Archive for February 1st, 2015
Amidst all the celebrations we should remember this: Labor is not the Australian version of SYRIZA
Posted by John, February 1st, 2015 - under ALP, Australian Labor Party, Labor Party, Queensland, Social Democracy, SYRIZA.
Comments: 7
A social democratic desire among workers for improved living standards and services is both systemic, arising from the forced sale of our labour power to survive, and historical. The reality that workers’ living standards are falling relatively, and may have to do so from capital’s point of view in real terms, conflicts with the very real yearning of workers for a better world of full employment, improved wages and conditions and good schools, hospitals and transport. In Australia at the moment that yearning finds expression not in strikes and demonstrations for these outcomes – strikes are at near historic lows – but in the yo-yo of electoral change from neoliberal Labor to the neoliberal Liberals to neoliberal Labor.