Jeff Richards Web Diary

Tuesday, August 12, 2003

Why Carmen Lawrence should not be the president of the Australian Labor Party Yesterday Carmen Lawrence announced that she would be running for the ALP presidency. I am of the view that her election would be counterproductive for the party. Lawrence resigned her position in shadow cabinet primarily over the question of refugees, and the loss of what she describes as the ‘values’ of the ALP. The use of the term values is extremely vague, especially given the wide berth of value judgements that Lawrence has made in her political career, starting with political scandals when she was premier and her premiership of Western Australia. I even have a memory of Lawrence once describing herself as an economic rationalist (without irony). I will discard any discussion of values in this particular conversation, since it borders on the meaningless. More importantly are Lawrence’s views on the detention of illegal immigrants. She made this a central part of her political platform. In the lead up to the next election we can be sure that Howard will be using the illegal immigration to strengthen his support in rural and suburban communities. In combination with the issue of terrorism he will be a formidable foe for social democracy in Australia. Carmen Lawrence as president will be a bonus for the prime minister. Lawrence belongs to that group in the ALP who one could call social liberal. In other words she has a policy and philosophical commitment to economic liberalism (which allocates primacy to the free market) and a tolerant and integrative approach to social policy. At first glance, many in the ALP would find little to disagree with social liberalism. The difficulty is that you cannot simply draw a distinction between your economics and politics.  Economic liberalism creates political consequences: widening inequality; insecurity in employments; longer working hours; cutbacks in social services; decaying social infrastructure. The polity is not entirely ignorant and stupefied. They become irritated at politicians who cry injustice for illegal immigrants while supporting policies that have multiplied the burdens and anxieties in their lives. A Lawrence presidency will simply confirm the polities justified suspicion that the ALP has little more concern for working people and too much concern for marginalised groups. I have argued in the past that no party that aspires to political power can focus its policy interests on marginalised groups (Aboriginal people; illegal immigrants; the long term unemployed). To do so is to invite electoral disaster. The primary focus must be on working people (i.e. those engaged with the labour market) and the party must first address their concerns. Making the defence of illegal immigrants the issue that divides the ALP from the Coalition is very stupid politics. It is a pity that the ALP has presented Barry Jones as the only other alternative. A Jones presidency will at least be a nothing presidency, that is, if the past president has learned from the thumping lesson administered by Peter Costello over ‘noodle nation’. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when Jones and Lawrence are the front-runners. The federal ALP could probably make the federal presidency an excellent propaganda and educational tool. It would mean choosing the right candidate who can inspire broad support among working people. Unfortunately it still remains some kind of factional booby prize. Tuesday, 12 August 2003 3:42:24 PM    comment []

Thursday, August 07, 2003

Letter to the Socialist Alliance in South Australia. Dear Renfrey, Thank you for the phone invitation to come to the Socialist Alliance (South Australia) conference, to, as you put it, discuss socialist politics. I appreciate your persistence despite the fact that I have not had anything to do with the SA since the catastrophe of September 11. As you may or may not know, I resigned from the organisation through an email I sent to the national office. This followed the decision of the SA to reflexively oppose Washington’s intervention in Afghanistan without even opening up the issue to discussion among the membership. I supported the intervention of Washington in Afghanistan because it was necessary to break the relation between a theocratic state apparatus established by the Taliban and the theocratic-fascist NGO Al Qaeda. Shortly after we had the federal election and the defeat of the federal ALP. Following the defeat, after a period of reflection, I applied for membership in the ALP. I was expelled from the party for publicly supporting a green candidate in 1989, and I gave the party secretary an assurance that I would not repeat this action without resigning from the ALP first. I intend to stand by this commitment. Allow me to waste some of your time by explaining where I stand politically. There are two legacies of what I would call the ‘generation of ‘68’. The first and most important is the theoretical legacy of western Marxism (a better description might be critical theory). That legacy can still be found in the pages of New Left Review; Le Monde Diplomatique; The Nation (New York); Monthly Review. It is interesting to see how the most important and interesting thinkers on the ‘left of the left’ do not belong to any far left parties. The second and most problematic legacy is organisational. I would argue that (and I confine my remarks to the Australian far left) the leadership of the far left have thrown away the magnificent opportunities that were created by the events of ’68. I can only speak about the experiences I have had with the SYA/SWL/LTF/RESISTANCE/SWP/CL/DSP/SA (I am sure the stories are not much different in other groups and sub-groups). My experience is that of a political leadership that was filled with a deadly combination of sectarianism and petty ambition. When I look back on my past I see a huge graveyard of former members and an organisation that is now, smaller and less influential than when I started getting involved in the Vietnam Moratorium Campaign. The year that followed the fusion with the Communist League in 1978 was Australian Trotskyism’s best year. For a moment there I thought we might have the beginnings of a viable alternative politics. It took about a year before the ‘Cannonists’, the haters of the United Secretariat, the haters of the Mandelists, began their psychotic crusade to purify the party. Remember that Renfrey? We were taken out of the universities and offices and told we had to ‘join the working class’. We, like stupid fucking sheep, marched to the tune of the party leadership. I am pretty certain that none of those fucking bludgers in the core of the leadership went into industry and if they did they didn’t stay in there for too long. That ‘turn’ was accompanied by the other psychotic crusade by the party leadership, the war against the dope smokers in the party. Remember that Renfrey? It was not a war against smoking dope at branch meetings, which never happened. It was a war against anyone who continued to smoke dope! I remember how in this insane crusade friend was turned against friend. I found myself attacking people who were nearest and dearest to me, people I loved! Some of the best and most intelligent cadres were dumped because they enjoyed a recreational puff at home. Oh, that’s right, they were ‘petty-bourgeois’. Of course, it is probably wrong to consider all this as a period of irrationality. There was a reason for it. It was that way that the leadership of the party, or that part of the leadership trained by the ‘Cannonists’ of the United States Socialist Workers Party operated kept their control of the organisation. This group never had any intention of sharing power. All their actions were designed to purge those who were not prepared to follow those miserable cretins who ran the show, and dictated the ‘line’ that we faithfully parroted. In retrospect, the political history of the far left had simply repeated itself after that time. It was a similar story in the move to create a new left with the remnants of the Communist Party (different moves, similar results). Will it be the same with the Socialist Alliance… we will see. I will watch from the sidelines. I think that the most sensible course is for members of the far left to join either the ALP or the Greens. Those who no longer have confidence in the politics of class should join the Greens. Those of us who remain committed to the concept of class politics belong in the ALP. We should never have allowed our politics to be defined as the opposite of the most insightful of early post-war Marxist thinkers, Michael Pablo. Regards, Jeff Richards Thursday, 7 August 2003   3:10:03 PM    comment []

Saturday, August 02, 2003

Looking Over The Wall For several years now I have been thinking about ways to organize my ideas in groups that might give my reading and writing some direction. Thinking seriously about politics requires a certain amount of order, if only to manage what is a potentially massive and unmanageable flow of information. If a person is involved in politics, and that interest extends beyond self-interest, then thinking clearly about political possibilities (i.e. the future) and how to progress ones concerns and interests, requires a disciplined and well-researched capacity for political reflection. My first attempts at grouping were heavily influenced by styles of categorization that I learned when I did my honours years in politics. The style was academic. I have no difficulty with that. I quite like the third person distance when I read a well-researched and well-written book. However, I found that this way of writing finally did not suit me. I am not an academic, and I prefer to move between first and third person. I write when it is convenient and I write to please myself, although I do try and keep an eye out for any possible audience (one or two, he says humbly) or perhaps a small audience when I am dead and gone. The subject headings I first devised went through several different configurations. The last one before I started this work went as follows: 1) Justice, Democracy and Social Planning. 2) Technology, Culture and Consumption. 3) History and Theory. 4) Sovereignty, Power and Bureaucracy. 5) Globalization and Imperial Power. 6) The Individual and Social Existence in Literature and the Cinema. 7) Populism, Democracy and Religion in the Era of Late Capitalism. The difficult with these categories is that I would have to deal systematically with the wide-ranging research that stands behind these words and phrases. I did not think that this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to write about these ideas contained in these topics in a less systematic, and more free ranging style. Part analysis, part biography, part diary, bit and pieces thrown in as I walk through life. While I would not dare compare myself to Walter Benjamin, I want to be inspired by some of his work that has a scrapbook quality about it all. Fragments of ideas, a mental archeology of a person’s life. As I have gotten older (in 2003, 48 years old), I find that life has become more interesting. However, it is also more depressing, from the vantage point of ageing (the aches and pains, the rising fear of major illness); from the chaos and cruelty of modern existence and from the narrowing of political options. I don’t have it in me to try and conceptualize existence in late capitalism. There are many brilliant scholars who can do that job for me. I am happy to pay the outrageous prices they charge for their books. I just want to record the interesting things I find on my life’s journey. So I thought that there might be a different way of ‘organizing my thinking’, one that is more centered on how an individual would experience the modern world of late capitalism. The beginning and the end of history is after all, about the way in which the individual might experience it. From there, from the individual, it moves to the collective and to the institutional structures that are created from the actions of individuals. From those institutions of collective life (of the state and civil society) it moves once again upon the individual, whose person is then transformed by those collectivities. Imagining The Future The Experience of the Present. Considering the Past. The Head and the Heart in the Currents of Public Life Pathologies of Modern Life The Individual and Social Existence in Literature and the Cinema. The Experience of Power . Saturday, 2 August 2003   8:21:07 PM    comment []

Thursday, July 31, 2003

Talking Labor Policy Yesterday I attended a meeting with my favourite Australian politician, Jenny Macklin. It was a poorly attended meeting, which surprised me, given that Macklin does command some respect within the party. The issue of the meeting was the Labor Party’s policy review process, principally the education policy and employment policy. There is something of an irony in the way party members hardly attend a forum to discuss policy that will be the battering ram to defeat the coalition, yet will attend in their dozens or hundreds a meeting over the refugee question that Howard will use to return his party to power. I wondered if ALP members felt so battered that they were entering into a lemming like state of mind. Many party members will repeatedly complain about the failure of leadership and policy to connect with the membership. However, when the opportunity to make one views on policy known to the leadership, the very ones who complain are nowhere to be found! I pondered this question. One reason I could think of was the sheer cynicism that has grown within the party about policy. Very few consider that policy has much bearing on the way the party behaves when it is in power. Another may be in the mental block (or an epistemological divide) in the ethos of the party between its pragmatism and goals. The party prides itself on its ‘pragmatism’ in politics What is pragmatism? First, pragmatism is what pragmatism does. It is the habit of acting in disregard of solidly based scientific rules and tested principles. In everyday life, pragmatism is activity that proceeds from the premise (either explicit or unexpressed) that nature and society are essentially indeterminate. Pragmatic people rely not upon laws, rules, and principles which reflect the determinate features and determining factors of objective reality, but principally upon makeshifts, rule-of-thumb methods, and improvisations based on what they believe might be immediately advantageous. George Novack Pragmatism Versus Marxism: An Appraisal of John Dewey’s Philosophy, Pathfinder Press, New York, 1975. The difficulty with the party’s pragmatism is that it ends up simply adopting the policies of the state bureaucracy, making the party indistinguishable from its predecessors. Consider that partnerships 21 public school funding scheme brought in by the previous government, criticised relentlessly by the ALP while in opposition and now adopted lock stock and barrel by and ALP government. The government wasn’t even bothered to recast the funding model with a new name. Overcoming pragmatism seems to be a function of extraordinary individuals within the party leading the charge for new policy models being implemented in government bureaucracies. Whitlam is probably a good example. For all his faults and his terrible judgement about East Timor, Whitlam did have that risk taking sense of urgency that make for a good social democratic leader. Wednesday, 30 July 2003 8:05:39 PM    comment []

Wednesday, July 30, 2003

The Question of Poverty and Unemployment The South Australian Government has just produced a report about the problem of poverty in South Australia. This report was the subject of discussion in our Labor Party sub-branch meeting last night. I have not read the report. Its an imposing document but I fear that it will go the way of many reports given to governments. There must be a room, perhaps a building in every capital city, where reports get gently put to bed. My concern with the proposals to deal with the issue of persistent poverty is they try to resolve many of the symptoms that result from disengagement with the labour market. I don’t think that there would be enough resources in the state to try and tackle the problem this way. Disengagement from the labour market includes chronic reliance on transfer payments (benefits) from the state to provide from basic needs and other personal expenditure; part time casual labour, in the legal or illegal economy (underemployment). There are also a growing number of working poor, the result of the states disengagement from intervention in the labour market. A social democratic government should be focusing, as its absolute priority, the maximisation of labour market engagement. There is no other issue more important. I remembered a piece I was reading in one of my UK periodicals, possibly New Left Review or London Review of Books that was written by Robin Blackburn. He made a remark about the relation between unemployment and the cost of labour. It struck me because those on the right of politics usually raised the question of the cost of labour. Here was one of the towering intellectuals of the left discussing the issue. There are two ways of looking at the cost of labour question. One is to look at the remuneration given to employees, the area the right gets obsessively preoccupied with. The other way is to look at the other associated costs, starting with the various taxation costs, charges, processing costs, and pre wage costs like superannuation. I suspect that if you looked at wages starting from the Accord era in 1983 you would see that the share going to wages in the economy has probably remained fairly stable. It is the other costs that have risen. There are also the growing costs of the shift in the way the states revenue stream is collected. More of the taxation system is focused around the wage system, including the Medicare levy. Furthermore, the effect of the privatisation of state institutions like the Commonwealth Employment Service has shifted greater burdens of hiring labour onto the employer. The result of the rising cost of employing labour is to make employers become more reluctant to hire new labour. It forces a shift of employer expenditure towards labour saving technology or towards a greater reliance on overtime. The latter will have damaging consequence for family relations if people start working too much overtime. Social Democratic governments should adopt strategies to lower the cost of labour. The easiest way would be to depress wages, but that would produce too much opposition from organised labour interests, whose members have already sacrificed wage increases for what have been very poor social wage tradeoffs. A better way would be to start finding ways of removing some of the non-wage costs. This would start with removing some of the taxation costs, many of which were already going to be removed as part of the GST trade-off. Perhaps a reconstruction of the taxation system that would reduce rates of taxation on the low paid. There are also some wider questions that relate to the costs of labour. As I argued earlier, states have become focused on using the wages system to collect revenue, provide future transfer payments (superannuation), and even place the costs of social services upon employers. I recently heard on the radio about moves in the United States to get employers to provide day care for the parents of employees. I question whether this is an economically and politically sound strategy. I think that the provision of social services is primarily a responsibility of the state. To transfer the cost of these social goods to employers would be structurally inefficient and would generate major inequities between those who are able to access such services and those who cannot. It would clearly favour large employers. The paradox of the competitive modern capitalist state is that it requires the partnership with a strong state sector providing services and skilled workers. The privatisation of the state sector fragments its ability to provide services in an efficient and strategic manner. Wednesday, 30 July 2003 1:50:59 PM    comment []

Tuesday, July 29, 2003

Civil War Erupts in Sydney Yesterday Leo McLeay, a politician whose patch is near Sydneys Kingsford Smith airport threatened early resignation from his seat, saying that there was no consultation with Sydney ALP politicians about the decision to oppose the creation of a new airport at Badgerys Creek. New South Wales Labor is once again at war with itself over the airport issue, a question that has plagued politicians in both major parties. An interesting theoretical consideration here is the emergence of conflicts within one cosmopolitan region and the impact that this has within a political party. There are emerging separate sets of interests that are being reflected in politics. Tuesday, 29 July 2003 10:32:34 AM    comment []

Reading about Italian History I just began reading a very good book on the history of modern Italy, Paul Ginsborg A history of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943-1948. I first encountered Ginsborg in an essay on the regime of Silvio Berlusconi in a recent edition of New Left Review. I have just started reading the chapters on the end of the Second World War. The situation is very much like Iraq: a devastated economy; a deeply divided society were central authority has broken down; a rising dislike of the occupying authorities (the Allies, primarily the UK). The story of Italy is very much about how the organised interests played out their influence and authority over the next fifty years. This parallel with Iraq is going to be an interesting consideration when I am reading the book. My main interest will be just how it was that the country with the most powerful communist party in the western world managed to produce a Berslusconi. Of course, Italy is not alone in the phenomenon of Silvio. In fact, it may well be the harbinger of the politician in the era of late capitalism. Monday, 28 July 2003 10:21:18 AM    comment []

Monday, July 28, 2003

Ironies in the History of the Left I recently finished a book by Patrick and Andrew Cockburn titled Saddam Hussein: An American Obsession, an interesting and informed study of the man and the state he ruled over. Its indispensable for developing a study of Iraqi politics. There was one interesting story that has some ironies for the Left to ponder. In the late 1990’s there was a serious attempt made to kill a number of leading figures in the Baathist Party. The Cockburns argue that it was the most daring and well organised plot against the regime from within Iraq. The group was not fundamentalist or a pro-US. They were primarily an educated, cosmopolitan group influenced by the radical and revolutionary currents of the Latin American left. The irony is that the victim of the assassination, a hated and despised senior member of the ruling elite, was saved only by the excellent work of specialist doctors from Cuba, the very country that did more to inspire the radical edge of Latin America. Monday, 28 July 2003 2:49:17 PM    comment []

Saturday, July 26, 2003

Richard Alston I have been listening to Richard Alston, the federal minister for communications relentlessly continuing his attack on the Australian Broadcasting Commission for its biased reporting during the Iraq war. Despite a review by an independent commission he continues to claim that this issue of bias has not been addressed. If there were any claims to be made about the reporting in the invasion of Iraq, it is that the ABC failed to give enough time to those who were opposed to this war. After all, they were probably in the majority before the invasion. Alston is hell bent on turning the ABC into the neutered American PBS. Listen to him makes me want to declare Jihad against the government! I was puzzled as to why Alston was so relentless in doing this. The opposition said that it was the product of the litany of Alston failures, starting with the failed privatisation of Telstra; then there is the dreadfull choice of the now dumped Jonathan Shier as head of the ABC. Is Alston in the crosshairs as far as his political future is concerned. He certainly wont be able to sell the privatisation of Telstra if the government does not win the senate in the next election. There may be another reason. This may have to do with fear of exposure over the reasons for invading Iraq. The government may want the ABC to be so distracted over this issue that it wont pick up on the false WMD claims made to justify war. Saturday, 26 July 2003 3:08:11 PM    comment []

Tuesday, July 15, 2003

Listening To Music I love my toys. Mine are usually the expensive kind. I recently purchased a Sony Net MD player. It’s a very usefull advance in the technology of digital music reproduction, if you are not into pirating music for sale or to your friends. Sony owns a lot of the music production business, so its understandable if they try and protect their profit margins from piracy. In return they give you a nice little piece of equipment. I have about 600 CDs and growing. Music is a wonderful addiction. The problem is for those of us 40 something’s who have what one regards as a treasure trove of loved music is listening to the damn things. You would have to spend a lot of time going through your catalogue. You also tend to forget some nice riff or song or album if you haven’t played it for a while. The advantage of the Net MD is in the Sonic Stage software that you put into you computer. It has an integrated compression system that allows you to put around 10 CDs per gig. So I put in thirty to fifty CDs into the hard drive. The software can randomly select the tracks. I am surprised at the listenability of random selection. It can go from genre to genre, making the next track an interesting surprise. I decided to load up a large number of tracks from genre box sets, in this case two box sets ‘The Secret History of Rock and Roll’ (tracks from the first half of the 20th century.) and the controversial selection of Ken Burns’ Jazz. Then a wide ranging selection from C&W (Johnny Cash) to Jazz, Rock, Jazz Rock, Garage etc. etc. Random selection gives you a good appreciation of the connections among musical genres. In any case, it’s all from my own collection. Tuesday, 15 July 2003 2:41:27 PM    comment []

Australia and the Nuclear Option. I have this feeling that deep in the heart of the Australian state apparatus there are preparations for to produce nuclear weapons, or at least move a few steps forward in the manufacturing processes. I wrote the previous paragraph a few days ago. Yesterday, in the Adelaide Sunday Mail I read an article on this very issue, about the way in which Australia was taking a few steps closder to making the atomic bomb, primarily through the upgrade at Lucas Heights Reactor and by the creation of a nuclear storage facility in northern South Australia. If these plans are being realised, then the political consequences of this will be very interesting, particularly for the Australian Labor Party. One can be certain that the Green Party will be resolutely opposed to the nuclear option. What about the ALP? It should not be taken for granted that the parties of the left will simply oppose the nuclear option. The French Communist Party for example, has supported a nuclear French state. I am sure that there will be a looming battle in the ALP about the nuclear option for Australia. Many Australian Nationalists might see the nuclear option as a road to an independent foreign policy. With a growing number of states in the process of making atomic weapons and long range delivery systems, there must be a view within policy making elite that the time has come for Australia to do the same. The same nationalists might argue that as long as Australia does not have atomic weapons then we will grow increasingly dependant on the United States. The current governments move to strengthen ties with Washington is indicative of the growing concern in Canberra with the proliferation of nuclear weapons among medium sized states. Monday, 14 July 2003 1:38:52 PM    comment []

IRAQ There is a certain amount of perverse joy one feels when we hear of the troubles the United States is facing in Iraq. Still, it couldn’t be too much fun being a soldier in a place where you just cant relax. There must be a great trade in illegal psychoactive substances going on. I wonder what the drug of choice is in this war. I suspect it is probably speed in its different forms. Policy makers in the Washington must be getting that sinking feeling. Slowly but surely the body count rises, with no end in sight. I don’t think I have heard any news coming out of Iraq suggesting the return of political stability. To make things worse the credibility of the reasons for going to war are being questioned every day. It will be interesting to see whether a well organised resistance to the American and British occupation forces evolves, and how this will relate to the remnants of the Baath Party. I have argued in the past that an organised resistance is separate but interlinked to Baath Party forces. The same applies this time. The party will only be able to partly influence the resistance struggle. It is possible ( but not likely in my view ) that the Baath Party might be overtaken by other organised leadership groups (say Communists or Islamists). It is also possible that the Baath might seize control of the resistance. If the occupation forces are not able to restore political stability and create some kind of state administration, then the resistance will grow to the point where it will become a contender for state power. There will be two processes that will be fascinating to watch. One process will be the further disintegration of the existing state authority. The other will be struggle for the leadership of the resistance. Friday, 11 July 2003 1:36:53 PM    comment []

Wednesday, July 02, 2003

Dark Thoughts It is easy to understand why people give up on the world and just retreat into a private life. If you look at life around you, it can seem very bleak. Social life sometimes feels like it is completely fucked. When I heard Senator Kay Patterson defending her rotten governments Medicare policies, I felt I had had enough.. too much listening to the radio, too much news. I long ago promised to try and stop listening to the news. I only have so much listening time in my life, so why the fuck am I wasting my time on the news when I could be listening to a wonderful Jewish Palestinian Jazz fusion music ‘Exile’, the marvellous Gilad Atzmon and the Orient House Ensemble. There are times when the daily vomit that is the NEWS becomes counterproductive. The act of understanding the social reality of late capitalism sometimes requires a person to step back from the flood tide of contradictory moments. Too much of a preoccupation with these moments can lead to a psychopathology. What is most fascinating about our late capitalist reality is the generalisation of chaos. Not only does the system become rocked by periods of economic and social instability, the very core of the social reality we experience comes apart (Is this what links Marx to John Coltrane’s most expressive and chaotic music e.g. Ascension?). Consider the sociology of modern life. Our understanding has evolved out of the traditions that include Marx. All attempt to describe structures by which social interests are shaped and interact. I would suggest that those evolved understandings we have inherited and which we now teach in our centres of education are becoming increasingly strained. Why? Not because of the evolving understanding, but from the chaos and disorganising power of modern productive forces. Capitalism has become a solvent, dissolving all social relations before it. Historically capitalism evolved ‘regulatory systems’, that locked various social interests in a social compromise that allowed various forms of ‘governability’. In late capitalism the very idea of regulatory system starts to come apart. Revolutionary socialists may draw comfort from such a thought, until we take it further. What if the solvent removes not just the system of regulation, but the very notion of ‘social interest’. Without the idea of social interests, there is no such thing as class. The idea of  ‘capacity for social organisation’ becomes problematic. I don’t only mean the capacity for social organisation of the ‘working class’. I would argue that the capacity for the organisation of all social interests becomes problematic. That includes the social and organising interests of capitalism. This is a scenario for barbarism. Tuesday, 1 July 2003 7:24:57 AM    comment []

Monday, June 30, 2003

The Governor General On the weekend the prime Minster announced the appointment of a new governor general for Australia. The new GG is has a military background, having served bravely during Vietnams war of national liberation. This choice is designed with the next election in mind. It will help erase the memory of the unfortunate Peter Hollingworth. Some voices from the republican movement were heard to mention the possibility of opening up the system by which the GG is chosen. The issue of the head of state and the system of appointing on has been churning in my mind recently. I actually prefer the title ‘commonwealth’ to republic. It sounds more egalitarian. Republic has a closer connection to democracy in the loosest sense of the word. I am opposed to a head of state being the representative of a monarch. More importantly, I have some doubts about the idea of electing the head of state. I have grown to share the fear that a directly elected head of state would become a rival centre of power to the parliament. I like the idea that the effective head of state, the prime minister, has limits placed on his or her authority. These limits include the PM being elected by an electorate and by the authority to rule being given by other elected representatives whose electoral legitimacy is similar to his. I have little doubt that a directly elected head of state, especially if the contest was hard fought, would attempt to challenge the authority of parliamentary rule. I don’t want to make a virtue of the parliamentary system. It works reasonably well, but there are many variants of a democratic system in the modern world. One could imagine a situation of political contestation where a president elected by a popular national mandate attempts to introduce an extension of democratic rule that will be opposed by parliament. On the other hand, a parliamentary system does give the ruling party more authority than an individual candidate. Personally, I think that a political system where parties dominate individual candidates is better than one where the individual dominates the system. The parliamentary system, with a ‘minimalist’ head of state is preferable. However, a good parliamentary system requires a good party system. To have that, a modern democracy needs to have an active citizenry and state intervention to encourage the development of a healthy party system. There is an alternative that I think warrants more serious consideration. Why do we need to have a head of state at all? I do not have legal training, but those who do know have suggested that we don’t need to have a head of state. It would be possible to appoint a council of ministers and invest them with the formal authority to create governments. Thursday, 26 June 2003   9:19:55 PM    comment []

Sunday, June 22, 2003

Elite Division over the Invasion of Iraq It has been fascinating to witness the current conflict among political elites in the US and UK over the way in which intelligence information about the former Baath Regime has been handled. I had expected nothing but an orgy of triumphalism, but we see a huge argument about the accuracy of intelligence about pre war Iraq’s military capabilities. It is to be expected that the opponents of the war would try and make the best of a bad situation by arguing that the issue of weapons of mass destruction was a fraudulent excuse (it was). What is not expected was how sections of the American and British state apparatuses would join in the argument, often at the expense of the victorious politicians. Just why is this occurring? I am uncertain. I would have thought that divisions in the state apparatus would be at their most acute before the conflict, not soon after. Perhaps it is because there remains a great deal of uncertainty about the whole strategy adopted by the Bush administration. It may be that there is a genuine fear that such military activism could cause major strategic problems if it is allowed to continue. Those elements in the US administration who are closer to the interests of multinational capital may be working hard to stop this drift to military adventurism by generating embarrassment about the justifications fabricated to invade Iraq. Sunday, 22 June 2003 3:55:40 PM    comment []

Friday, June 20, 2003

Beazley and Crean The struggle between Kim Beazley and Simon Crean was not about policy. This was not a contest of different policy agendas. I have argued in the past that there are no substantial differences among the two. Both would adhere to fiscal conservatism; both would continue with privatisation agendas (although they would do it in a different way from the coalition). There are many elements that make up this conflict. It was about the contest among state branches for control of the federal organizations. It is about the contest among interests groups within the party, who tag themselves as belonging to the left or the right (although this has very little meaning as a policy making framework). It is about the fear that the coalition will be able to mobilise a populist constituency that will win over voters in marginal seats. It is also about the political memory of what happened before the election of the last Labor federal government. Political memories are very strong inside the ALP. You never forget the favour or the betrayal of a mate. While Hawke is held as an ‘Labor icon’ there are still many who hated the neo-liberal agenda he pursued. There is a residue of guilt about the way in which Bob Hawke placed himself in power by launching a coup against Hayden in the dying months of the last Fraser government. Hawke and Keating were to fundamentally reorient the ALP. They evolved a social democratic version of neo liberal politics that has become the dominant ideology of the party. The leadership elites of the ALP are now simply incapable of imagining anything outside of this policy framework. While many in the ALP can hardly remember Hayden, I think that if Hawke had not defeated him, the ALP might be operating within a different policy framework. Hayden was far more interested in the idea of developing a new policy framework on the left. He was instrumental in the wide ranging debate about the socialist objective among other things. I think that if trade union elites (including by the way leaders from the Communist Party of Australia) had not helped Hawke bludgeon Hayden from the leadership, Unions today might have a greater level of social influence than they have today. The promise of the Accord and Australia Reconstructed were reduced to nothing more than the cynical use of that negotiating framework to lower the cost of employing labour. I suggest that in the heart of many in the ALP there is the hope that Crean might take the party ‘back to the future’ and return us to that moment of hope when the Fraser government was falling apart (‘give Fraser the Razor…’ remember that…). Personally I would be very surprised if that would happen. Crean just doesn’t have the determination to change the course of the party in such a fundamental way. Not only that, he has the New South Wales machine to sabotage such any attempt to change course. Crean staked his campaign to defeat Beazley on the grounds of ‘policy not popularity’. It ought to be said that the federal leadership claim that it wants to turn its organisational structure and policies back to the membership is somewhat questionable. I rejoined the party soon after the defeat of the last federal election. To my great frustration, I waited for the structural review process to filter down to the membership level. It never did. There were a few public meetings, but almost nothing at the level of the local branch, where most of the action should have taken place. A similar fate for the policy review process will occur. Policymaking is still the prerogative of the leadership elite. While some good policy may come out of this, it still perpetuates the problem of separation of elites from membership and all the problems this has created over the decades. I agree with many who state that Creans profile in the public mind may have benefited from this. While I saw Beazley as posturing in the style of Curtain and Chifley, Crean seems to have projected the image of the educated suburban family man. Friday, 20 June 2003 10:40:33 PM    comment []

Friday, May 30, 2003

Listening to a Human Shield At this months Labor Party sub-branch meeting I had the opportunity to listen to the story of one of the ‘Human Shields’ during the invasion and occupation of Iraq. I thought it would be a good opportunity to try an understand what motivated some people to put their lives at risk. I don’t particularly like the term ‘Human Shield’. Most of those who went were not silly enough to place themselves in the line of fire or in the path of a tank or APC. Perhaps a word like ‘witness’ might have been a better way of defining yourself. There was nothing fanatical about her. I thought that she was driven to her actions by her heart more than her head. Unlike me, who would have been paralysed by my doubts and uncertainties, this human shield probably felt it was more important to get down to action. Never the less, I thought that her views were apologetic about the Baath Regime. There is always the covering rider ‘I don’t support Saddam’. Yet in her conversation there was not a word of criticism, not a reflection about the brutality of the regime. I only noted praise for the educational achievements of the regime. The invasion of Iraq has been a difficult dilemma for those of us on the left. I recently heard a British journalist on Late Night Live describe this dilemma (in the left) as a conflict between the ‘anti-fascists’ and the ‘anti-colonialist’ left. I thought this was a very useful distinction. Most people don’t only associate with one or another tendency. We have these two tendencies working within our mental framework. For those on the left who think (there are, as in all political tendencies, those who don’t think) these two tendencies generate the mental conversation about the invasion of Iraq. Despite my deep desire to see the Baath regime in Iraq destroyed, in the end I supported the anti-war movement because of my concerns about the way in which Washington’s imperial agenda would affect international politics. Even if one were to accept the claim by the Bush, Blair and Howard administrations that there is no colonial agenda, colonialism may be the outcome of this invasion. I suppose it would have been difficult to go to Iraq during the invasion if one had major doubts about the regime in power. Never the less, I would have thought that someone who would place their life at risk would have taken the trouble to research the issue and find out what had gone on there and understand how we found ourselves at this historical conjuncture. In the 1970’s we on the left would pride ourselves on the idea that we combined political action with a deep and abiding interest in reading history (and theory). Today, much of that had disappeared. I have noticed for many years now how many on the left are simply driven by their emotions (the politics of ‘feeling’). This unfortunate tendency has not been helped by the prevalence of ‘post-structuralist’ (or philosophical relativism) discourse among many intellectuals on the left, whose form of discourse is often incomprehensible, if not psychotic. Friday, May 30, 2003 4:14:37 PM    comment []

Sunday, May 25, 2003

Privatisation of the Tertiary Education System. A few weeks ago I heard some voices on the radio telling us that the political conversation that followed the release of the federal governments policies on tertiary education was missing the point. The argument was over the details, while what was truly significant was the whole. What is occurring is the privatisation of Australian education. Brendan Nelson -once the earring wearing president of the Australian Medical Association, and a person regarded as being on the left of the Liberal Party- was now, as education minister, going to be the chief engineer of the privatisation of Australia’s education system. He will now complete the destruction of a socialised education system. It must always be remembered that this process was begun by John Dawkins, an education minister when the Australian Labor Party was in government. I find it an interesting phenomena to see people and group whole could be described as small ’l’ liberals so involved in the process of privatising social life. It seems that this is occurring with what seems like a complete lack of self awareness about what is being done. Consider this. A year or to ago I had a brief lapse of reason and I started wasting my time reading Murdoch’s ‘Australian’ newspaper. The paper had been promoting a large social survey of Australian society which showed that social inequality was a worsening problem in Australia. The editors of the paper seemed to cry buckets of tears over these facts. Never the less, the editorial line continued to promote the very social and economic policies that were creating the problem in the first place. A similar attitude seems to occur in the Liberal Party. John Howard wisely choose his meat grinders after the last federal election. Many of his barking neo-con dogs were moved from the spotlight and replaced by sweetly smiling members of the left of the liberal party, people once marginalised and who would now do anything for a bit of power. The price they (we) had to pay was to slaughter what they once thought was worthwhile. My own views about the Australian education system are as follows. I think that universities are too big. Universities are institutions that should be used to train our elites to the very highest standards. They should be free and based on merit. Our society is going to be, in the foreseeable future at least, be run by elites. A publicly owned free university system should be used to educate those elites. The greatest blunder committed by federal Labor governments was the abolition of Colleges of Advanced Education and their integration into the University system. The result of this was to give enormous power to administrators and managers whose primary focus has become the further accumulation of power, resources and autonomy from decision making systems of the state. It is these managers who are the driving force of the privatisation of education. Just like Eastern Europe... bureaucrats want to become capitalists. In the modern university money is king. Not all high school graduates want a wide ranging university education and the chance to ponder the big issues. Most want a job. They want training that will get them some well paid work. In my experience there is nothing more depressing than seeing young people at tutorials who don’t really want to be there but who have been pushed into the University system by their ever anxious parents and teachers. Sunday, May 25, 2003 4:18:59 PM    comment []

Saturday, May 24, 2003

Politics and Religion The most important conversation in Australian is the Governor General Peter Hollingworth. If ever there was an example of a past returning to haunt a man, this is it. First the scandal of covering up for child molesters in the Anglican Church. Then the accusation that he raped a young woman in the mid 1960’s. Now a repeat performance of blaming a victim for an abuse of power (A 14 year old school girl has an affair with her Anglican school master. The most amazing thing about Hollingworth seems to be his ability to put his foot in his mouth. I have no affection for this governor general. Compared to William Deanne he is dreadful. When he was a prominent religious figure I regarded him as a socially concerned religious activist. When he was appointed the GG, I saw a different person. He and his wife looked so smug and comfortable in the role, like he deserved it. He seemed and smelled like an English aristocrat. The worst moment came during the invasion of Iraq. He took himself to be the head cheerleader for Howard. There seemed a begging dog quality about this particular performance. I did not expect the Governor General to take an anti-war stand. I thought that he should have played a conciliatory role in a society that was deeply divided on the issue. He ought to have been a facilitator of a civilised conversation about the issues surrounding this conflict. Hollingworth should have been a Conservative in the best sense of that word... tradition and continuity; harmony and co-operation among interests in society. Instead he was defeated by his own personal weakness and desire for approval. Saturday, May 24, 2003   4:08:52 PM    comment []

Vitamins and Politics Today we are in the middle of what is probably the largest recall in Australian history of dietary supplements and non-prescription medications. The therapeutic goods administration has set off a process that is bringing chaos and anxiety among those who consume alternative therapy medications and supplements. They investigated the production process of one the largest manufacturers of non-prescription medications and dietary supplements, Pan Pharmaceuticals and decided that they needed to recall their products. As far as I can understand, the issue is not contamination but uncertain quality control. I cannot help but think that there is a relation between the timing of the TGA’s recall and the changes to the Medicare system being proposed by the government. Our attention to these changes, which in the long run are a much greater danger to our health than what is occuring with Pan, is constantly being distracted by our fears. Thursday, May 01, 2003 2:43:54 PM    comment []

Saturday, April 26, 2003

Respect and Politics I am reading a book on the issue of respect in social relations by the sociologist Richard Sennett (Respect: The Formation of Character in an Age of Inequality, Allen Lane, London, 2003). Sennett engages in a vigorous unpacking of the concept of respect in modern society. His argument is about the problem of respect in an unequal society. Respect is undermined by inequality. If we wish a society based on respect among humans, then can only come about if we resolve the issues of inequality.  The issue of respect has been an interest of mine since I had my encounters with the late Professor Bill Brugger, whose concerns in philosophy centred on the issue of respect and its role in society. I will probably write about the way in which Sennet conceptualises respect at a later date. The philosophy of human relations was initially low on the agenda of western Marxism through the 1960’s and 1970’s. There seemed to be more pressing issues dealing with the struggle to transform whole societies that concerned left wing intellectuals. With the ‘retreat of hope’ that followed from the triumphs of neo-liberalism the concerns became more focused on social relations among humans. Never the less, the lefts considerations of these issues come from the background influenced from psychoanalysis. I remember asking Brugger once if the issue was ‘mutual respect’ and he said no, it was about respect. I understood this to mean that regardless of mutuality we ought to behave with respect. We ought even respect the torturer and executioner in the concentration camp. In other words, much as we might want to, we should not do onto the torturer and executioner what they have done to others. Our response ought to be based on principles of justice and standards of decency. Why? Probably because we can only maintain respect for ourselves if we behave in this way. Respect is recognition. I would go further than the sociologist and argue that the roots of respect are social and biological. Recognition begins in the simplest forms of life. Recognition evolves into a complex self awareness we end up calling respect. Biological beings are confronted by a continuum between coercive relations and cooperation. In other words there is on one side the use of force and destruction to maintain the existence of a biological being and on the other there is the system of co-operation among biological beings that facilitates survival and reproduction. For all biological beings there is dialectical combination of ‘force and consent’ (co-operation). The dialectic of force and consent has a qualitative leap among self aware biological beings (humans). There emerge complex relations among human societies. Social relations also run along this continuum of force and consent. It is possible to conceive a society where force (domination, subordination) is at the center of social relations. Yet even in such societies there continue to exist forms of co-operation and behaviour based on co-operation. As societies evolve increasingly complex relations among interests there evolve forms of recognition that place co-operation at the centre of social interaction. From co-operation there emerges the concept of respect, which we might describe as co-operative recognition among humans. Saturday, April 26, 2003 6:31:00 PM    comment []

Friday, April 25, 2003

Cruise Missle Fired from Perth lands in Canberra On the weekend a cruise missile was fired from Perth at the Australian Labor Party offices in Canberra. The owner of the missile, Kim Beazley declared that he was challenging the leadership of Simon Crean. He denied firing the missile despite all evidence to the bloody obvious! There is no doubt that Crean has failed to mobilise support for the ALP despite recent opportunities that could have given him an advantage. Included in this was the anti-war movement that successfully mobilised before the invasion of Iraq began. Australian federal politics has a version of a Baath Party torture machine called the NEWSPOLL that registers voter support for Parties several times a month. At each successive poll Crean has simply failed to even maintain his support. I agree with Lindsey Tanner, who argues that the political failure of the Federal Parliamentary Labor Party rests with the leadership team more than it does with the leader. The federal party leadership seems incapable of developing a policy strategy that interests the public. Crean’s failure is the failure of shadow cabinet and the Caucus. Never the less, the leader is not entirely absolved. I don’t think that Crean is able to project himself into the political debate. Beazley is. His ‘presence’ and ‘style’ make up for the conservatism of his politics. Unfortunately Crean does not have these qualities, which means that the conservatism of his politics is the only thing left. Unfortunately, the masses don’t find this softer version of liberal conservatism very appealing. If one must chose between Crean and Beazley, then I would support the later. Why? Because this is an argument about ‘style’ not ‘substance’. Beazley is capable of projecting something more than the nothingness of his social conservatism. For this reason he will at least lessen the defeat Labor is probably going to suffer in the next election. Yes, style matters. Don’t let some boring old left wing fart tell you anything different! You know, the master of ‘style’ politics is the left. Think of that wonderful iconic photograph of Che Guevara. The far left can justifiably make the claim that at least its style is combined with substance (the right can too). Style matters. Look at the photograph of social protest in the 1960’s and 1970’s and tell me that style does not matter. Many years ago I saw Beazley in a photograph. It was a shot that favoured his stature. In his hand he held a hat that looked like it was shaped in a classic Australian style. He immediately reminded me of iconic Labor from the 1940’s. There was a hint of Curtin and Chifley. I thought that it was this imagery that Beazley is trying to project as a political leader. Again, let me restate that I have no illusions about Beazley’s programmatic agenda. I only have in mind a damage limitation exercise. If there is to be progress in politics it is likely to come as a result of Labor developing a common programmatic agenda with conservationists (the Greens) and political ‘small l’ liberals (the democrats), rather than directly from shadow cabinet and caucus. Thursday, April 24, 2003 1:35:46 PM    comment []

Wednesday, April 16, 2003

A role for the United Nations? War and Interests. Some among those of us who opposed the invasion and subjugation of Iraq have been calling for the United Nations to take over the role of re-establishing civil order in Iraq. I question this. In my view it is the invaders who must take the responsibility. Why should the UN become the clean up agency. The money should come from the coffers of those who invaded. After all, they are getting the contracts for all sorts of reconstruction activities. Why should the rest of the world pay for the damage inflicted by the coalition forces. All of this conversation about precision warfare has obscured the amount of damage the war has inflicted upon Iraq. I don’t think war has changed all that much, despite the hype. To win in war you have to break a lot of things and hurt lots of people. The damage to the social and technological infrastructure will come out when the issue is long forgotten. Lets leave aside the weapons of mass destruction. I may be wrong, but I think that they wont find any significant quantities. That is not really the issue anymore, except as a special moment of acute embarrassment to the victors, who invented this pretext, instead of telling the truth to the public. The real reason is obvious from just one piece of news. Amidst all the chaos and looting in Baghdad, with the plunder of the priceless treasures of human antiquity, with hospitals being looted, the Coalition refused to provide protection for these social institutions until the pressure of publicity breathed down their necks. Yet there was one government agency that was given immediate protection: the Iraqi Oil Ministry. So is the world a better place with the demolition of the violent and gaudy Baathist regime in Iraq. Well, I am sure there is a certain relief among the citizens of Iraq. Yet there must be a huge amount of trepidation about the future. After generation of violently enforced homogeneity, the Iraqi polity will have to think about what kind of future they want amidst the ruins of their cities. Was it wrong to oppose this invasion? Removing a political problem by armed force is only one possible option among a number. I don’t agree with those who ran the debate along the lines of ‘just or unjust war’. Trying to reduce the conversation to a question of moral theory is not particularly productive. Once you outline your moral positions the conversation stops. It may be more useful to talk along the lines suggested by Bob Hawke, of wars as necessary or unnecessary. The only way one can think of this war as necessary would be in the context of the existing relationships and inter-relationships in the international political order. The Baath party dictatorship and its use of high levels of violence to maintain political order is the product of the post World War Two political order in Arab Societies. Polities across the whole Arab world, including, by the way, Israel, are in a state of crises and decay. The renovation of political systems and the creation of new social compromises (i.e. societies are the product of social compromises among interest groups, principally class interests) in Arab polities is essential if advanced capitalist societies are to avoid the scourge of terrorism on civilians. The starting point for renovation is a territorial settlement between Palestinians and Israeli’s. This issue, the failure of a territorial compromise is what is driving significant sections of Arab polities into the arms of theocratic fundamentalists.  The starting point for dealing with political dictatorships is to give support and encouragement to those who are interested in political renovation. An example of this was the provision of territorial autonomy for Kurds. I don’t have an issue about war itself. War remains an extension of politics. If you look at Iraq from the point of view of someone who has no other concerns about the existing political orders in the Arab world, then the use of military force is the only possible way to resolve the entrenchment of the Baathist party in Iraq. War and oil were a deadly combination for the Iraqi polity. Twenty years of war has wrecked Iraq and broken the political dynamism of its people. Revenue flows from oil, while severely diminished from the sanctions regime, was just enough for the Baath Party to maintain its authority. I disagreed with the war because it did not, in my view address the wider issues of Arab politics. It was driven by strategic interests in one faction of US policy makers. Yet, one could argue that in ‘meta-strategic’ terms, it is in the interests of US policy makers to address Arab politics in the widest sense. Social planning, which should be an essential component of an Imperium exercising its muscle, was barely an issue for policy makers, the media, and the public. Tuesday, April 15, 2003 1:17:25 AM    comment []

Tuesday, April 15, 2003

The Last Days Very shortly before the collapse of resistance in Baghdad, I began to wonder if the Iraqi information minister had lost his marbles. When tanks and aircraft were busily destroying the outskirts of the city, he kept proclaiming the Baath regime was in control. The now former information minister had a popular following. A web site devoted to him was closed down due to excessive demand (it will be reopened shortly). Its a humorous site, dedicated to his exaggerations. He had some charm and I am sure he will have something of a cult following. It should be noted that the Iraqi information minister was no worse than the propaganda machine of the Washington Consensus. Rupert Murdoch will surely be well rewarded by the neo conservative elite in power. There was a time when I thought that the Iraqi information minister was more accurate in his descriptions than many of the journalists, who were often little more than lazy parrots. I wondered about those last few days. What was the information minister on about? I then realised that his last efforts were devoted to holding back the possibility of an internal rebellion emerging when the Shia suburbs felt confident enough to take their chances against the Baathists. When histories are written about the overthrow of Baathist Iraq, I think that the role of the Shia suburbs in Saddam City will be seen as having a central role in collapsing their power. It will be a working class uprising against the state. Since the collapse of the Baathist regime, under the weight of munitions in this war of subjugation, we have witnessed the collapse of civil order. Commentators are shocked at the lack of preparation on the part of the coalition for this eventuality. It has been asked why there was not constabulary to maintain public order. Perhaps the Americans were expecting to simply take over much of the Baathist apparatus. Unfortunately this was not to be after the failure of the decapitation attempt. April 12, 2003 11:50:32 PM    comment []