Re: [Marxism] Unionization rate drops to 6.9% in private sector
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Richard Seymore: Tony Cliff argued that imperialism is central to the strength of reformist political attitudes... With regard to sections within the working class, Cliff's simple argument was that these tended to be more pronounced the weaker the working class is, but are reduced when the workers' standards of living go up... As for myself, I would not use the language of 'privilege', but I would agree with you on the relevance of 'feelings of superiority', or chauvinism. I am the last to deny or 'downplay' the relevant political effects of, say, white supremacy on working class cohesion and strength, which is certainly at the heart of long-term difficulties faced by the US working class for example. It's just not clear to me how theories of 'embourgoisement' or 'labour aristocracy' help with this. Ok, Cliff was and you are very aware of and very against imperialism and chauvinism, but... is there no relation between differentiation in the working class, and opportunism and chauvinism? Haven’t some relations of differentiation been quite stable, for many decades, such as the relative privilege of white workers in the US, Australia and South Africa, defended both by law for a long time as well as exclusivist union practices? Wasn’t the White Australia Policy part of the Laborist mainstream from the 1890s to the 1960s? Wasn’t this mainstream formed in the early 1890s-1900s, shaped not only by the concurrent formation of monopolising capitals and Pacific colonialism, but by the fact that it was largely based on craft unions (as well as farmer and middle class elements), keen to keep women and Chinese out of their trades as well as fight the bosses and use arbitration and protectionism to defend what they understood as their interests? Aren’t the cadres of labo(u)r and social democratic parties and union apparatuses today largely drawn from highly skilled and educated layers of the working class? (For my PhD I conducted focus groups with three Labor branches totaling 25 people, which included one blue collar union organiser, one blue collar worker, and the rest from such layers Large scale surveys of ALP members have shown the same). I’m happy to reject the embourgeoisment concept, as it implies a qualitative transformation of class. But the concept of labour aristocracy, understood in the careful way I’ve put it, can help us discuss these questions. But I repeat I don’t want too be too determinate about it, and that one political expression of skilled, white collar labour in Australia today is the rise of the Greens as a particular type of left social democratic formation, a progressive, if of course partial alternative to the ALP (Greens branches I also interviewed were sociologically quite similar to the Labor branches, and the labour aristocratic/social democratic nature of the Greens is discussed empirically in the brief article I previously linked to as well as an academic article I’m hopefully publishing soon). Also one important material basis I think not just of union decline but also of anti-refugee, anti-Indigenous chauvinism in the last 20 years in Australia was a neoliberal fuelled process of *actual* petty-bourgeoisification of hundreds of thousands of blue collar workers from the early 90s (when Laborist neoliberalism accelerated), due to their jobs being forcibly transformed into self-employed contract relations and the fact that large numbers made redundant through restructuring had little choice but to use their severance to buy a van and tools and set up a business. Cut off from the solidarity of work and union membership they first (on the whole) helped vote Labor out in 1996 and were then prey to the petty-minded suburban-reactionary outlook of John Winston Howard. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Unionization rate drops to 6.9% in private sector
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Paul Flewers: One of the most worrying things I found when trying to recruit people to the union in my last job -- administration work in a university -- was that many people under 30 had no idea of what a trade union was and what its role was in the workplace and more generally... Have list members had similar experiences in other countries? This roughly accords with my experience in the higher education sector particularly spending several stints of casual work around 1999-2002 on my campus helping the union branch in recruitment drives. But the consciousness around the question was very much related to specific structural changes, particularly the massive growth in casualisation, up to around half the workforce on many campuses such as this one. Many would be more or less supportive but weren’t that motivated in joining if they were only there for a year’s research contract or didn’t even know if they’d be in the following week. And of course casualisation was associated with younger workers. Joaquin’s points on this thread about imperialism are quite irrelevant because union density decline is much more to do with more recent processes, i.e. neoliberalism. Australia was just as imperialist in 1983 when union density was 50% as it is today when it’s slipped below 20%. Related processes of tariff cuts decimating (highly unioinised) manufacturing, the concurrent growth in (lowly unionised) service sectors, privatisation or corporatisation of public enterprises, contracting out, casualisation, the conversion of real jobs to self-employed contract work, etc, have all hit union membership. The rapid decline in Australia happened from when the Labor government’s social contract was introduced in 1983, and it’s been a slow drift since. The union tops are of course on the whole hopeless but at least there’s a general recognition that being completely tied to a Labor government and incorporated into the state apparatus isn’t a good idea, and a turn fromn the 90s from a “services model” to an “organising model” (apparently based on the US public sector union’s methods) which was some improvement. Those unions which have taken the latter most seriously, such as the nurses which have made a serious effort to develop workplace reps, have grown. The former academics union made a serious turn from the 90s to “industrial” unionism and grew rapidly among admin staff, although it has been stagnant in membership in recent years. Some list members would know of a successful response to the new economy in the form of the New Zealand Unite union http://www.unite.org.nz which, from a tiny base a few years ago, has organised thousands of young casual workers in fast food, cinemas etc., and in which socialists have played a leading role. The CWI group in Melbourne has taken the name and the general idea but while they’re carried out some creative and worthy actions, without being an officially recognised and supported union this Unite is more of a local action group. As far as I can see consciousness as opposed to membership has actually held up quite well in this context. A number of union-sponsored surveys have shown a lot of people would join unions if they knew how or which one or if their employment was more secure. General social surveys that have asked similar questions since the 80s show people are on the whole *more* pro-union, anti-big business, anti-deregulation and anti-privatisation than people were in the early 80s (with quite a noticeable jump in these regards between surveys taken in 2005 and 2007 in the context of the high profile campaign against the former government’s anti-union laws, although membership only rose slightly). This suggests to me that the former “closed shop” which existed in some industries, while we would have defended as it was removed in the 80s, led to some actually anti-union union members and complacency by many unions in winning workers to basic consciousness. Some time in the first part of the year I’m doing a talk for Socialist Alliance in Melbourne on “class today”, for which I’ll update an outline I did for my PhD a few years ago of such structural and attitudinal changes, and I’ll post that on our blog and notify this list when it’s done. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Unionization rate drops to 6.9% in private sector
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Richard Seymore: The embourgoisement thesis doesn't have much going for it Leonardo Kosloff: such theories of the aristocracy of labor are unhelpful I noted before that imperialism per se has little or nothing to do with the decline of union density, but more generally some comrades, not least of the state cap variety, tend to downplay or deny the political effects of relations of relative privilege within the working class, internationally via imperialism, and within national social formations in terms of more skilled, educated and/or better off sections of national working classes. Sure the major aspect of imperialism is *not* the direct ripping off of profits from the oppressed countries into the pockets of the advanced countries, including the workers, most capital is invested in the rich countries where most profits are made and more intense exploitation in the technical sense happens etc etc. But that’s not really the point here, as an imposed international division of labour and unequal terms of trade still maintain a basic division in the world and big relative difference in conditions of life of rich country workers vis a vis the poor (including relative stability and apparent democracy), which I think is associated with feelings of superiority and lack of solidarity among rich country workers vis a vis their Third World brothers and sisters, though clearly not in any homogeneous and permanent sense (i.e. relative privilege within the working class is quite different from becoming bourgeois). Similarly positing an “aristocracy of labour” within a rich country is a useful concept, related to illusions in reformism, although it’s not useful to simplistically pose this as one homogenous bloc with a determinate political effect. Of course better off workers have often been radicals, from highly skilled engineers like Tom Mann in the late nineteenth century to the numerous teachers, IT workers and the like who are Greens activists today. I wrote about this last year in response to material from Socialist Alternative (dissident IST group here) which exaggerated the “middle class” nature of the Greens, confusing the nature of the working and middle classes today in the process in terms of not accounting for differentiation within the working class. The Greens in my opinion are more about particular skilled and educated sections of the working class, at least in membership and voting base, and this conditions their strengths and weaknesses. (Note though that the article linked to below, in comparing the class nature of the voting bases of the Greens, Labor and the conservatives, does contain an error in my typology of class structure derived from a social survey, in that I mistakenly included lower level supervisors in the ‘salaried manager’ section of the middle class rather than properly in the working class. I haven’t got around to fixing this. Anyway the point that there is no statistical difference evident between the *class* as opposed to the “status” nature of Greens and Labor voters, and as opposed to both these groups of voters and conservative voters, stands). ‘A response to Socialist Alternative on the Greens and class' http://links.org.au/node/1938 Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Rammstein: heartbeat on the left?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Re Tom O'Lincoln's article at http://www.sa.org.au/index.php?option=com_contentview=articleid=3060:rammstein-heartbeat-on-the-leftcatid=220:culture-and-reviewsItemid=223 Thanks for that Tom, very interesting. From what I've heard of the band on the radio they seemed so over the top I assumed there was some self-parodic elements there, like a fair bit of metal/heavy rock. Generally the whole blood and iron schtick of metal plus the lingering influence of early, more cosmic bands line Black Sabbath and Deep Purple who came out of psychedelia, seems to lend itself to a crypto-Nazi paranoid cosmology. There have also been those who adopt a bit of an ambiguous pseudo far right look as an ironic postmodern pose (Joy Division, the seminal Australian indie rock band Radio Birdman). But those within heavy rock who are really far rightists are hard to miss: the nasty, explicitly far right wing of the oi! sub-genre of hardcore punk (best known to Australian audiences through the movie Romper Stomper). I can't think of any metal bands per se one would describe as leftist, apart from maybe the Brazilians Sepultura who seemed to promote environtentalism and Indigenous rights. Interestingly those clearly leftist musos who use some elements of metal are very into hybridity: e.g. Rage Against the Machine (metal-grunge-hip hop), System of a Down (metal-punk-Armenian folk) and Gogol Bordello (metal-punk-Roma folk). Actually from memory I think Sepultura brought in some Indigenous and traditional music when they went more political. I was though sort of tempted to see the recent heavy rock extravaganza 'No Sleep till Melbourne', to see the Drop Kick Murphys but also in the hope that Megadeath would play their slightly adapted Sex Pistols cover, Anarchy in the USA. Brilliant! From Tom's article: their arms are outstretched, but not in a Nazi salute; it’s a satanic gesture common in “alternative” audiences. Even so it’s too close to the edge for my liking. Well I assume you mean the forefinger and little finger salute which is closely associated with metal (and sometimes used somewhat ironically at other rock gigs), and is politically harmless I think. As an historical aside, on the HBO-BBC drama Rome a character did exactly this gesture as a very serious curse. The show was touted as a very accurate representation on ordinary life among the different classes in ancient Rome, and so I suppose this was a real gesture and there's been some weird transmutation to what it means today. Watching it I burst out laughing and wondered how many takes the actor needed to do before he could spot thinking of Spinal Tap or Wayne's World and keep a straight face. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Rammstein: heartbeat on the left?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Re Tom O'Lincoln's article at http://www.sa.org.au/index.php?option=com_contentview=articleid=3060:rammstein-heartbeat-on-the-leftcatid=220:culture-and-reviewsItemid=223 Thanks for that Tom, very interesting. From what I've heard of the band on the radio they seemed so over the top I assumed there was some self-parodic elements there, like a bit of metal/heavy rock. Generally the whole blood and iron schtick of metal plus the lingering influence of early, more cosmic bands line Black Sabbath and Deep Purple who came out of psychedelia, seems to lend itself to a crypto-Nazi paranoid cosmology. There have also been those who adopt a bit of an ambiguous pseudo far right look as an ironic postmodern pose (Joy Division, the seminal Australian indie rock band Radio Birdman). But those within heavy rock who are really far rightists are hard to miss: the nasty, explicitly far right wing of the oi! sub-genre of hardcore punk (best known to Australian audiences through the movie Romper Stomper). I can't think of any metal bands per se one would describe as leftist, apart from maybe the Brazilians Sepultura who seemed to promote environtentalism and Indigenous rights. Interestingly those clearly leftist musos who use some elements of metal are very into hybridity: e.g. Rage Against the Machine (metal-grunge-hip hop), System of a Down (metal-punk-Armenian folk) and Gogol Bordello (metal-punk-Roma folk). Actually from memory I think Sepultura brought in some Indigenous and traditional music when they went more political. I was though sort of tempted to see the recent heavy rock extravaganza 'No Sleep till Melbourne', to see the Drop Kick Murphys but also in the hope that Megadeath would play their slightly adapted Sex Pistols cover, Anarchy in the USA. Brilliant! From Tom's article: their arms are outstretched, but not in a Nazi salute; it’s a satanic gesture common in “alternative” audiences. Even so it’s too close to the edge for my liking. Well I assume you mean the forefinger and little finger salute which is closely associated with metal (and sometimes used somewhat ironically at other rock gigs), and is politically harmless I think. As an historical aside, on the HBO-BBC drama Rome a character did exactly this gesture as a very serious curse. The show was touted as a very accurate representation on ordinary life among the different classes in ancient Rome, and so I suppose this was a real gesture and there's been some weird transmutation to what it means today. Watching it I burst out laughing and wondered how many takes the actor needed to do before he could spot thinking of Spinal Tap or Wayne's World and keep a straight face. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Bono bullshit, chapter 473
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis wrote: Look, I think that Bono and Buffett are pretty bad but it is important for the left not to quote people out of context. Buffett said this in the context of favoring a return to a more progressive income tax, not in the spirit of Atlas Shrugged. True, but it also should be remembered that Jay Z is also a major league wanker. And most disturbingly, the conversation also included the magazine's founder, Steve Forbes. By associating with the major league tax avoider Forbes, Bono is not only betraying the poor and oppressed, but the entire human race, as revealed by the fearless Michael Moore ... http://www.afn.org/~iguana/archives/1999_01/19990106.html Michael Moore's investigation reveals Awful Truth about Steve Forbes January 1999 We were at a loss to respond to the fact that the unspeakably wealthy Steve Forbes, right wing presidential candidate, would be speaking on campus, PAID by student fees. Forbes is worth between $400 and 500 million, but since he won't release his tax returns, we don't know exactly. We bet he didn't pay much in the way of taxes. We think it's only fair, however, that we here reveal the terrifying information about Steve Forbes Michael Moore uncovered in his most recent film The Big One. (Which, incidentally, is now available on video at the Civic Media Center.) But first, a memo to Steve Forbes' lawyers: THIS IS SATIRE. -The Editors Michael Moore: Ever wonder what happened to Steve Forbes? He appeared from nowhere, had you ever heard of him before? Ever notice when he was on TV his eyes never blinked? Really, he never blinked. I saw him on Larry King, he never blinked, the whole time, the whole hour, he never blinked. Couple nights later he was on Nightline and they had the camera on him for a full minute. Not once did the eyes blink. I thought, this is very strange, so I called New York Hospital asked for a doctor in the Eye, Ear, Nose, and Throat Division and I said Doctor I'm watching TV right now and this guy on there, his eyes have not blinked for a full minute, is that possible? He said No! The human eye needs to blink every 15 to 20 seconds. Now we're into 2 minutes and this guy's eyes have not blinked, not once. And the doctor said, and I quote: Well ...that's not human. Not human. Right. I'm thinking Don't look at his eyes. Then he hits us with a sound, flat tax, flat tax, flat tax. So back in February I was here in Des Moines for the Iowa caucuses and I decided to go over to the Forbes headquarters to see if Steve was some kind of freak X-File brother from another planet. This guy comes out and he says Hi, my name is Chip Carter Chip Carter? Jimmy Carter's son? No, I'm the other Chip Carter. He had this weird look in his eyes too. [We interviewed him on tape.] Michael Moore: How long has Mr. Forbes been here? Chip Carter: He's really only been on the ground for 6 to 8 weeks. MM: Steve Forbes was born where? CC: I have no idea, I can't remember. MM: You don't know... Where did Steve Forbes come from? CC: Steve Forbes seems to have come from nowhere. Pretty much. MM: Where is nowhere? CC: Somewhere out there. MM: (I'm freaking out, I'm thinking, OK, I am not going to die in Des Moines, taken away by space beings calling themselves the Forbes campaign.) Where are you taking the Spaceship here after Iowa? CC: Uh, I'm going to go home to Oklahoma for a few days and rest and then they'll send me to another state. So the guy's disappeared right? And the only time that you have any idea that they are still with us is if you ever notice certain people reading the publication with the name Forbes, the name of their leader, on the magazine? These men in three piece suits, white guys, who look like they've got a lot of money? They're the aliens. Beware of these people. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] NPA 'down under'?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == A few initial thoughts on the Victorian elections. With 70% of the vote counted it looks like the Coalition has unexpectedly sneaked into power after 11 years by saying nothing. This sucks but at least there's they won't be privatising much, if only because there's nothing left to privatise. Also somewhat unexpected is that the Greens vote, after big gains in the federal elections, was virtually stagnant, up only 0.7% from 2006 to 10.6%. They have retained their three upper house seats (out of 40) but failed to win any of the inner city lower house seats they were fighting Labor for, despite around 30% of the vote in the inner city. The fairly late decision of the Coalition to direct their supporters to preference the Greens last in every seat limited the chances of the Greens in this regard, and may have shored up the hard right vote for the Coalition, or something (why the latter got a late swing in the polls and then the vote is mysterious to me). Of the socialist vote vote, with 70% counted, Steve Jolly for the Socialist Party is on just under 10%, about 2300 votes, in his seat of Richmond, while Socialist Alliance scored 1300 votes, around 1-2%, across four seats (three in Melbourne and one in Geelong). I guess we involved about four times as many people in activity, with Jolly, from his excellent work both as an activist and a local councillor, got more media profile. Jolly's vote is very credible and I would say was very effective in raising the issues from a consistent pro-working class stance. I would say our campaign was very useful in involving probably more than 100 people and linking electoral propaganda with our activist work particularly in local climate change action groups. A few thoughts on how these campaigns relate to left unity: One of the Greens I chatted at the booth in Coburg I worked at for a while in the morning seemed to be under the impression that Jolly was one of our guys. If you think they'd be any worth trying to explain in this instance the distinctions and the reasons behind them you'd be very much mistaken. I'm sure this happens quite a bit: I remember hearing that when Jolly was first elected to Yarra Council in 2004 a sympathetic sort from the Electoral Commission rang the Socialist Alliance office to offer congratulations. Further, while Jolly's campaign undoubtedly raised his profile and that of his current in one inner city state electorate (which I think has the same boundaries as his council area), the fact that the SP does not have the wider support to achieve electoral registration, i.e. he appears on the ballot as independent, limits the gains virtually everyone noticing this vote outside that electorate has for brand SP or brand socialism. Personally, I put the idea to some comrades early in the year that, since at that point Jolly was already campaigning for the state poll but not it appeared for the federal election, we put forward for practical and political reasons a division of labour whereby we (SP and SA) unite specifically around Jolly's campaign, and they help us out with a federal election effort. There were however as you might think some political and practical barriers to this (and I wasn't going to be at all insistent as I had just moved to Victoria), and in the end we were supportive of his campaign by at least publicising it in out various media (while the SP website doesn't seem to mention ours). In now very late hindsight, what would have been very interesting would have been a united socialist tilt at the upper house, which is elected from eight regions each which of which elects five members. The Northern Metropolitan regions covers both the SP's patch of Richmond-Collingwood and the areas to a bit north and west (Brunswick, Coburg etc) in which there's clusters of SA members living and being active in, as well as Melbourne and La Trobe Universities. A 10% vote across this region with the right preference flows would be a real shot at actually winning a seat out of the five. Probably just as unfeasible as yet as my earlier suggestion but perhaps something to think about for 2014. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] NPA 'down under'?
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == DW: I'm curious. So...the SPer received support from his local chapter of the union? This is not uncommon, I think It's a significant or at least interesting development here, with funding and support traditionally locked into the Labor Party. The unions giving him some dough are the state branches (i.e. larger and more formal bodies than local chapters I presume) of his own union, the CFMEU (he's a builder delegate I think), of the Firefighters and particularly of the Electrical Trades Union. It's in the order of tens of thousands, so some big colour posters of Steve near our place (we're in an adjoining electorate and one of our boys goes to a school in his electorate), but about only about 10% of what these and some other union bodies recently gave the Greens in the federal elections. The ETU has been most outspoken about political independence and has disafilliated from the ALP (and gave the recently helped the breakthrough election of a federal lower house Green MP a cool $300K), but it's generally on a pragmatic level, with various union bodies who supported the Greens in the federal elections due to some specifically industrial issues falling behind Labor now. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Response to Socialist Alternative on class today and the Greens
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == I don't have time for much of a reply to Ben's reply to my response to his article (and I mean really not much time, not that I couldn't be arsed). I do appreciate his willingness to engage and reconsider some of his formulations and points: it'd be wise I think not be too definite just yet about the Greens, in any direction, after their rise to now have real governmental influence. One of the positive things about the election is the tests this will put upon them. I'll try to look at his points in more detail before I do another version of my piece for http://links.org.au/ in a few days A couple of points: The apparent Socialist Alternative position, of the Greens being in no sense an alternative to labor, is sectarian in that it will make it harder for the socislist left to have a critical dialogue with Greens members and voters, and also crucially the significant militant union state branches and sections (all, interestingly, blue collar), will give large large wads of cash to the Greens as the best way they see to advance working class interests in elections (they generally also give small wads of cash to Socialist Alliance too). A didn't say I have and don't have a 'fundamental' difference with Kuhn and Fields about class analysis at all, having recently used their work as sources for a sketch of class structure in Australia as part of my PhD thesis. In fact I don't think I have a difference with them at all, having checked - I misremembered and thought they unduly discounted some professional layers as part of the working class, rather than pointing out the complexity of counting such layers. The most concise formulation of the working class today from Kuhn is probably: The technique, developed by Diane Fieldes and me, of rendering ABS data into a very conservative estimate of the size of the Australian working class shows that workers make up the vast majority of the labour force. In 2001, 84 per cent of the employed labour force was wage and salary earners.4 If we exclude the occupational status categories of managers, administrators and professionals, but not teachers and nurses, from this group the result is 5 378 554 workers. They are almost two thirds of the employed labour force. That is an underestimate, as it excludes many ‘employed professionals’, like most journalists or social workers, who are skilled white collar workers. Also left out are those in the ‘self-employed’ group, like many construction workers and outworkers in electronics and clothing. Legally contractors, in practice their level of control over their own labour is no greater than that of other workers. The Australian working class also includes retired workers, discouraged job seekers, people working in the home and dependents; in all about thirteen million people. (From Rick Kuhn, 'Classes in Australia, in themselves and for themselves', Paper for the workshop on Class: History, Formations and Conceptualisations, 4-5 March 2006 University of Wollongong). Which I'd almost entirely agree with (i'd say all social workers who weren't managers would be workers, and probably even all employed professionals who weren't managers and who didn't have significant income from investments and property - e.g. lawyers who choose to work in the community sector or unions rather than self-employed practice). I still think Ben's article is much less clear, and inappropriately uses union membership and income in regard to the small sample of Greens in the Australian Election Study. Incidently I think we can do better estimates of the different classes and their fractions by using not the aggregate ABS figures, but the quite large census samples with individual responses to all questions that are available from the ABS (5% of the population I think), which can be sliced up with more confidence of accuracy than much smaller samples like the AES, but which may be costly. Perhaps I will be able to undertake some work detailed work on this some time. I think Marxists in general can use higher end stats more (even given the limitations I mentioned previously), but that's another story. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Response to Socialist Alternative on class today and the Greens
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Gary: For me the reality of the Greens was captured by Alan Bradley's post on how there would be a major split if Leftists turned up in the Greens en masse. That is an honest remark and from my observation it is a very true one, but Nick is silent on the meaning of it. Lest Nick is tempted to inv9oke Queensland's exceptionality again, I would suggest the history of the Nuclear Disarmament Party is also relevant here. Well yes the awful antics of the NDP right in 1985, which was bit before my time, are a relevant lesson, and their subsequent trajectory. Jo Vallentine as a later Greens senator actually wasn't too bad, but Garrett's history speaks form itself (curiously his music was pretty crap after 1985 as well come to think of it). But more directly relevant is the expulsion of the DSP from the emerging Greens in 1992, including both Alan and me (I was still pretty new then). What I meant by a united front was not in any near future joining the Greens, but drawing them into joint campaign work and discussions, such as a recent joint forum on indigenous rights Resistance organised in Brisbane with campus Greens that seemed to go very well, and a forum on left electoral alternatives we've got coming up in Melbourne with the Greens candidate for the state seat of Melbourne, which they have a good chance of winning, and Socialist Party councillor Steve Jolly. I did actually comment on Alan's prediction of 'entryism' producing a split (at least on the Green Left list, can't remember if I did here as well), thus: For anyone suggesting that socialists all immediately join the Greens, there's two related problems. Firstly, whether or not Alan Bradley is correct in predicting that any influx of organised socialists into the Greens would severely damage that party (due to a reaction from its right wing), the Greens constitution specifically disallows members to be members of another party. I don't think anyone is game to test whether this means members of a socialist organisation that doesn't define itself as a party would be unwelcome as members, or expelled if they discreetly joined in any numbers, as the DSP was en bloc when this provision was adopted in 1992 (presumably after the DSP offered to give up its electoral registration, operate more loosely etc). After the IST-aligned group here left Socialist Alliance in 2007, these comrades orientated towards the Greens and apparently handed out for them in the 2007 federal elections. But in their articles at the time it was unclear whether any of them had joined the Greens and if so whether they were pushing the general arguments they were making about the Greens in their press. Their activity wasn't a bad thing and an advance on their previous position of voting for the Labor Party ahead of the Greens, but while the comrades presumably think they are in a united front with the Greens in bourgeois elections, I'm not sure if many people would have noticed. Secondly, any argument that the small socialist groups with their meagre followings should dissolve themselves into the Greens, for the greater good of the struggle, comes against the reality that there is very little to the Greens pretensions of being an activist party, and what there is occurs very unevenly. The Greens are not a vehicle for organsing public meetings and conferences or producing media that build campaigns and help the whole left (as opposed to some impressive media that promotes the Greens), or for sustaining and promoting class struggle ideas in the unions and other social movements. Any effort to make them more so would probably need the kind of struggle with the more right-wing Greens that Alan warns about. The Greens policy and general perspectives is probably about as good as a broad left party with 10 000 members and 10%+ of the vote is going to be at present, and if we could have either a more clearly activist and left Greens and/or a 'Green Left' type current (something like that in the UK) that did some of the work mentioned in the preceding paragraph that the whole party couldn't do, and could forward its own perspectives without permanent war in the party, I'd be quite happy. In the meantime I'm not willing to abandon Socialist Alliance and Green Left (the readership of which until recently was higher than the Greens website and still rivals it). Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Response to Socialist Alternative on class today and the Greens
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == This is a little rough and a bit long for an elist post, but I think the points on both the Greens and class today will be of general interest. Some of the stuff on the Greens will hopefully appear in more detailed form in an academic article in November, and I hope to work the arguments about class today into a talk for the Socialist Alliance in Melbourne later in the year as well, at which point it'll go on the Melbourne SA blog. Ben Hillier’s article article, ‘A Marxist critique of the Australian Greens’ (available from http://www.marxistleftreview.org/) contains some useful information and analysis on the formation that has achieved a significant breakthrough in the recent Australian elections. He is correct, generally, in writing of their ‘populist left nationalism’ and ‘middle class ideological basis’. But he overemphasises the sociological middle class nature of the Greens’ voting base (and probably membership), as part of a general confusion on class today. In a related error, he is quite wrong, and quite sectarian, to state the Greens ‘do not in any sense represent an alternative to the ALP’. In should be borne in mind that populism and nationalism are hallmarks of social democracy, even the more militant and class struggle elements that Marxists have always been keen to work with and influence (with contradictory admixtures of internationalism, which the Greens incidently show more of on the whole than the ALP, something covered in the academic article referred to but not here). It is my contention that irrespective of their particular origins in conservation and other ‘new social movements’, the Greens today represent much of the leftist end of the social democratic oriented electorate, and in that much of the more educated and skilled sectors of the working class, as well as much of the more progressive sectors of the middle classes (understanding these terms properly, as Ben does not really seem to). I’ll illustrate this below with a number of analyses, including from my own research. Firstly a few points on some methodological limitations of Ben’s article. He cites a number of academic articles that relate to the class nature of the Greens, which have generally used as data aggregate voting figures in different areas. That’s OK as part of an argument, but such figures, aggregating people of different backgrounds, are quite limited in drawing strong conclusions from, because although geography structures class, it does so with quite a lot of variability. Better is the large-scale academic sample surveys of voters, the Australian Election Study (AES), conducted after each federal election, and the bienniel Australian Survey of Social Attitudes, which allow one to correlate demographic factors (including class), opinions on various questions asked and voting behaviour. Now there simply hasn’t been enough Green voters in the AES samples until the 2007 study to make any valid claims about. Still in this survey the number of Greens voters in the workforce (only 128 voting for the Greens in the lower house, which I use as a measure of stronger identification than votes for the senate) was of a size that makes margins of error considerable (I say in the workforce as that is what I’ve used in analyzing class relationships – for some respondents not in the workforce you could reasonably use partners who are, but that’s a bit complicated and wouldn’t make that much difference to the numbers). The error for this size ranges up to 9%. So quite a lot of caution, and understanding of statistical significance, is in order. Ben tries to make points about sub-sub groups of Green voters and other voters, such as white collar workers from non-English speaking backgrounds, which due to the very small sample size and hence very large sampling errors simply aren’t valid at all for the Greens voters. In any case Ben’s much more significant error is his understanding of the middle classes and working class today. He is quite correct (I think to fairly paraphrase him) in stating the that the concept of the ‘middle classes’ is best understood as including variegated layers of the self-employed, small business owners and some salaried layers, which have some material conditions and forms of consciousness in common. But he is 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. In places like the public service there are a series of “grades” of employment seniority, each higher level bestowing greater autonomy, responsibility and control. In such circumstances, it is impossible to clearly demarcate (except at the margins)
Re: [Marxism] Last man standing
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Louis: Maybe [the Greens make] more sense than the Socialist Alliance? There's two related problems here. Firstly, whether or not Alan Bradley is correct in predicting that any influx of organised socialists into the Greens would severely damage that party (due to a reaction from its right wing), the Greens constitution specifically disallows members to be members of another party. I don't think anyone is game to test whether this means members of a socialist organisation that doesn't define itself as a party would be unwelcome as members, or expelled if they discreetly joined in any numbers, as the DSP was en bloc when this provision was adopted in 1992 (presumably after the DSP offered to give up its electoral registration, operate more loosely etc). After the IST-aligned group here left Socialist Alliance in 2007, these comrades orientated towards the Greens and apparently handed out for them in the 2007 federal elections. But in their articles at the time it was unclear whether any of them had joined the Greens and if so whether they were pushing the general arguments they were making about the Greens in their press. Their activity wasn't a bad thing and an advance on their previous position of voting for the Labor Party ahead of the Greens, but while the comrades presumably think they are in a united front with the Greens in bourgeois elections, I'm not sure if many people would have noticed. Secondly, any argument that the small socialist groups with their meagre followings should dissolve themselves into the Greens, for the greater good of the struggle, comes against the reality that there is very little to the Greens pretensions of being an activist party, and what there is occurs very unevenly. The Greens are not a vehicle for organsing public meetings and conferences or producing media that build campaigns and help the whole left (as opposed to some impressive media that promotes the Greens), or for sustaining and promoting class struggle ideas in the unions and other social movements. Any effort to make them more so would probably need the kind of struggle with the more right-wing Greens that Alan warns about. The Greens policy and general perspectives is probably about as good as a broad left party with 10 000 members and 10%+ of the vote is going to be at present, and if we could have either a more clearly activist and left Greens and/or a 'Green Left' type current (something like that in the UK) that did some of the work mentioned in the preceding paragraph that the whole party couldn't do, and could forward its own perspectives without permanent war in the party, I'd be quite happy. In the meantime I'm not willing to abandon Socialist Alliance and Green Left (the readership of which until recently was higher than the Greens website and still rivals it). Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Nature of the Greens (was Re: Last man standing)
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Gary MacLennan: The Libertarians use the Green veto to preclude any discussion of class politics in The most important thing is the ozone layer, climate change, etc. This is a specifically Queensland phenomena though. I'm just finishing off an academic paper for the Australian Journal of Political Science on the considerable extent to which the Greens represent a form of left social democracy. I look at the views - of Greens leaders and branch members that I conducted focus groups with and in Greens material - expressing left nationalist ideas of Australia as economically exploited and politically subservient, and compared Greens voters and other voters in the 2007 Australian Election Study (the first such survey to include enough Greens voters to make any sensible claims about), in terms of class composition, left-right self-identification and attitudes towards class (the latter consisting of an index created from responses to questions about union power, big business power and the former government's WorkChoices legislation). As in a lot of academic social science the findings are pretty much what you'd expect, with footnotes, and this is from my unsurprising conclusion: I have found that in relation to two sets of issues — trade, globalisation and the AUSFTA, and the Iraq and Afghan wars and national security — discourse emanating from Greens branch members and leaders seems mainly framed by traditional left nationalism (and to a lesser extent traditional internationalism). I also find that in social composition and attitudes towards class Greens voters are considerably closer to Labor voters than to Coalition supporters (though generally are more middle class and educated than Labor voters), and are more leftist in self-identification than either. Hence, while the “newness” of Green politics is a real phenomenon, Green parties have roots in and similarities to left social democracy that must also be recognised. I would suggest, from general observation and anecdotal evidence, including comments from my focus group participants that the connection between Green politics and left social democracy arises from two interrelated factors. Firstly, that despite the undoubted radical newness of Green politics, these parties were bound from the first to be influenced by extant radical and anti-establishment traditions. Secondly, from the apparent defection of Labor activists and voters into the Green camp due to perceived rightward turns of parties such as the ALP. For those interested in class composition, I found the Greens voters (in the workforce) broke down into 51% non-managerial employees, 29% salaried managers and 20% business owners, with corresponding figures for the ALP being 59%-29%-13% and for the Liberal Party 40%-35%-25%. Compared to Labor voters, Greens voters have more degrees, less trade qualifications and on the whole higher incomes. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Socialist Alliance federal election candidates in Victoria
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == Media releases, downloadable campaign materials and video clips will be downloaded to the following pages as the campaigns progress. Via the right hand column of each page you can subscribe to the site by various means (you might be able to subscribe to particular pages if you want to follow a particular campaign - I haven't worked that out yet). Trent Hawkins for Wills http://socialistalliancemelbourne.blogspot.com/p/trent-hawkins-for-wills.html Ben Courtice for Gellibrand http://socialistalliancemelbourne.blogspot.com/p/ben-courtice-for-gellibrand.html Sue Bull for Corio http://socialistalliancemelbourne.blogspot.com/p/sue-bull-for-corio.html Margarita Windisch, Sharon Firebrace and Ron Guy for the Senate http://socialistalliancemelbourne.blogspot.com/p/margarira-windisch-sharon-firebrace-and.html Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
[Marxism] Australian Gaza rally reports with slideshow of Melbourne rallies
== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. == http://socialistalliancemelbourne.blogspot.com/2010/06/melbourne-free-gaza-rallies-june-1-and.html Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Max Lane in latest Direct Action - Indonesia: 'Oppositionists' seek cabinet posts
v_brown_au wrote: Indonesia: 'Oppositionists' seek cabinet posts By Max Lane, in Jakarta . In one article by a PRD spokesperson, it was also argued that through rhetorical campaigning against neoliberalism in the lead-up to the election, retired general Prabowo had wiped out his sins of organising the torture and disappearance of pro-democracy activists during the late Suharto era. It was even argued that the numbers involved — 14 are still missing, presumed dead — were minor compared to the victims of Yudhoyono's neoliberal policies, forgetting that the disappearing of the 14, and the torturing of several others, were actually acts aimed at terrorising the whole pro-democracy movement. It's hard to know what to make of the quotation of four words without any indication of where they came from (apparently from some article by some unnamed PRD person), let alone what context these four words appeared in or what else the apparent PRD leader wrote. Max seems to escalating his campaign of dubious rhetorical tactics (disingenuous excision of a few words from their context, outright distortion, lecturing the PRD on things they've already clearly stated) in his now long-running factional intervention in the Indonesian far left. As I've written here before, perhaps Max is correct in some of his criticisms; I don't have the time or Indonesian language to thoroughly investigate. But considering his blatant distortion of what is readily available in English, my previous demonstration of which I'll re-paste in below, and utter silence about the PRD's previous history of critical support for bourgeois figures (let alone his own presumably still extant view of voting for Labor before Liberal), in my eyes Max has lost all credibility as an objective observer of the Indonesian far left, despite the usefulness of his more general analyses of Indonesia (note: there may be a detailed exposition of the PRD's own views publicly available in English soon, which I can relate is very different from Max's distorted account). Below is what I wrote before, referring to a previous article by Max at http://directaction.org.au/issue14/the_indonesian_left_and_green_left_weekly . Perhaps, as Max claims the PRD made no criticisms of these figures, the clear characterisations of Prabowo as a murderer of pro-democracy activists and Megawati as a neolioberal and both as cynical opportunist members of the oligarchic elites, given by the PRD writers below, were just for the benefit of Green Left readers and not repeated in any form anywhere in Indonesia. And perhaps it will snow in Jakarta for Christmas. Here's what I wrote and quoted before: For example Max claims: Now the PRD/Papernas line is framed within the assertion that in the 2009 presidential election there was a ?contest between pro-people policies versus pro-capital ones?. The alleged champion of the ?pro- people policies? is ?Prabowo Subiyanto...The new PRD/Papernas line was oriented towards giving electoral support to General Prabowo Well you'll have to excuse me for interpreting the actual article, as opposed to the minimalist quotes Max selects, as meaning that the stated Papernas line was framed within and oriented towards organising mass actions and making demands on bourgeois politicians while explaining the latter's demagogic nature pretty clearly: From http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/801/41260 Indonesia: Challenging the neo-liberal regime More than 2500 people from the Volunteers of People?s Struggle for the Liberation of Motherland (SPARTAN) held a festive anti- neoliberalism protest in front of the National Election Commission on July 1 in Jakarta. The multi-sector coalition, initiated by the People?s Democratic Party (PRD) to intervene in the 2009 election, held similar protests involving more than 1200 people in Makassar on the island of Sulawesi. Hundreds rallied in Surabaya, Medan, Lampung, and protests occurred in 11 other cities... ...Until the rise of neoliberalism as an issue in this year?s presidential election, previous electoral contests did not involve a contest between pro-people policies versus pro-capital ones. However, the bitter truth is that this development is not directly caused by any advances for progressive and democratic forces. Rather, it comes from a conflict within the oligarchic elites. This specifically involves Prabowo Subiyanto, a retired lieutenant- general who commanded the notorious Kopasus elite troops involved in the kidnappings and killings of pro-democracy activists in 1998. Lately, the content of Prabowo?s speeches are almost identical to the arguments of progressives in recent years. This is both the way he explains the nature of neoliberalism as well as, to a degree, the proposed economic solutions. Prabowo is running for vice-president with the presidential candidate Megawati Sukarnoputri in this election. Is his populism an illusion, considering that
Re: [Marxism] English skinheads wave ... Israeli flag!
A minor point, but skinhead is a stylistic rather than a political position. The cropped head and Doc Marten footed look has historical connections to ska and reggae, the 80s mod revival, and anti-racism and leftist politics, as much as to the fascism for dummies and the particularly stupid form of hardcore punk which are more popularly associated with the term skinhead. The latter grouping were often termed boneheads by those identifying with the former set of associations. Representative of the left skins in the 80s was a UK ska band, the Redskins, members of the SWP. Similarly in Australia there was the Strange Tenants, members of the Moscow-line SPA. The latter played at the first conference I went to, the Resistance national gathering in 1990. There was a security detail (of more buff comrades than me) in case the Nazi skins made an appearance, which they apparently were wont to do at the Tenants' gigs previously. They didn't: the physical confrontations between fascists and the left had peaked a year or two before my involvement and boneheads have been pretty much invisible here since (some no doubt graduating to One Nation in the 90s and Australia First now). In contrast ska, which is almost by definition anti-racist, seems to get revived at least every 5 years. YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. Send list submissions to: Marxism@lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Max Lane's critique of Indonesian leftists
This is a comprehensive indictment of accommodation to bourgeois forces. Though somewhat contradictory -- was the PRD supporting Prabowo or Kalla-Wiranto? Either way I would welcome a response from the DSP or whoever. This is what I previously posted in response to the posting of Max's more recent article here and on the Green Left list. The first part is a comment by DSP member Chris Slee on the Green Left list, followed by my responses. I might add that Dita Sari left the PRD before making the comments Max quotes. This might not necessarily invalidate his criticisms of the actual PRD, but it's quite disingenuous of Max not to mention this relevant fact. On 11/08/2009, at 7:07 PM, slee_c wrote: --- In greenleft_discuss...@yahoogroups.com, red_april65 red_apri...@... wrote: The Indonesian Left and Green Left Weekly by Max Lane http://directaction.org.au/issue14/the_indonesian_left_and_green_left_weekly I am inclined to agree that there was no significant difference between the 3 teams in the Indonesian presidential election, and that calling for a boycott may have been preferable to calling for a vote for those using anti-neoliberal rhetoric. But this is a tactical question. As was the number of previous examples of the PRD giving critical support in various ways to various bourgeois politicians and forces, which Max supported, but does not mention here. As was, as Chris has pointed out before, the recent and successful tactic of the Malaysian Socialist Party in standing candidates under the banner of a bourgeois party, a tactic Max appears to agree with. As was the PKI's critical (and often uncritical) support for Sukarno, and I know Max has a soft spot for Bung [Brother] Karno. All of these tactics have been denounced in toto, and as a matter of principle, by some super- revolutionaries. But as Trotsky says somewhere, if it suits us, we'll make an alliance with the devil and his mother too, and even with social democrats. Unfortunately it's hard for the non-Indonesian reader to assess what the PRD has been saying and doing recently in an objective and balanced way, firstly because Green Left has lacked some of its previous resources to regularly translate material from and analyse events in Indonesia (the more prosaic reason for recent lack of coverage, as opposed to Max's claims). And secondly Max's representation of events clearly distorts what's readily available in English, so it's unfortunately hard to be confident about his version of Indonesian sources. For example Max claims: Now the PRD/Papernas line is framed within the assertion that in the 2009 presidential election there was a “contest between pro-people policies versus pro-capital ones”. The alleged champion of the “pro- people policies” is “Prabowo Subiyanto...The new PRD/Papernas line was oriented towards giving electoral support to General Prabowo Well you'll have to excuse me for interpreting the actual article, as opposed to the minimalist quotes Max selects, as meaning that the stated Papernas line was framed within and oriented towards organising mass actions and making demands on bourgeois politicians while explaining the latter's demagogic nature pretty clearly: From http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/801/41260 Indonesia: Challenging the neo-liberal regime More than 2500 people from the Volunteers of People’s Struggle for the Liberation of Motherland (SPARTAN) held a festive anti- neoliberalism protest in front of the National Election Commission on July 1 in Jakarta. The multi-sector coalition, initiated by the People’s Democratic Party (PRD) to intervene in the 2009 election, held similar protests involving more than 1200 people in Makassar on the island of Sulawesi. Hundreds rallied in Surabaya, Medan, Lampung, and protests occurred in 11 other cities... ...Until the rise of neoliberalism as an issue in this year’s presidential election, previous electoral contests did not involve a contest between pro-people policies versus pro-capital ones. However, the bitter truth is that this development is not directly caused by any advances for progressive and democratic forces. Rather, it comes from a conflict within the oligarchic elites. This specifically involves Prabowo Subiyanto, a retired lieutenant- general who commanded the notorious Kopasus elite troops involved in the kidnappings and killings of pro-democracy activists in 1998. Lately, the content of Prabowo’s speeches are almost identical to the arguments of progressives in recent years. This is both the way he explains the nature of neoliberalism as well as, to a degree, the proposed economic solutions. Prabowo is running for vice-president with the presidential candidate Megawati Sukarnoputri in this election. Is his populism an illusion, considering that Megawati carried out a neoliberal
