What is going on in Oz? was Re: [Marxism] Re: Ostalgie

[Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I really do not want to get into a discussion about the Australian Labor
Party (ALP), but things seem to marking time in Australia, and the only
flurry of excitement and it wasn't much at that, was around the election of
New South Wales right winger Mark Latham to the leadership of the ALP.  I
suppose the excitement partly came from the exit of the former leader Simon
Crean - a true Dead Man Walking.  A man it would seem born to spread joy
among his opponents and to generate the deepest of despair in his followers.

The left of the Labor Party, and they are defined not by policies or
politics so much as gullibility, took great heart from Latham's record of
abusing the Government for being a "Congo line of suck holes" with regard
to the USA.

Since becoming leader he has "naturally" backed away from that rhetoric and
was even filmed at a press conference in front of US & Australian
flags.  That was a pretty obvious piece of symbolism.  However many on the
Left subsequently believed the story that a staffer had done the flags
thing without consulting Latham.

Apart from the flags, Latham has also sought to outflank the government
from the right on security matters.

So is it all a matter of "same shit, new flies"?

The short answer is 'yes'.

However the real problem with the Labor Party is that they do not know why
they lost government in 1993.  Their other defeats in recent times were
1949 and 1975.  In the case of 49 the lesson learned was that they had
tried to control the economy too much and had even proposed to nationalise
the banks.  Before the 75 victory the then Labor Leader spent a good deal
of time assuring everyone that there were no plans for bank nationalisation.

The 75 defeat was generally put down to a failure to "manage the
economy".  So the incoming Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke spent a lot of
time pre- 1983 giving guarantees that the ec0onomy would be managed
"prudently".

So prudent were they that they drove large sections of the working class
into voting Tory in 1993.  I still recall clearly on election night Senator
Bob McMullan, one of Labor's bright spots, complaining how they had done
all they were supposed to do and had still been beaten. Since then it seems
to me that the Labor Party has been waiting for word from the ruling class
on what they need to do to win back their favour.  No word has come though
as yet and the result is that Howard seems unbeatable.

So although a kind of numbness is growing in Australia, none of it is fed
as far as I can seen by a nostalgia for Labor Governments, with the
possible exception of the Whitlam Governments of 1972-5.  The leftist myths
around Whitlam are fed largely IMHO by the fact that he was sacked by the
far right Governor General, Sir John Kerr.

But if there is a nostalgia factor outside of the white colonialist
dreaming, then it is the Left's current worship of Whitlam.

Curiously this brings us back to the new Leader, Mark Latham who was a
Whitlam protege. But history is repeating itself as farce.  Whitlam
attempted a range of reforms of the system, but Latham to date has offered
us only a few insults of the Right which he has now withdrawn. Truly this
is the summer of our discontent.

regards

Gary


_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism