Tag Archive for 'classical liberalism'

The Australian’s series on the left

Published
by
Mark
5 months, 4 weeks ago
in Australiana, Books, Writers & Writing, Culture, History, Media, Philosophy, Politics and Sociology
. 72 Comments

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. Continue reading ‘The Australian’s series on the left’

On the futility of arguing about Hayek, or what’s in a name?

Published
by
Mark
1 year, 6 months ago
in Education, Ethics, History, International, Philosophy, Policy, Politics and Sociology
. 108 Comments

Club Troppo’s Don Arthur and I started a correspondence by email about some of the issues I raised in my post the other day about neo-liberalism and thinktanks, and the very rapid Blairisation of the Rudd/Gillard agenda (which has certainly become even more evident in the interim with the latest instalment in the “education revolution” and the momentum that some liberal and libertarian bloggers are correct to assume is building up towards vouchers in all forms of education). I don’t want to try to represent Don’s side of the discussion, but I did want to talk about a few things that I put to him, and thank him for the very stimulating opportunity to clarify my thoughts.

One argument that’s often raised by liberals in denying that talk of neoliberalism makes sense is the claim that the state is still large as a percentage of GDP, that Howard did redistribution, and so on. That’s a point that Andrew Norton often makes, in claiming that there’s a degree of social democratic consensus still embodied in the governing practices of the Australian state. John Quiggin has made the same, or a very similar point, from a different political position. There’s some truth in this, but only some. No, Margaret Thatcher didn’t succeed in rolling back the state very far. But expecting her to is to make a false assumption – that the ideological objective only has meaning insofar as it achieves its ostensible aims. What she was actually doing was building up a stronger state in some areas to contain the damage from its withdrawal from some areas. You need a strong state to attack the weak, basically.

Continue reading ‘On the futility of arguing about Hayek, or what’s in a name?’