the disarticulation of culture and economy, etc. But we can take as read that the question of the economy is still at the heart of the left-right difference.
I think women from a Marxist tradition write on them (and I didn’t suggest various of those because the explicitly Marxist tradition is so ossified) – but that many others simply abandoned such questions with the 70s/80s collapse of Marxism, and went into either cultural debates, or more specific political issues (Meaghan Morris has a good account of this historical process, both generally and in her own life, in The Pirate’s Fiancee), and that accounts for the gender deficit.
Paulus -
the comment that control of banks etc by some sort of social ownership – not necessarily the state – would have no effect, or no possibility of effect on equality or democratic control, that is probably the single silliest comment I’ve seen on the whole issue. The idea that the acme of left achievement should be the extension of a free dental plan represents exactly the lowered expectations that the Oz’s series was aimed at encouraging.
“The idea that the acme of left achievement should be the extension of a free dental plan…”
Actually, many (if not most) fine left achievements come courtesy of the Acme Corporation.
Wasn’t that Wile E Coyote’s favourite business?
I guess the only thing I have to add to discussion so far, is to ask “Why are we having the discussion here?” (!).
Whilst I realize the severe ideological and power constraints which constrain the sorts of “comments” which The Australian newspaper places upon its readers, is it absolutely and irremediably hopeless to nonetheless “comment” on the articles which The Oz has been publishing??
That is to say, rather than having a chat amongst ourselves here, couldn’t we engage in a sort of “activism” by still trying to “comment” on those articles??
I think that this is probably a fortoiri the case when they start publishing their articles on “the Right”
Would be interested in people’s thoughts…
Guy,
It’s not “lowered expectations” — it’s focusing on the practical and the achievable, rather than the ideological.
Regarding bank ownership: nothing stops people from forming financial co-operatives. They exist right now. I suppose they are more democratic than the major banks — but to what effect? Maybe they offer slightly lower mortgage rates to their members than the big 4 banks do. Whoopie.
You still haven’t explained how — to paraphrase from your article — educational opportunity, class mobility, perpetual poverty, derisory pensions, over-priced services, or public health, get improved through having banks under “social ownership”. I’m sure there’s a link somewhere. I’m just waiting for you to elucidate it.
(Oh, and by the way, while you’re making grand plans for every bank, mine, and telecom, to be taken under “social ownership”, you might wish to check out section 51(xxxi) of the Constitution. “Just terms”. Might cost a fair bit, don’t you think?)
No idea Fran, I don’t work in the area. But I have good friends who do (in QLD, specifically), far left of the ALP by instinct, who all say there’s a quiet revolution going on in social housing – driven by the federal agenda – and its actually working. Its not a story Ive heard in the media – not even the left journals.
As for your Qs, get your own research assistant!
My point LeftyE would be that if you have “no idea” then you’re in no position to castigate the far left for failing to celebrate Rudd’s achievements in ‘social housing’.
It seems to me that ‘social housing’ could either be something very worthwhile or simply a poltical repackaging of what already exists and without any clear and measurable benchmarks we’ve no business giving the Rudd regime kudos.
My own view was that FHOS was utterly retrograde. Here were funds that could have been used to augment public housing stock and yet they were being applied so as to underpin the private market, in the process pushing up the costs to the state of acquiring public housing stock, encouraging retropgrade housing development and underpinning people over-leveraging.
Very poor policy IMO.
There is no need for a ‘left’ approach to politics in Australia. Its such a ‘yesterday’ ethos.
http://www.actu.asn.au/Campaigns/HealthSafety/News/WorkDeathPromptBidforUniformSafetyLaws.aspx
“A staggering 8000-plus Australians die each year from work-related incidents or illnesses, Access Economics says.
Another 690,000 are injured or fall sick from work-related causes.”
http://www.aph.gov.au/library/pubs/rp/2008-09/09rp27.pdf
“Based on a measure of relative poverty ….11.7% of all Australians [or more than one in nine Australians] were living in poverty in 2006.
Well, first, we don’t need the scare quotes on social housing Fran. It comprises public and community housing – the latter is a very important sector of non-private housing. Its a widely used term in the sector to encompass the two.
Second, national housing policy has be bedeviled by private sector subsidies for years. No argument there.
However, people who DO know about this (and I suspect we might be both exempted from that group) are telling a story of change that isn’t being heard. I know because I used to work for Housing QLD, and speak to friends there regularly. I dont pretend know the details anymore – but hey, maybe its a LEAD some enterprising young journo or left social commentator might choose to pursue.
Alternatively, of course, we could sit around making a priori judgments that everything’s just symbolic, and reflexively mourning the lack of progress in social policy under Rudd. I’m not sure thats helped us recover a left narrative in the past, but its worth another burl I spose.
Fran, Lefty E. I do work in housing and there’s a massive amount of investment happening in public housign and affordable rental. Never as much as we would all like, but a welcome improvement on the previous govt. There’s $5.x billion investment in new public housing, most of it to be managed and sometimes owned by not-for-profits.
And a big chunk of other money is an investment subsidy to guarantee a below market rent in privately owned, or not-for-profit owned rental housing. Not sure if that latter program (National Rental Affordability Scheme) is a “right” or “left” approach. It’s got bi-lateral support in govt if that means anything, but probably not.
I don’t know what’s left or right any more about lots of things Maybe I’m getting more pragmatic as I get older but I’m more likely to look at social policy on the grounds of whether it works and is for the greater good.
Thanks for the detail, Angharad.
It might be part of a story of “lowered expectations” but it is important that a bit of fairness creeps in on housing and on the oral health story. Actually, in my state Victoria, the basis of dental care for the underprivileged has been maintained since Howard pulled the plug on Federal funds early on in his tight arsed government.
State labor has bragging rights there and it is pretty early on to throw hands in the air and suggest federally they will not respond positively to the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission Report that recommended the introduction of Denticare. It is only a couple of months out of the bag for gawd sake.
Nobody from any part of the political spectrum would ever disagree with that sentiment (with the possible exception of the local equivalents of the irrational post-modern Right, they’d just think you’re not saying what you’re saying).
As interesting as Rundle’s points are I don’t see where his version of a new transformative Left is coming from, or is going to. He’s given up on the ALP/labour movement. Yet there’s no mention of trying to bring the ideals of the Green movement into this discussion he wants started (Bob Brown & Peter Singer are broadly the same as Evan Thornley & Soutpho-whatzits for providing a starting point for commentary? Really?)
IMHO, because G. Rundle is a post-Marxist, kinda-post-class-struggle Leftwinger with a surprisingly bland economic populist doctrine (“Such a programme would be one whose proposed changes are not piecemeal, but are based around a common principle — that economic power and control has to be transferred to social and public control (in forms better developed than old processes of nationalisation), as an expression of right (not rights, right”), and he can’t see, or refuses to acknowledge, the importance of the softer post-materialist influence on Oz progressivism over the last half century.
On the Soutpho-whatzits thread I had a back-and-forth with Katz about these themes, although Katz isn’t even as confident as GR is about existing conditions; he thinks labourism is dead or has at least been fatally wounded. (Here’s another thing to consider, somewhere between the positions of Rundle and my sparring partner—the old Coalition parties supported labourism via their endorsement of the industrial relations club. That club is dead. Hence Leftwingers shouldn’t be sanguine & take for things for granted, ala, “Ah, well, Kev and Julia alone can protect some sort of independent umpire, they don’t need patrician tories on the other side of the House to agree with them about that.”)
And I agree with Ginja, Lefty E and Angharad about the surprising effectiveness of turtle v hare policy decisions.
Boring historiography point alert: fwiw Manne is smart enough to know that his hero, George Orwell, never really understood the monstrousness of the pre-Stalin Bolshevik regime.
Which makes him more historically aware than either the old revolutionary Left or the Rightwingers & contrarians who used Orwell as cudgel with which to hit people around the head.
(Ginja, you are very brave to bring up the bad old days in a discussion where nobody has been going into much detail about the bad old days
)
It is also a matter of life or death, quite literally. People die from untreated dental abscesses. Even the “cheap” option of extraction is prohibitively expensive and it leaves people with a loss of function and an appearance that can be a deal breaker for potential employers. I had thought that the extension of medicare to dental health was a dead cert. If it has really dropped from the agenda that is appalling.
Fran Barlow, you’ve got to be kidding! Symbolic?! Rudd has a massive public/social housing scheme.
As part of the stimulus, Rudd is currently building 20,000 new social housing dwellings and repairing 47,000 existing dwellings – which will bring more housing in the public housing/social housing pool back into circulation.
To do a bit of budget juggling I think that 20,000 figure was unfortunately pared back by 700 houses. But apparently the repairing of existing housing stock that wasn’t being used has meant that more dwellings are ready for use again than anticipated.
Pure public housing is no longer preferred by many because not-for-profit social housing groups can apparently build significantly more houses for the same amount of money.
Nickws: I was quoting from Robert Manne’s piece which is part of The Oz’s “What’s Left?” series. Manne was making the point that the far Left did themselves so much damage last century that they’re really not to be taken seriously – unlike social democrats. That’s a tad harsh for me – maybe one or two far Lefties are worth a hearing.
And what’s boring got to do with the deaths of millions of people?
Why badmouth Orwell? Animal Farm may be a Trotskyist version of Bolshevik history, but in one of his essays he says he distrusted communists right from the start because of their violent rhetoric – Orwell had them sussed from the beginning.
Guy Rundle: the idea of a serious free dental scheme is way above the expectations of The Oz. They of course came out and bagged it the next day.
This debate reminds me of what happened with LBJ in the ’60s. Without bringing Vietnam into this, who achieved more? Great Society liberals or radicals? I wouldn’t discount what radicals did on civil rights, but for concrete results I come down on the side of the liberals.
@49 -
Sure, rhetorically, Nickws.
But let’s just take two examples:
(1) The composition of the professions.
Despite Dawkins’ massification of the higher education system, the “old” professions such as law and medicine continue to draw on a very narrow social base. Suggestions for more inclusive catchments – such as the use of interviews for selecting medicine students – have either been bitterly opposed, or stripped back, and were never implemented such as to make a real change in the social composition of the cohort. Such opposition has often been mounted on liberal grounds (ie a purported meritocracy of entrance scores, which ignores the way such entrance scores are created) but has served conservative ends.
(2) Gender equity in the workplace.
Going backwards. Again, a liberal approach has proved ineffectual, and even raising the issue these days brings down on your head a stream of invective.
As to the point about agency, it’s an eminently fair one. Myself, I’d be starting with serious discussion of social democratic ideas within and reaching out to already existing social movements – ie feminist, union, community groups. A think-tanky style of work, in the first instance, joined to a communications strategy which can then spark off an organisational strategy. In other words, not starting off by writing learned tomes or addressing “ideas” to power.
Of course, I’m guilty of not doing this personally.
“With some honourable exeptions, the far Left have a lot to live down from the previous century. By contrast, social democrats can hold their heads pretty high.”
I would have thought the ‘far Left’ were more or less defined by their opposition to Stalin and his protege’s.
Social Democrats can hold their head high…for endorsing the mass slaughter of the First World War and their support for colonialism during the 20th Century. And then there’s Afghanistan…
#57 Chav Sep 28th, 2009 at 10:38 am
You mean Trotsky, that literary critic cum totalitarian mass-murderer and his fawning acolytes amongst the ranks of “infantile communists”? Whenever the “Far Left” got their hands on power they rivalled Stalin with their bloodthirstyness eg suppression of Krondstadt rebellion, Pol Pot.
Otherwise the “Far Left” invariably get purged come the morrow of the revolution. They couldnt run a tuck shop let alone a modern industrial state. For an existence proof of that proposition in this country I give you the “administration” of Remote Indigenous Communities 1977-2007.
Chav says:
Chave is correct, the Social Democrats were wrong to support World War One. But they were only following their constituents wishes. GIGO.
The Far Left, eg Jaures, were quite right to oppose WWI. As were classical liberals like Russell and traditionalists like the Pope.
Colonialism generally did more good than harm to colonised countries. Particularly in those countries colonised by states which had effective social democratic parties.
Afghanistan is a legitimate war against fundamentalism. No doubt we should get out sooner rather than later. But our long time commitment to the region is hardly due to some fatal flaw in social democrat ideology.
Would be good to get some opinions from the Manne-style social democrats on the social justice outcomes of letting publicly funded private schools use discriminatory employment practices.
To the extent that there is such a thing as the left and the right these days, it is clear that the left spend too much time gazing into its collective navel, and the right not enough.
Thus you have many of those who identify with the left content to spend hours upon hours ruminating on what ought to be done, and those who identify with the right happy to do anything or say anything so long as it doesn’t require any thought or reflection.
So do contributors think that we are in a post-ideological age, where the political parties are judged on essentially pragmatic criteria?
.
I reckon the ideological battles of the 20th century are drawing to a close. Despite Mark’s assertion viz the victory of ‘labourism’ over ‘classical liberalism’ the Left has not won and neither has the Right. The result we see is a combination of policy preferences. Labour market regulation has been reaffirmed in this country. But then so have many aspects of free market ideology. Political parties capable of winning govt in the English speaking world have been converging for a long time now.
.
But the ideological argument is heating up in an inversely proportional manner. In America especially it’s now common to speak of the other side as less than human despite the fact that the Democrats and Republicans are divided by very little. Or maybe because of it.
.
I have to add that, despite the fact that both Left and Right, are terms that collectively describe sets of allied groups there is some kind of esprit de corps uniting them. And the diversity either side might boast of is actually only really apparent to those on the inside. The spectrum is however too simplistic to be of much use. According to it Bob Brown and Stalin are mates and so are Malcolm Turnbull and Hitler. That’s obviously horseshit. But both sides persist in such generalizations for reasons of expediency and convenient hysteria.
.
And that goes for a lot of people here. Some of my views are of the classical liberal strain, some would be associated with the non-orthodox radical Left, (many are just grim Machiavellian pragmatism). And yet I can’t count how many times I’ve been labelled a Windschuttlian reactionary, an anti-feminist and all the rest of it.
Update: Rundle writes a sequel.
Update: Quadrant piles on.
Ashamed to say I haven’t read it yet, even though I have a lot of time for Manne.
Is it personally directed at G. Rundle?
Not certain whether I like pissing matches between commentators who’re supposed to be discussing the ‘big picture of the Left’.
Heh, I’m a Laurie Short/Jim McClelland Grouper, for pete’s sake (in the same way John Gorton once declared himself a Southron Confederate, that is).
I know all the Marxist Leninist totalitarians were bad guys, we should remember they slaughtered people, and not just during the worst of the Red Terror of the thirties, etc.
I just query bringing up that unpleasant legacy in a debate about the current Left.
God, it’s been a couple of years since I forced myself to read Orwell’s major essays & almost every newspaper column reproduced in his collected works, but I’m certain that Orwell was blind to the extremes of the Trots & Anarchists in Spain (though I haven’t read his war book).
If Eric Blair ever said he was opposed to the original Bolshevik revolution then I reckon he included the caveat “because Stalin was involved”.
Objectively the man just wasn’t anti-tyranny, as far as I remember. He was mostly anti-Stalin.
Yes.
Chav: true, social democrats did, to varying degrees, support going to war in 1914. But social democrats must be counted as among the most equivocal supporters of the war, with the ALP splitting over conscription and the German social democrats splitting as well – and playing, let’s not forget, a critical role in bring the war to a close in the 1918-19 revolution.
But support for the war was not a central part of social democratic philosophy, whereas violence and militarism were always central to Bolshevism. It’s a crucial difference.
And while support for colonialism was a bit of a mixed bag for social democrats, the Attlee and Chifley governments were largley exemplary de-colonizers. In fact, I can’t believe you’d bring up Afghanistan – the mess in Afghanistan is a direct result of the Soviets trying to expand their empire!
Thanks Mark: I just had the briefest of glaces at some of the Quadrant responses. Though the Left fights amongst itself, a quick glance at Quadrant is enough to remind me what a bunch of dull, misanthropic, bitter, narrow-minded pedants the other mob is.
Buggered if I know why we’re talking about this, as the historical entities which went under the name of “social democracy” in 1914 were largely confined to German speaking countries and Russia and were (at least formally) Marxist parties – despite revisionism, etc. Bolshevism, at the time, was a small minority of Russian social democracy. So, I think that formulation is a little misleading, if broadly accurate. The point about colonialism is somewhat relevant, though, if you take the sort of argument that people like Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and Fanon made seriously about liberal and non-Marxist socialist regimes resting on colonial and imperialist violence. There’s something in that, even if it’s a bit of a broad brush. But given that violence is at the core of any sort of state in conceptual terms, making these distinctions is always going to be broad brush to greater or lesser degree.
Anyway, neither the UK nor Antipodean labo(ur) parties could have been accurately described as “social democratic” at the time, but in the first case, there was a significant pacifist element (overlapping with the British Liberals, from whom it’s hard to distinguish in many cases Labour at the time) and certainly strong sentiment against war from Irish and Catholic elements in the ALP.
I don’t think the historical example proves very much at all, but at least it’s important to state it accurately! You’re sort of schematising a bit much, I think, Ginja, while Chav seems to me to be simply wrong in making a polemical point.
@67 – Quadrant is just hilarious, Ginja! I can’t see how anyone can take it seriously!
Mark says
No, but they are dialectically inter-twined. So it makes a lot of sense to confront psephological realities with ideological goals, and vice-versa.
Why so many intellectual organs seem to be in such a hurry to define the nature and predict the behaviour of the Left is because AUS is slowly evolving into a proto-one party state, governed by an ad infinitum of ALP governments at municipal, state and federal level.
The Commonwealth as “ALP one-party state” formulation looks strange, even bizarre to most people. But not to long time residents of Sydney, believe me. And the ALP as Natural Party of Government is rapidly becoming Conventional Wisdom amongst political scientists.
The only thing that is likely to upset the ALP apple cart is a renewal of the Culture War, based on majority civic-minority ethnic tension as NESB immigration continues to skyrocket. But there does not seem any clear evidence of this on the horizon.
I base my “ALP hegemony” political conclusion on the fact that there are demographic biases in the electoral system that favour the ALP, although not necessarily the Left. In particular, Baby Boomers, NESB’s and single mothers are all large and increasing fractions of the polity. And the bulk of them tend to systematically vote for the ALP. (NB: These demographics will tend to be pro-ALP, but not necc. pro-Left. Quite the opposite in the case of Baby Boomers, who are turning cultural conservative as they age.)
I predict that the current FED ALP admin will govern out till 2016. The VIC ALP, once jewel in the crown of the L/NP, appears to be consolidating its hegemony. I am willing to bet that SA, QLD & TAS state admins will remain in the ALP’s column. No doubt the NSW ALP will spend a term or two in the political wilderness. But the NSW L/NP looks cranky and lacks the – ur – professional skills to manage NSW INC.
Over time this captured demographic creates the institutional basis for a NSW ALP machine set up, where the ALP functions as a clearing house for the distribution of state jobs, contracts and laws. Particularly in the residential property development sector, which is where about 2/3 of AUS’s wealth currently resides.
However the ALP cannot govern smoothly without appeasing the polities remaining ideologues to its Left. Which in practice means the GREENs.
That is why ideological analysts – from Rudd, Rundle, Tim S., Manne, the Australian, Quadrant etc – are focusing on the Left. It is the last remaining bastion of ideological politics in the country so it is important to develop a clinical picture of its behavioural propensities. This also explains why Rudd went to so much trouble to tickle the Left’s soft-underbelly with symbolic politics pantomimes such as 20-20 conference, Sorry Statement, Bill of Rights etc
At least you guys can console yourself with the thought that they are at last paying attention, even if it is unwonted.
There were always clues the difference between social democratic parties and the Bolsheviks – a split that predated ww1, though the war did widen it.
Those from the social democratic/labour tradition chose the parliamentary route early – and stuck to it. And unlike the Bolshevik Parties they always aspired to have a large, mass membership, not be a small conspiratorial vanguard (a hardened cadre willing to put their societies through any degree of suffering).
These differences were often unstated – German social democrats suscribed to Marxism right up to the post-war period and ALP rhetoric could be bloodcurdling by today’s standards, but there was a fundamental difference in the way the parties actually acted (the only philosophy that counts).
The point, though, Ginja, is that they were all in the same party in Germany at that stage, and neither grouping really existed in the British Labour party. So I still think you’re being too schematic!