En Passant

Me on superannuation and the death rattle of the ALP in The  Conversation.

These two actions – appointing former mining maggot and climate change denier Gary Gray to the resources portfolio and merging Climate Change with the Environment – are good examples of Labor’s bankruptcy; of its complete capitulation to neoliberalism and the idea that the market is the best way to organise society and profit the only god to be worshipped.

The ALP has lost its working class heartland, not because of who leads it but because of its rotten neoliberal policies. Abandon the neoliberal policies and personalities, Labor.

The choice for Labor is the Hugo Chavez route or oblivion. Goodbye Labor.

It is because Labor’s policies have been the policies of neoliberalism, of kowtowing to the rich and powerful, with occasional rhetorical flourishes of class war merely showing how far removed we are from it, that it offers no class analysis of society and the way forward for workers that Tony Abbott will be the next Prime Minister.

Rather than this being a rupture it is a continuation of Labor’s politics of neoliberalism. As Hawke and Keating led to Howard, so Rudd and Gillard are now leading to Abbott.

The solution for workers seems clear enough. Fight both brands of neoliberalism, not with television advertisements but with strikes.

Labor’s crisis is about politics and policies, not people. It doesn’t make much difference if Labor is led by Gillard or Rudd or some other snake oil sales person – the pro-profit and pro-business policies of the party would be much the same.

The play’s the thing and this 7 month long interlude is designed to trap young Abbott, perhaps help keep the jester in his place and cement the uneasy crown on the Queen against her plotters. The reality is both Gillard and Abbott are past their dancing days.

Is there an alternative to the failure that is Labor? The need now for a revolutionary socialist workers’ party is great. But we cannot hurry history. Workers will have to learn the lessons of struggle and history, with input from the revolutionary left where we can to patiently explain the way forward and our view of the world.

Labor might be gone but the struggle continues.

Yours truly in today’s The Age on Jenny Macklin, the dole and driving single Mums into more poverty. I argue we need to fight industrially against the neoliberal Labor Party to end this sort of systemic misogyny.   Here are a few snippets:  ‘The rich are getting richer and we are not bothering to fight [...]

If there should be, as the Opposition leader claims, an inquiry into the AWU slush fund of 20 years ago, should there not also be an inquiry into the very very recent Ashby abuse of process affair?

There is something else in all of this too. The strutting roosters of neoliberalism in Australia have done little to distinguish themselves from each other. Where there are differences, they are usually of degree, not substance. The political cock fights are over reputation, not policy, because both Labor and the Liberals basically agree upon the neoliberal policy framework.

A pox on both their houses. Maybe it is now time for the working class fox to enter the chook pens of the major parties and put pro-working class policies and politics on the table of state.