[DG]
Following on the interesting discussion of the relative importance of PR
and
CIR, I believe the only legitimate basis for any ideas on governance is
the
absolute right of the people to make the major decisions affecting their
own
lives. Referenda about forms of representation are important, but in
the
end the only effect constitutional adjustments can have on the people is
to
increase or decrease their power to participate in decisions on just who
will govern for the corporations while pretending to represent the
electorate.
[AL]
Representative democracy (including PR) and CIR are both methods in use
in
various countries today, which claim to implement the "absolute right of
the people to make the major decisions affecting their own lives".
Yet everywhere, most of the people "only work here", while a tiny
minority
actually runs things. The corporations govern both through
representative
legislatures and direct referenda.
[DG]
In referenda, however, the people can start to win a say (no more than a
say, in the absence of a great deal of the education that exercising
this
degree of control will in time impart). Not just a say in who is to
misrepresent them, but a say in what is actually done.
[AL] Referenda, like PR can help people to think about, mobilize around
and learn
about political issues and thus educate themselves. But they cannot
solve
the problem while most of us "only work here" and the ideas of the
people
who actually run things are the ruling ideas and set the agenda.
Of the two, I believe referenda play a less positive role. PR ensures
that
a wider range of political viewpoints are given the opportunity to
discredit
themselves in the parliamentary arena, rather than a completely sterile
"debate" between two substantially identical parties who are already
despised
by most people.
Referenda do not facilitate development of coherent political platforms
and outlooks
which can be tested over time, but are often used by people who can
afford to sponsor
CIR campaigns to whip up support for some demagogic proposal that
empowers nobody.
The "republic" campaign sponsored by the Turnbullies is a classic
example, even
though we do not have CIR.
In California such referenda have been used to deny social welfare to
"undocumented"
immigrants from South America and to place caps on taxation and public
debt in the
short term interests of the super rich. They have not noticeably
contributed to the
level of serious political debate or understanding in any country where
they are used.
(Though they could on occasion). They have the same tendency to be
dominated by ideas
pushed in the mass media as elections. They have the same positive
advantages as
elections compared with systems in which the people do not have even a
token "say".
[DG]
The corporations
want tax burdens shifted even further from themselves to the people --
hence
the Howard package. It won't matter a fig to the Labor Party
politicians
whether or not such a package is imposed -- but it matters much more
than a
fig to the people who are affected a great deal more by it than they are
affeted by whether Tweedledum has advantages over Tweedledee, or for
that
matter what happens to any politcally flexible Tweedlethree. [Even
within
Tweedlethree there are strong currents of opinion, reflected in public
statements, that it isn't the interests of the people that's important,
it's
gaining a place on the parliamentary dance floor by following its
unwritten
rules.]
[AL]
Although you agree that the ALP and Democrats don't really give a damn,
your first sentence above is a direct reflection of the ALP propaganda
about the GST used to rebuild their base among disaffected traditional
ALP supporters in their "heartland" seats as part of a "two elections"
strategy to win office next time. The Coalition can cop the blame for
the GST
while the traditional ALP supporters won back this time are left with no
place
to go when the ALP fights the next election on a platform aimed at the
"swinging voters" in the marginals (accepting that the GST is
"irreversible"
by then).
I think Howard was quite right when he pointed out that Beazley had
supported
Keating in his challenge to Hawke at the tax summit on precisely the
issue
of a GST, knows damn well that it is necessary to introduce such a
system and
would do it himself if in government.
More interesting was the point, not made as strongly, that traditionally
the ALP
party as the party of reform has favoured securing an effective tax base
to finance
various government programs, whereas the Coalition "conservatives" have
offered
"tax cuts" to "middle Australia" as their strategy for winning elections
because
they prefer a (marginally) smaller government sector leaving more
economic
activity to "private enterprise".
This former very minor difference between the two wings of the
bipartisan party
has now become obscured to the point where the ALP openly runs as a
conservative party seeking
to relieve "middle Australia" from tax burdens while the Coalition
speaks of its
REFORMIST "courage", "vision" etc in trying to secure a viable tax base
for maintaining the
government sector.
That role reversal is so startling that it would have been glaringly
obvious if the ALP
had not resorted to absurd demagoguery about the corporations whose
interests they serve.
They could not hope to win back their "heartland" without adding
"anti-big business"
rhetoric to their fundamentally conservative and anti-reformist taxation
policy.
Even very moderate reformist groups like ACOSS and the churches speaking
for the welfare
lobby section of the government sector could see this a bit, but the
grip of the two
party system on most people's imaginations was sufficient for the ALP to
get away with
presenting themselves as having an "anti-corporations" taxation policy.
I also don't agree that taxation has much to do with shifting tax
burdens between corporations
and the people. Wealth is shifted from the people to corporations by
people working
for corporations, not by the tax system. The tax system is just the
means by which
the owners of the country contribute part of their wealth to common
needs in
maintaining a government (including a social welfare system which is
cheaper than
the level of wages for social insurance and the level of extra policing
that would
be required without one).
Workers don't pay taxes - they just work here. Taxes, whether deducted
from pay packets
or from grocery bills, are amounts transferred among the owners
themselves. The idea
that these nominal sums of money theoretically paid out to workers and
then transferred
back to the government as taxes were ever part of workers income is
simply an illusion.
Workers get what they need to be able to work for the owners - no more
and no less,
regardless of the tax system. There is no way to shift the burden of
maintaining
the government paid for taxes between workers and the owners of
corporations through
taxation measures because fundamentally the owners of corporations do no
work and therefore
carry no burdens and the workers do all the work and therefore carry all
the burdens.
The GST is a completely uninteresting restructure of an obsolete tax
system that became
a major campaign issue in a national election simply because the two
competing parties
had nothing whatever to say about anything of interest.
[DG]
Therefore demands for referenda are an essential step in shifting
decision-making power from the politicians and civil servants (and
ultimately Mr Greed who controls the politicians and civil servants) to
the
people themselves. This is the direction in which democratic advances
lead.
Mr Greed first tries to stop democrartic advances and then, if defeated
in
this, tries to control them. The historic task is to further the
democratic
process until the grabbing classes become an increasingly endangered
species, and finally an extinct species even though the human impulse to
grab from others may never die.
[AL]
As long as Mr Greed can persuade people who are starting to wake up, to
divert their energies into supporting ALP policies on taxation or
anything
else, the grabbing classes are in full control. Their ideas are the
ruling
ideas, not ours, and we debate what they want us to debate.
Utter indifference to whatever the ALP and the Coalition are trying to
get
us excited about is what threatens them with extinction. We cannot shift
decision making power from them until we reject their agenda for the
issues
we are to fight about (such as a GST or a phoney "republic") and start
advancing our own agenda as matters for decision. We cannot take the
second
step and even conceive what our agenda might be, until we have taken the
first step and rejected their agenda.
