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Hi, this is also long... A couple of responses to Nick's criticisms of my article, firstly political, secondly statistical: Am I "quite wrong, and quite sectarian, to state the Greens ‘do not in any sense represent an alternative to the ALP?’" Here i think the answer is a definitive no: The Greens are an organisation 9,000 strong that has no activist base in the workers' movement and they have no significant activist base on university campuses. The Greens have, at state level, supported the conservatives in minority government in the past; they attempted to form coalition with them in Tasmania this year, federally they continue to make overtures to the Liberals to work together; and in Victoria now they are not ruling out supporting a Liberal minority government if the opportunity arises in November. The left of the party did not and has not publicly opposed or criticised these moves (Adam Bandt did, however, state and hold to the view that he would side with Labor after teh recent hung parliament). The Greens are situated significantly to the right of e.g. Die Linke in Germany - and it is certainly debateable whether Die Linke represents a political alternative to the SPD. Is this sectarian? No, it would be sectarian to refuse to work with the Greens in campaigns or to endlessly denounce them. We certainly don't do that [See http://www.sa.org.au/australian-politics/2872-left-voters-swing-behind-greens-but-what-nextfor example]. The problem has been that the Greens do not orient to grass-roots campaigning, despite their rhetoric. It is difficult to work together when so few Greens members are involved in the campaigns that we are. And those that are involved are invariably involved as individuals - not as an organised current (how you apply the method of a united front given this reality is unclear to me). At my university, where the Greens do have a handful of members, they will not run with socialists in the student union elections because they do not want to run on an explicitly left-wing basis. I'm sorry Nick - Socialist Alternative can't be held responsible for any of this in my opinion. I wish we were influential enough to convince the Greens to be more involved on the ground, but we aren't. I made a "churlish formulation that the Greens are ‘perceived to be to the left of the ALP’. Given that they are ‘no alternative’ to the ALP, presumably [Ben] thinks they are not really to the left of the ALP. A whole lot of perceptions must be wrong then." Less definitive here: yes and no. Putting aside the class composition of the party and the dominant ideological outloook within it, what is the comparative emphasis that needs to be placed on policy and campaigning when it comes to making appraisals of the Greens? If we look at their policies they are to the left of the ALP in many respects, no question. But in terms of their practice they are sometimes to the right of the ALP (supporting the Tories). In terms of their positioning they have spurned protest politics and class struggle; yet they generally campaign strongly on progressive issues. This makes things complicated precisely because they can [appear to] be one thing (left) while then [appearing to] be the other (right). The overriding consideration for me was the question of the Liberals. If you are prepared to countenance governing with the conservatives, all claims to being left wing begin to dissipate, and written policy becomes fairly meaningless - you simply can't claim to be on the side of workers and the poor (to be fair the Greens don't usually emphasise this anyway), while giving support to the open party of big business. Even if they don't end up supporting them, they make an argument to the effect that it is fine to do so. It might be different there had been a backlash within the party aginst those who are completely comfortable sitting with the Libs. But it didn't happen. This brings up another dimension to consider - the left/right division in the party. One argument for seeing the Greens as alternative is that they have attracted many left wing labor supporters, ex-communists, and socialists to their ranks. But there is little indication that there is an organised current willing to fight the likes of Bob Brown. In fact, on Greens member has put it to me that the divisions are quite overstated in practical terms - those who identify as the left "roll over", evidenced in full by the silence over working with the Liberals. Should socialists have called for a vote for the Greens at the federal election given that many left-wing people do see them as an alternative to Labor? I think we were right not to this year, but there are disagreements in my organisation over this question. Should we call for a vote for them in Victoria? Definitely not in my opinion if they continue to countenance supporting the Liberals. It is clear from Nick's criticism (and the criticism of others on the left), that i should have spent time in the article attempting to go through the difference between the categories of "left wing" and "socially progressive". I think there is tremendous confusion over this issue (and I have no pretence to immunity). I don't mean to say that there is a clear cut analytical distinction, but there IS a difference - it was more obvious in relation to the Australian Democrats - and it would have been worth going over. That i didn't is, in hindsight, a mistake but no doubt there will be more time to give it a go in the future... On the statistics: Nick says that I overemphasise "the sociological middle class nature of the Greens’ voting base (and probably membership)" Nick is right that I am not a statistician and have relied entirely on other peoples work to come to some broad conclusions regarding the Greens' voter composition (my comments on the membership are pretty sound I think). Nick's calculations may be more accurate regarding the voter composition - i.e. maybe one half rather than one quarter to one third working class. intuitively his figures would seem to make more sense, although I can't be sure as he says he disagrees with me over the nature of the middle class (I'll come back to this below). There are a couple of things to say about this "overemphasis", however: Firstly it should be noted that my estimate was made in the context of an argument AGAINST the generally made argument that Greens voters are simply "middle-class progressives". In fact, i clearly state that "the Greens have a substantial working-class vote. There is a significant correlation between a high Greens vote and areas with a greater concentration of service industries such as arts, education, media and IT.* * <#_edn43>Employees in these industries all generally require bachelor degrees, but most – teachers being a case in point – are workers." One of my conclusions on the question of the voter composition is that "...it is more solidly middle class but has a significant working-class component; class-conscious workers are still comparatively more important as voters for Labor than for the Greens..." If Nick is right on the numbers, the sentence "more solidly middle class" will be an overstatement. However, this will have little impact on the overall conclusions of the article, which don't generalise from the voter composition. Secondly, Nick writes that I am "quite muddled about white-collar labour and seems to exaggerate the extent to which skilled and educated sectors of this form of labour should be understood as middle class." Nick doesn't take issue with my [incomplete] list of categories composing the middles classes - "sections of the state bureaucracy, lawyers, doctors, middle/high-grade professionals, professors and senior academic staff, middle managers and small business owners." [i didn't bother giving an account of how social classes are defined as i thought it superfluous,. Again, perhaps i shouldn't have been presumptuous...] I think I'm fairly clear here - in fact i am literally categorical. So I will assume that Nick derives my alleged confusion from: 1) The numbers themselves. But my willingness to accept that Nick's figures may be better than those on offer elsewhere i should think would nullify criticism here. 2) My use of income as a rough proxy. I can accept Nick's criticisms of using income in this way - it is rough, there is no getting around that. But it is not scandalous or unreasonable. In particular, given that the bulk of the Greens' support comes from the white-collar section of the workforce, i think the proxy of income is not as rough as would otherwise be the case - it is rare for management in white collar industries (particularly the public service) to earn less than $50,000pa. If I'm right about the above then Nick's thought that "perhaps the difference between Ben and I are terminological: you say middle class, I say better-paid, educated white-collar workers" can be discarded for the time being. However, Nick has written elsewhere that he has some fundamental disagreements with how others (Rick Kuhn and Diane Fieldes) in my organisation have defined the middle class - he didn't elaborate at the time, however, so I won't go down this road now... ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
