Webdiary - Independent, Ethical, Accountable and Transparent
header_02 home about login header_06
header_07
search_bar_left
date_box_left
date_box_right.jpg
search_bar_right
sidebar-top content-top

Beyond right and left: a review

Last Sunday Webdiary published an extract from David McKnight's new book Beyond Right and Left; New politics and the culture wars in a thread titled The death of the Old Right: when conservatives become radicals. Today, Webdiarist Ian MacDougall reviews the book and describes his own conceptual framework which 'gelled' after reading McKnight's work.

Ian MacDougall became interested in politics while a student at Sydney University. In 1958 he attended the International Union of Students Congress in the city then called Peking where he shook hands with Mao up on the balcony overlooking Tiananmen Square on the night of the October 1 celebrations during Mao's Great Leap Forward. Then, following Wilfred Burchett, Ian was only the second Australian to visit North Korea after the Korean War earlier that decade. 

With considerable academic qualifications under his belt, Ian retired from the ACT education system in 1995 and now spends time fattening cattle and cropping in northwest NSW, songwriting and music composition (3 albums and 3 musical shows to date), working on various inventions (one provisional patent application, no. 2004901510 for a hydraulic transmission for the good old Aussie windmill), with family, skiing, Aikido and pursues his current scientific interests in the ecology of Australian forests and the origins of bipedalism in primates.

Beyond right and left: a review

by Ian MacDougall

 

As suggested by the title he has chosen for his book, David McKnight has abandoned the belief that people can be allocated positions according to their politics on a simple line from right to left: from those who want things to remain as they are to those who want radical change.

What follows is in two parts: first a review of McKnight’s book, and second a discussion of issues it raises. My own conceptual framework, (which finally gelled only after reading McKnight on the subject) I set out in the second part.

1. REVIEW:

McKnight says at the outset:

…I believe that we must recognize that the Right-Left spectrum of ideas has collapsed and that many old ways of thinking are finished. This is the first and most important step to advancing new ideas on the environment, the family, economic inequality, cultural diversity, and even deeper issues concerning purpose and meaning in our lives. All the ‘isms’ are now ‘wasms’. Many people instinctively feel – as I do – that the established spectrum of Right and Left is inadequate; this book will explore where such feelings might take us… (p. 3)

Eight chapters after that opening statement, McKnight argues for ‘a new humanism’:

The Right has already undergone its own transformation, and the result has been the combination of militant economic liberalism with a new kind of cultural politics based on values. This has given its political agenda an ascendancy over the disparate movements and ideas of the Left. In response, the Left must undergo its own renewal. As I have outlined… this involves reconfiguring some ideas of the Left and discarding others. Until this occurs it is hard to see how the decline in progressive politics can be stopped. (p 237)

“The decline in progressive politics” McKnight speaks of coincides with the rise of the values admired and protected by the Howard government, which McKnight opposes, and also the fruit of its policies: the growing inequalities of wealth and power, the decline of public health and public education at all levels, the commodification of everything and the counterattack on the Left’s perceived cultural dominance in Australia.

The ideas he thinks need reconfiguring are those relating to the family (‘rethinking family values’), and the problems of multiculturalism and immigration brought into prominence by Pauline Hanson and the asylum seeker issue following the MV Tampa incident.  He sees Hanson’s stereotypic thinking on race and immigration as being the other side of the ‘group thinking’ that motivates ethnic minorities to seek increased political clout through such bonding activities as the stacking of ALP branches. “Preserving the authenticity and integrity of a culture is not far removed from notions of racial purity.” (p 216)

Of the baggage he believes should be discarded, the main part is the idea of socialism; not only  as envisaged by Marx and Engels but also as found in the world’s communist regimes to date.

In the middle chapters of his book, McKnight does a very good job of covering the history and concerns of neo-liberalism: emphasis on markets (which give consumers considerable choice and producers vital information), deregulation, privatisation of state-owned enterprises, minimal taxes and the user-pays principle for remaining government services, free international trade, and application of the market principle to all public goods such as education, health and the environment.

He says:

There is more to this than meets the eye, including certain deeper assumptions about human nature. But 25 years ago, the small group of economists and philosophers who held these views were regarded as rather eccentric – even by the mainstream Right. They met in small discussion groups and debated each other in obscure magazines and economic journals. They dreamt of a world reshaped by these ideas. We now live in this world.” (p 51)

As McKnight points out, there is now no socialist movement to offer an alternative pole of attraction. The 150 year old socialist tradition has largely gone, unremarked and unmourned. The New Left, which rose in the 1960s and matured in the 1970s, has also joined socialism, at least as the world knew it, in the dustbin of history. “It’s now clear,” he says, ” that the socialist component of the New Left was the last gasp of an older Left, not the promise of a renewed one.” In its place, he sees the modern ‘broad’ Left (which to him includes members and supporters of the ALP, Democrats and Greens across to some current supporters of the Liberal and National parties.) But as far as he is concerned, all those people are standing on an eroding philosophical sandbank. “Tinkering with policies, presentation and leadership is not enough,” he says. His aim is the development of a ‘new vision’ for the Left, but he makes no claim to have one. Rather he wants to prepare the ground from which one may emerge. He is not the first to attempt this.

I would add here that the present policy crisis of the ALP, as reflected in the dismal polling of Kim Beazley, is reason enough to look forward to something new in that direction. The ongoing bunfights in the nation’s parliaments are more about the spoils of office than diverging ideologies. The Greens, with around 10 percent of the national vote, have replaced the ALP as today’s party of the Left. Yet as McKnight points out, conservationists are conservative in the truest sense of the word. It is their opponents who want change. That is, of forests and other natural features into dollars. The Greens by contrast want things left alone, (or at least, put onto a sustainable basis), not ‘fair shares’ of the spoils.

However far fragmentation of established politics extends into the traditional Right, it is probably not as far as McKnight would have us believe. Indeed, one of the paradoxes of our modern Australian economy is the fact that over the course of a year (1984) we went from high levels of protectionism and regulation to nearly zero, except for carefully selected exceptions like the professions, and with both major parties driving the change in tandem. Moreover, they met no significant opposition from business. (I would add the following observation: much of the clothing sold in Australia today under well-established Australian brand names is made in Australian owned factories in countries like Fiji. One can only conclude that the managements all did their sums and saw increased profits in moving operations offshore to take advantage of lower wages and conditions, then bringing the product back home to sell. Some workers lost much as producers, but many more appear to have gained in a strict material way as consumers. This applies across other industries as well.)

The triumph of ‘free-market’ capitalism, says McKnight, has coincided with a rise of job insecurity, stress on individuals and families, gambling, drug abuse and mental illness. “It once seemed commonsense that public goods such as water, telephone services, electricity, road-building and so on would be organised with the public good uppermost in mind. But now privatisation, marketisation, competition and deregulation … bring with them a new set of values. Universities were once institutions whose rationale was in the knowledge they produced and passed on. Today, universities jealously guard their ‘brand’ in the competitive market for fee-paying overseas and local students.”

In such passages, McKnight appears to be hankering after the good old days of his youth, when the society ran along more traditional lines, and at least we all knew where we stood. Now, he argues, communal human instincts at least as old as our species continually run up against self-interest and aspiration; in short, to the quest for purchasing power in the market. It was the commodification of everything which eroded and destroyed the “strongly cohesive” feudal system. Following the lead of the conservative historian of the market Karl Polyani, McKnight sees the benefits conferred by the rise of market capitalism as doubtful compensation for the relationships of mutual support that were destroyed in the process.

The idea of Right and Left originated in the seating arrangements of the French National Assembly after the revolution of 1789, with the radicals on the left of the chamber and the conservatives on the right.

In nineteenth-century Europe, the Left became more clearly defined as a socialist force, wanting to redistribute the wealth of the newly industrializing nations to the working class, while the Right became the description for those who thought the existing order worked well…

In the twentieth century, the Left and Right came to be defined more by those supporting a greater role for government – in either its social democratic or its Marxist form – and those who opposed such a role. During the Cold War, the Right and Left were defined by their attitudes to communism and anti-communism.” (pp 3-4) )

However, in the last 15 years, as McKnight has outlined on the Forum website, not only have we seen worldwide the triumph of neo-liberal policies, but also an accompanying series of collapses: of the USSR; of the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe; of anti-communism; of the social democratic ideals embodied in the ALP; and apparently, of any adequacy Marxism had as an explanation of the world and society.

It has not been all one-sided. There is a section of the Right strongly critical of John Howard’s government, which includes ‘social liberals’ like Robert Manne (former editor of the right-wing journal Quadrant), former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, and the Liberal MP Petro Georgiou. (For me, this change was best expressed by the decline and fall of the DLP during the Whitlam years of 1972-75, and the eventide tirades of that eminence grise of the Right, BA Santamaria. The latter had spent his political youth as a cheerleader for Franco’s fascists in the Spanish Civil War, while also leading the Catholic Social Movement (fighting communism in the unions), and simultaneously the ‘six acres and a cow’ agrarian fundamentalist National Catholic Rural Movement (which planned to build a new order once communism was finally defeated, and to turn Australia into a sort of Catholic Afghanistan – read Tom Truman’s Catholic Action and Politics (1959) on the subject.). But he spent much time in his last years attacking the ‘economic rationalism’ ascendant in both major parties.)

Moreover, many people who were on either the right or the left a generation ago have now moved more towards the centre, to become swinging voters. (This includes both my wife and me.) It is thus easy to agree with McKnight’s conclusion: “The consequences of all these changes in the world of politics has been profound. In shorthand, the whole framework of politics and philosophy, which was based on a linear left - right spectrum, has become almost irrelevant.”

David McKnight’s book is worth buying just for three of its chapters. These are: 3 The triumph of an idea – which is the story of the rise of neo-liberalism; 4 Neo-cons, ex-cons and the death of the old Right; and  6 The culture war and moral politics. Those last two chapters discuss in considerable historical detail what their titles suggest.

Recall that McKnight began by stating that “many people instinctively feel… that the established spectrum of Right and Left is inadequate; this book will explore where such feelings might take us…” He finishes up arguing for ‘a new humanism’, with a critique of neo-liberal capitalism for what it does to the environment and to the family – issues dear to conservationists and conservatives alike. My only critical comment on this is that while setting out a basis for values-based politics ‘beyond Right and Left’, he remains confined in the linear spectrum he denounces so effectively. Nowhere does he foreshadow or recognise any non-linear alternative.

2. A NEW CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK?

In a nutshell, a major problem is encountered when we assign the wide variety of modern and historic political outlooks to positions on a single ‘left-right’ line or continuum, and we engage in the thought that this engenders. The interests of human beings are a bit more complex than is allowed by any such scheme.

David McKnight devotes the first three chapters of Beyond Right and Left; New politics and the culture wars. (Allen & Unwin, Australia, 2005. 298 pp; $24.95 pb) to the current ‘Age of the Market”. On page 48 we read:

The point of this chapter is not that markets are inherently evil. In later chapters I will argue that non-market societies are inevitably tyrannical and repressive. Rather, my point is that when a society relies excessively on market mechanisms this has consequences for the values and culture of that society. Markets encourage the values of self-interest at the expense of common interests; they promote commercial and utilitarian values in place of human and traditional values.

…The relentless march of markets is slowly but inexorably corroding these human values in ways that even their enthusiasts fail to comprehend.

But here I think we must ask: just what exactly is a ‘market’? The very word is annoyingly ambiguous, having ten different meanings according to the Macquarie Dictionary. Most importantly for our purposes here, a market is a population engaged in buying and selling a particular commodity. A market is people. Nearly all of us are in various markets as buyers for a good deal of the time, and most of are in a range of other markets as sellers. Any given market is thus an ant heap, with individuals entering and leaving. I have for example been at various times in the car market and the real estate market as both buyer and seller; in the labour market (mainly as a seller but also from time to time as a buyer); the clothing market (only as buyer) and at present am in the grain market as a seller. From my own personal and limited human perspective, there is nothing wrong with free trade in goods and services.

As “economic rationalists” have been eager to point out, there is a major similarity and overlap between free trade on the one hand, and free exchange of ideas on the other. The Protestant Reformation in Europe was a big factor in the rise of modern capitalism, modern science and philosophy, and the values associated with the Enlightenment. What was destroyed by the spread of trade and ideas included not only many traditional village and home-based crafts such as handloom weaving and smithing of various metals, in which sons and daughters would work alongside their fathers and mothers for generation after generation, but also the economic security and social dominance of the clergy, and with that the ideological foundations of feudalism. Any argument in favour of restricting free trade in goods can be easily modified for the restriction of critique – in the interest of those threatened in some way by it.

Nor does it say much for Australian democracy that the last time the people had a vote on free trade as against protectionism was in the Federal election of 1907, when the protectionists won, and set the agenda on the matter for the following 76 years. In their campaigns before the 1983 election, both Malcolm Fraser’s Coalition and Bob Hawke’s ALP were protectionist and interventionist in approach to the economy. By the subsequent 1984 election, both had switched to neo-liberalism. The ‘wets’ had been defeated in the Coalition, and the parliamentary leadership of the ALP had ignored official ALP policy and the party’s internal democracy and adopted policies identical in all but name to those of the Liberals. The 1984 ALP campaign director complained that the Party lacked knowledge of 'the Government's intentions with regard to major policy areas ... the content and tone of the policy speeches'. This development was called ‘The Hawke-Keating Hijack’ by the sociologist Dean Jaensch in his book of the same title. In my view, it was a major setback for Australian democracy. Future historians may well date the decline to extinction of the ALP from this point.

(Of course, those in the ALP leadership at the time will argue that the policy turn was absolutely right and justified if economic woe was to be avoided. But while the jury is still out on that, it is completely beside the point. The ALP’s constitution and established internal democratic processes were flouted by its own parliamentary ‘representatives’.  If that is of no significance, then so is the membership of the ALP. The current crisis over the impact of Mark Latham’s personality on the organisation’s public standing probably would not have occurred except for this victory of the ALP politicians in the long historic fight with the ALP rank and file over policy and preselection. It was a case of (to paraphrase Louis XVIII), “Le Parti – c’est moi!” I am the party.)

We are all in markets both as buyers and as sellers. And here is the simple economic reality governing our behaviour: when we go in as buyers, we want sellers falling over themselves to offer us cut prices and special deals. We want in short, total free trade. But when we go in as sellers, we want a closed shop. We want rivals who might undercut us locked right out of it. This is the fundamental reason for the rise not just of craft guilds and trade unions, but of empires as well. Buy cheap and sell dear has been the principle underlying human trade going right back into prehistory. Sellers best connected politically want special privileges, and want them denied to their rivals. Much of politics reduces to these sorts of questions of political economy.

The traditional Left has supported the trade unionists’ attempts to close their shops to competition from other workers and thus hold the bosses to ransom. It is a jungle out there. Exorbitant executive payouts testify to that. Capitalists have traditionally wanted to want to buy (labour) cheap and sell (product in a protected market) dear. But ironically, in a closed system it is in the interest of every capitalist that every other capitalist pay his or her workers the highest possible wages. Otherwise there will be no market for the first capitalist’s product.

It is interesting that while stressing the inadequacy of thinking of parties and individuals as being in a linear arrangement from left to right, like washing hung out to dry on a clothesline, David McKnight does not consider the alternatives around today. There are a number of relating websites, including The Political Compass and the Wikipedia summary of it, both of which advocate looking at politics on a two dimensional scale, as on a map, where a person’s position can be specified using north-south and east-west coordinates: the x and y coordinates familiar to mathematicians.

Most advocates of such arrangements place the radicals at the left end of the x axis (west on the compass cross) and the conservatives appropriately at its right end (east). Using such a scheme, we can choose a position for all individuals and parties somewhere along that east-west line. As Lenin, Hitler and Mao all gained power on a program of significant change, they would all be classed as ‘radical’. Reformers like Luther and Henry VIII, and revolutionaries like Cromwell, Robespierre, Jefferson, Napoleon, Garibaldi, Lenin, Rosa Luxembourg, Gandhi and Peter Lalor (of Eureka Stockade fame) would all get lumped in together on the left, as would Ghengis Khan, as would Stalin. This I suggest is clearly unsatisfactory, because of other important differences between them.

To name Gandhi here is to raise another significant issue. It is not easy to put a fence between politics and religion. Our categories have to be able to accommodate religious leaders in cases where they finish up acting at the head of what also amount to political movements. This is not easy if we confine ourselves to two political categories.

But if we start using the y axis as well, we can spread these leaders and their positions out in two dimensions. If the north-south line (y axis) is used as a scale of regard for the personal freedom of others (liberalism vs authoritarianism, with again following convention, authoritarians to the north and liberals to the south), then for starters Luther, Jefferson, Garibaldi, Luxembourg and Gandhi move to latitudes significantly to the south of those occupied by Hitler, Mao and Ghengis Khan. Henry VIII was an authoritarian, and arguably to the right of Ghengis Khan, because he sought and caused less in the way of ruthless change, at least in his own lifetime. At the same time he was probably the more liberal of the two, so should lie southwest of Ghengis Khan on the political map.

What we are doing here is sorting political positions into four major categories, as against the two of the old left/right scheme. Using ‘radica’l in place of ‘left’ and ‘conservative’ in place of ‘right’, the four categories are: radical authoritarians; radical libertarians; conservative authoritarians; conservative libertarians.

The desire to bring about change vs the desire to prevent it are two important motivations of the characters who strut both present and historical stages, hence radical vs conservative. Likewise the desire of some to impose their will on all those within their reach (authoritarians) vs that of the latter to resist them (libertarians). Power corrupts. The scheme has relevance.

However it still lacks discriminatory power, for it is unsubtle enough to lump say, Hitler and Fidel Castro together as ‘radical authoritarians’. Arguably, we need a third axis, and again, one with present relevance and historical validity. And given that the other two are north-south and east-west, this third will have to be the up-down z axis in terms of mathematical coordinates; the path followed by an object dropped from rest above the floor. So let us now place our two dimensional political map on a table in an otherwise empty room of, say, cubic shape. We can now start to arrange history’s players, including ourselves, in three dimensions.

I now suggest that the human variable to be placed on this z axis is attitude to privilege. Up near the ceiling we find those who favour not just raw privilege, but privilege in an institutionalised form, which means privilege by inheritance or other permanent connection that makes it self-perpetuating and independent of any pretensions of merit. In Europe they are the aristocracy, somewhat battered in France and Germany, but still very much alive in Britain. In India, they enjoy the rewards of what is left of the caste system, and elsewhere can still be found trying to transform social classes into castes – a somewhat natural progression. Where officer cadets in the Russian army are sons of serving officers, we also have the principle at work. Kim Jong Il, dictator of North Korea and son of Kim Il Sung, founding dictator of North Korea, illustrate it well. In the colonial world, it was the privilege of one ‘race’ in its domination of another. It still is in Rwanda and elsewhere. Finally we have perhaps the most pervasive institutionalised privilege of all: that of males over females.

(Arguably the most important product of the Enlightenment before the French Revolution of 1789 was its withering critique of institutionalised privilege. Once targeted, it proved indefensible. (Read Tom Paine.) No rational argument, for example, can justify the modern existence of the British House of Lords, even in its present quiescent state. Mass political inertia is all that now preserves it. The same is true in nearly every other case, save of course, for the elites protected by military dictatorships in various countries. The local elites here generated and protected behind the cyclorama of “economic rationalism” would of course be well aware of this.)

Down at floor level, below the table, we find such people as the Diggers and Levellers of the English Revolution, the Sans-Culottes of the French, the Anarchists of the Spanish republican period (1936-39) and other extreme opponents of such privilege. We can call these the Includers as against the Excluders favouring privilege and found up near the ceiling.

Thomas Jefferson, the liberal author of the American Declaration of Independence and aristocratic owner of 187 slaves, can be found floating somewhere above the table, but not nearly as close to the ceiling nor as far west (to the radical side) as Adolf Hitler. Jefferson was a revolutionary. He also reconciled himself to black slavery, while at times working to have it abolished. So he would have viewed as totally outrageous and abhorrent any scheme to ‘purify’ America racially through a program of mass extermination, though such a campaign was actually in progress on the frontier. On the other hand, Hitler’s program of radical change was based (totally) on the idea of the superiority of a disciplined and strongly led ‘Aryan race’, and he worked to create a Europe in which his ‘race’ could live the lives of natural aristocrats, lording it over slavs and other such ‘inferiors’. That is, those not so ‘inferior’ as to merit outright extermination. He wanted his ‘Aryan race’ to be none the less totally subject to his own will, and to that of his eventual designated successor. This scheme, of course, met with much approval from many of those who stood to benefit from it.

But it is paradoxical, because Hitler is normally regarded as being on the Right of the German politics of his day. He was after all a bitter opponent of the Communists, and his whole program saw the future of Germany in terms of colonial expansion to the East, into the lands of the Slavic and other ‘non-Aryan’ peoples. He was also supported (with less than total enthusiasm) by the aristocratic landowning Junker class and the big industrialists. But given that politics in Germany for a greater part of the period 1918-33 was dominated by rivalry between Nazis and Communists, this was hardly surprising. Where the upper classes justifiably feared the Communists’ program to strip them of all their property and power, Hitler gave the appearance of far greater amenability. He was a risky option, but far better in their view than the most likely alternative.

The three axis system would place Hitler far closer to the ceiling than either Stalin or Mao, based on attitudes to institutionalised and hereditary privilege. Neither Stalin nor Mao encouraged it, at least, not to the extent that Hitler did.

So we need a small amendment to the conventional ‘political compass’ arrangement. There are very few human beings around on this planet who want no change at all, not even the Taliban. Some religious fundamentalists of various persuasions are suspicious of scientific and industrial progress, but most favour it. Of course what (say) the Greens would regard as progress, differs somewhat from that envisaged by (say) a timber company like Gunns Ltd. The real and established political divide on ‘change’ is between redistributive change (dispersing wealth) and non-redistributive or concentrative change (concentrating it). It is the former that is usually associated with the traditional Left, and the latter with the traditional Right and its trickle-down economics. Seen in this light, Hitler remains on the centre-right of the chart. The only wealth he redistributed was that of the millions of people he murdered.

The left-right division gave us two boxes to sort political figures and their positions into. The political compass gives us four. The political cube gives us eight. (We could of course keep going until we had as many political categories as there are people in the world. I choose to settle for categories based on separable attitudes to change, power and privilege. They are all we need.)

We have gone from a line to a map to a stack of eight boxes. We can now just consider the categories we have and the people who might be assigned to them, and then decide if the system is useful and gets us anywhere worth the going. Here are the eight categories, with my first suggestions of (provisional) examples. Explanations provided on application for those who need them.

  1. Exclusive authoritarian radicals:  Henry VIII, Stalin, Hitler. (Margaret Thatcher as a borderline case.)

  2. Exclusive authoritarian conservatives:  Ayatollah Khomeini. (Margaret Thatcher again as a borderline case, along with John Howard.)

  3. Exclusive libertarian radicals: Thomas Jefferson

  4. Exclusive libertarian conservatives: Bertrand Russell

  5. Inclusive authoritarian radicals: Christ, Luther, Garibaldi, Trotsky

  6. Inclusive authoritarian conservatives: St Paul, St Augustine (?), St Dominic (?)

  7. Inclusive libertarian radicals: Gandhi, Karl Marx, Woody Guthrie (a folksinger of considerable  political influence); Kropotkin (?) Bakunin (?)

  8. Inclusive libertarian conservatives: Buddha

Some boxes are made to order for those in them. Others fit less well, but are still the most appropriate of the range available. The important thing is that everyone can find a place in one of these categories, and that politics is a conflict between alliances formed among them.

I would call myself an exclusive libertarian radical. Mildly exclusive, in that I always lock my car and my house against thieves (I am not as redistributive as Christ might have liked); neither would I welcome invasion by squatters (I am exclusive to that extent). We all have our limitations. But this illustrates an important point. Private property as such is probably the most important form of economic regulation there is. Behind every dry, deregulatory ‘economic rationalist’ mask, one can find an exponent of some kind of institutionalised privilege. Note well the masks worn by Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Reagan, John Howard and Peter Costello.

In connection also with the exclusivity principle, I draw your attention here to Robert Manne’s Sending Them Home: Refugees and the New Politics of Indifference, (published as Quarterly Essay 13, 2004). From a ‘Left-liberal’ perspective, Manne covers the issue of refugees and asylum seekers very well. And he says this:

The Department [of Immigration] has now, to its great satisfaction, regained control over the twelve thousand places of the humanitarian element of Australia’s migration program. Australia is, accordingly, more or less an asylum seeker-free zone. In the eyes of Philip Ruddock, Amanda Vanstone and John Howard, we are now the envy of the Western world, for, in the instantly famous words of the Prime Minister during the 2001 election campaign, almost alone among Western nations, “We decide who comes here and the circumstances in which they come.” (p 89)

That statement of Howard’s is one which Manne finds particularly abhorrent. In common with other commentators, he has quoted it adversely elsewhere in the media. So let us amend it, and recast it into a form of which Manne and the rest of Howard’s critics on the matter would presumably approve: “We will not be deciding who comes here, nor the circumstances in which they come.”

Would that have been better? I for one have enormous sympathy for the refugees and asylum seekers, and even for the economic migrants who are trying to pass themselves off as such. Who but the totally heartless can blame them for wanting a better life? If I were in their situation, I would be doing exactly the same. But I am against open borders, as implied in the above recast of Howard’s policy. And nowhere in any of Manne’s or anyone else’s commentary pieces that I have read to date have I found a statement boldly in favour of open borders. Manne himself, asking what should be done “about the increasingly punitive anti-asylum seeker system introduced progressively from the early 1990s, whose most important features are mandatory detention, temporary protection, stiff penalties for people smugglers, naval repulsion at the border and Pacific island processing centres” says the question “will take considerable time to resolve; the arguments are complex; there are genuinely great difficulties to resolve.” (p 89). He does not say anywhere “We should open the borders, because we have no business trying to decide who comes here, or the manner in which they come.” Instead, having attacked the position taken on the matter by Howard, he chooses himself to consign it to the too-hard basket; understandably, because it is very hard indeed.

While immigration remains restricted, all Australian citizens live in a situation of privilege vis a vis a large part of the rest of the world. And because this privilege is passed by inheritance from generation to generation of citizens, and conferred on outsiders only at the discretion of governments those citizens have the power to sack, it is institutionalised just a surely as the British peerage.

Most Australians are in favour of border controls: the 2004 election proved that. So we perhaps should ask the obvious next question: Why? Come to think of it, why does any country have border control?

A history of passports can be found on the Canadian Government website. It is interesting to note that, although travel documents are an ancient invention mentioned in the Bible, between 1861 and 1914 one could travel freely around Europe without any travel documentation at all:

The rising popularity of rail travel in the mid-19th century led to an explosion of tourism throughout Europe, and caused a complete breakdown in the European passport and visa system. In answer to the crisis, France abolished passports and visas in 1861; other European countries followed suit, and by 1914, passport requirements had been eliminated practically everywhere in Europe. However, World War I brought renewed concerns for international security, and passports and visas were again required, as a "temporary" measure.

Imagine then a John Lennon world in which all human beings could travel as they pleased, where passports and border controls were unknown. What would be wrong with that?

The 20 million refugees presently registered with the UN’s agency (UNHCR) would probably say “nothing at all”, and who could blame them? A far greater number of people would choose economically motivated migration, as all Australia’s non-indigenous free immigrants have done since the 1790s, and as no doubt many of the forebears of the aborigines did millennia earlier. Again, who could blame them? Does not a dog in the manger attitude to Australia’s land and resources fly in the face not just of the internationalism traditional on the Left, but the Christianity and liberalism that underpins the philosophy of much of the Right?

The hard fact is that the consequences of opening the borders could be as disastrous for present Australian civilisation as lack of immigration control was for the country’s first inhabitants. (The extreme case: It only took from 1802 until about 1825 for unrestricted European immigration into Tasmania to destroy not only the culture and economy of the original Tasmanians, but most of their whole race as well.) In the 10 years following the discovery of gold in 1851, the non-aboriginal population of Australia trebled. Immigrants came pouring in; most understandably, given the circumstances they left behind in Europe and Asia. Again, who could blame them? And in 1942 the country was threatened with a fourth wave of uncontrolled immigration, this time from northeast Asia. Consciousness of these undeniable historic facts is widespread in Australia, and arguably underlies the popular support for conservative policies on immigration control. Who could reasonably expect otherwise?

With uncontrolled immigration, I would have grave misgivings for the health and welfare of Australia’s whole present population, and the future of its culture and liberal institutions. Because I too want to conserve them, that makes me in this dimension a conservative. Quota settings under immigration control are of course, another matter entirely.

Again, the total deregulation of trade, allowing a capitalist like me to make a private deal with any customer or supplier I wish worldwide, is only to be welcomed. But it is important to remember that before federation, there were severe controls on the movement of goods between the Australian colonies. Hence the various railway gauges, and the customs payments that had to be made at Albury by those travelling from Sydney to Melbourne. Hence on federation, Section 92 of the Constitution, which makes trade between the states absolutely free, and Section 117, which prevents any state from blocking free travel across its borders.

A federation of the nations of the world might one day solve the opposing problems and do the same, but not any time soon as far as I can see, though the EU is a welcome start in that direction. This restriction on the free travel of labour has been overcome by capital, in that as we have seen, capital is free to migrate out of Australia to places where the labour laws suit it better. Such are the open borders you have when you are not having open borders. For capital to use its influence to open the borders to cheap labour could well be to invite communal riots and disorder such as wracked the goldfields in the 1850s, and the Sydney furniture trade around the time of Federation. Understandably, all countries have border controls of some type. Exclusiveness is very common.

I will conclude on this note: Charles Darwin once said in another context: “Looking back, I think it was more difficult to see what the questions were than to solve them.” That applies in every sphere of life, political economy included. David McKnight has made a very important contribution towards framing the problem presently experienced by all those who cherish the Left’s old values of liberty, equality and fraternity. His book should do much to help revitalise Australian democracy. We certainly need it.

***

 

Beyond Right and Left; New politics and the culture wars

David McKnight
Allen & Unwin, Australia, 2005.
298 pp; $24.95 paperback.

left
right
[ category: ]
spacer

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

re: Beyond right and left: a review

Left or Right? Who would Jesus vote for?

Howard and Bush claim to have God on their side. Bush even claims he has a direct line to God.

Are they both manipulating the religious right?

Dr Muriel Porter is an Anglican laywoman and commentator on religion.
She recently reviewed God under Howard”: The rise of the religious right in Australia by Marion Maddox, Allen & Unwin, See here.

She says:

The undeniable resurgence of right-wing thought internationally has produced an environment that not only suits Howard’s personality, but also his political ambitions, [Madddox] argues.

If Maddox’s case is accepted - and the detail of her research suggests it is a compelling case - the overall impression is that religious values are not at the heart of current political strategies at all. Rather, a deep and dark cynicism is the central force, manipulating the religious Right as a powerful and convenient tool to persuade an insecure electorate.

It is a dangerous game, and one Australians need to be alerted to. Maddox’s book deserves the widest readership - particularly among political commentators.

re: Beyond right and left: a review

An interesting analysis but isn't it just Political Maslow? The only people Maslow could find who net his self-acualising criteria were all dead (and one of them was Lincon who wasn't all that self-actualising vis a vis the theatre.)

There is another way. I have always been task oriented. To put Darwin's comment differently, there are four necessary steps in any political discourse: Is there a problem? What is it? Can it be solved? How? The final step is doing it.

Doesn't really matter where you are on the x, y and z axes, and everyone is going to be all over the shop anway at different times under different circumstances. I really think this is just reductionism in another guise.

It was an interesting read though.

re: Beyond right and left: a review

David McNight's book is a welcome contribution to a debate about the usefulness of traditional linguistic shorthand ('left/right')as adequate descriptions of a person's politics on a range of issues. I agree that much of the traditional way of slinging those terms about is nonesense, and I agree that the current political economy, including its 'psychological economy' poses some sharp questions for traditional 'social liberals' as well as some traditional 'conservatives'.

A couple of things occurred to me after reading the book. The first is the inadequacy of David's understanding of the political alliances that could be forged to undertake a new redrawing of the old forms of 'shorthand'. Frankly his approach is less an analysis and more a laundry list of various groups that he claims all have a vested interest in changing the way things are at present. I am not convinced at all by his approach to this issue.

A political alliance that stretches from 'traditional conservatives' (and I am not sure that he properly deals with conservatism as a politics, as opposed to a 'general sensibility') to embrace every movement/group short of John Howard's cabinet, is in my view simply utopian, and quite unrealisitic. Exactly what program or policies would link this disparate and desperately heterogenous group other than dislike/distaste for certain aspects of the current regime is not clear to me. It is even less clear what exactly would be the values we could all agree on that would enable a sucessful political alliance to be effected. In my view this part of his book reeks of nostalgia, and he seems unable to deal squarely with the politics and the economics of the current situation.

This is not to say that the opposition to neo liberalism is not far more profound than the recent electoral successes of Howard would suggest. David is right I think in drawing attention the real ideological problems facing the relentless market mullahs, and it is clear the 'program' is deeply unpopular everywhere, when it is presented and argued in its own terms and when its underlying assumptions and programs are laid out. Remember 'Fightback'? Howard does. It is seared into his memory banks forever.

Howard has been particularly skillful in pushing fistfuls of dollars at various political constituencies that might 'ark up' at the costs of the relentless drive to implement the program in this country, and the combination of susidies for privatised health and education, together with relatively generous payments to families, despite the poor targetting of these payments, are a testament to his political instinct and understanding of the need to 'package' a radical program as simply an extension of a form of 'entitlement'for the deserving. It has been very smart, but above all he has been very lucky.

In this he has been the despair of the purists, particularly the CIS, News Ltd and mad Des Moore. However, unlike those palukas he has to be relected if they are going to get more of the goodies that the 'program' delivers, so I guess they will just have to put up with it.

Howard is a careful and instinctive politician, but nothing beats being lucky, and the economic boom, or rather I should say, asset boom of the last ten years has been particularly kind to him politically, and in the absence of this, he would be out on his ear. One more serious interest rate rise in order to combat inflation occaasioned by oil prices and he is history. People are remarkably unsentimental about 'beloved' leaders in a democracy. Rightly so. Howard understands this better than anyone else in his cabinet, let alone the idiots in the think tanks that are constantly urging him to go harder faster while he and they, have the chance.

In addition to what I regard as the inadequcy of the political analysis in David's book, I also think that David has missed the point about the 'values' debate. Issues concerning the family and debates concerning 'multi culturalism' for example, reflect real anxiety about the reality of deteriorating security for both the 'traditional' working class, as well as for large swathes of more 'middling' wage and salary earners. In my view the 'values debate' needs to be seen from a couple of perspectives.

The first one is the perspective of people caught up in the relentless commodification of every day life, including even of childhood itself. Here, Miranda Devine and Philip Adams are of closer mind, than say Catherine Lumby, who is a very fine example of the close links between a certain postmodern/post politics sensibilty and the logic of the 'market society'.

The anxieties and uncertainties expressed in much of this debate are not phantams of people's imaginations. They are real and reflect very real issues. When the intent of a sytem and its logic, is to outsource and unload, every risk attendant on life onto individuals and families, it is not surprising people are anxious and talk endlessly about changes to the 'traditional way of life' they can remember. The problem however, is that all they get is prattle about values from conservatives and neo liberals alike.

No one (and that icludes the ALP) is serious about attending to the very real risks piling up for individuals and families. But everyone it seems can talk endlessly about the lack of 'appropriate attention to values' practiced by public school teachers, single mothers, the ABC, baby boomers and the rest of the ridiculous prattle coming from the usual suspects.

People are indeed anxious, and are concerned about what they see as a deterioration in traditional 'family values'. Howard, ably assisted by News Ltd's more downmarket products, has been very successful in 'Tampering' around ethnic identity, anxiety about race, and in jihads against elites like school teachers, welfare queens and blue collar workers claiming disability rather than working honestly for a living like they did for the first 35 years of a working life that did not usually involve being an MP or a journalist for that matter. Will their bludging ways never end? My point is that talk of values and the like needs to be seen from a number of persepctives.

For neo liberals and their smarter political representatives, it is widely if tacitly understood that their project will fail if it is presented in all its bald truth. Remember 'Fightback'?

So what we get are subsidies for the 'deserving' middle and upper class, invitations to celebrate your own good fortune in buying your house ten years ago instead of now, agreement that those less fortunate deserve their fate, and an endearing concern for the 'old values and verities' that their chosen model is busy shredding as fast as they can go.

What people want is security and certainty about their retirement, their children's education and their parent's health care costs. What they get instead is talk of values. David's book is a very good contribution to the current debate, but I think it is a little 'light on' concerning an analysis of the relationship between the current political economy, and the values debate, and I think that political alliances and programs are less about values, and more about interests. That might make me an old fashioned pragmatist, but hey, it's a label, and I am happy to stick it on my back!

re: Beyond right and left: a review

Ian MacDougall, many thanks for your timely review of McKnight's book. And, although I strongly agree with much/most of your points - particularly your totally-accurate summation of market behaviour, "buy cheap and sell dear", and the politics which flow from same - I, nonetheless, have come to some different conclusions re regulation, as well as your three-dimensional typology...

In particular, I disagree with you that "any argument in favour of restricting free trade in goods can be easily modified for the restriction of critique – in the interest of those threatened in some way by it." Because this argument assumes an overly-simple model of regulation. Restrictions re market power - rather than types of market activity - are not at all so "easily modified". In point of fact, such approaches inherently drive activity towards diversity.

Thus, market-design - explicitly oriented in this direction - is the core policy direction we most need to pursue. Sadly, although I've raised this point (frequently) on Webdiary, it has yet to attract any real support - or even interest - amongst the tired feuds of old...

On another level, while I welcome your approach to "separable attitudes to change, power and privilege", I feel your examples show that there is at least one other necessary dimension. Because, to my mind, attitudes to violence should be added...as, if you think about it, this can be seen as a crucial test dividing - to use only your examples - Marx/Gandhi and Trotsky/Christ. Since most, I think, would find any typology that didn't widely separate these inadequate, I think you'll have to admit that even three dimensions are not enough...

Now, I'm well-aware that violence can easily be viewed under the category of power. However, that is not the case with regard to your usage here. Dispersed or concentrated power is one thing, but 'soft' or 'hard' power another...and your typology neglects the latter. Hope you find this useful!

By the way, on bipedalism...have you read Kingdon's "Lowly Origin" yet? I've reviewed it here.

I feel that it should revolutionize thinking in this area, by properly bringing into focus much that had been merely assumed-away by earlier theorists. Now we just need someone to do the same job for us in politics...

all the best

re: Beyond right and left: a review

Jane Doe...having not read McKnight's book, I am very thankful for your much more jaundiced assessment - since I was thinking of (over)spending the 'discretionary' portion of my next dole cheque on same.

And, I'd have to say that everything you write here - in this markedly substantive post - I totally agree with. And, that is a very rare thing...

I hope all subsequent commentators on this thread take the time to read - and re-read - Jane's incisive comments, as these (to my mind) provide much that we should all think through, at some length. In particular, I welcome her insights into the fundamental problems which underpin 'values' debates, and suggest that - like her - I see these (together with the fragility of the housing bubble) as being the Achilles' heel which will soon justifiably destroy Howard's electoral base...

In fact, the only addition I'd make to Jane's post is to add - as I feel sure she would agree - 'security of employment prospects' to her wish list in the final paragraph. Until politicians learn - via the usual route of shock therapy - that such basic needs are NOT negotiable, and that most the rest of us don't give a damn about their (stupid) ideological commitments, we'll just have to suffer the consequences.

But...the handwriting is already upon the wall, I suspect...

all the best

re: Beyond right and left: a review

Malcolm B Duncan, I agree with your proposition that action based on ideation is the proof of the pudding.

John Henry Calvinist, mea culpa, I’m one who hasn’t noticed before your proposition that market design to regulate imbalances in market power is vital. I imagine that Kerry Packer would reply that the current market is a product of God’s Intelligent Design, seeing it suits him so well.

Likewise I appreciate your reference to violence/nonviolence as an axis. I have to say though that I’m happy to restrict my thinking to three axis (within my grasp) and not get too complex. I’d ditch the “radical” v “conservative” axis as artificial and transient, and stay with power, privilege and violence as an analytical tool.

Also folks, forgive me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think the purpose of politics is to build either unanimity or even broad alliance – but as a process where as many as possible are brought to contend in a nonviolent way about the allocation of resources and development of values, in a diverse and flexible way.

For me the unifying factor in politics is purpose, or intent. I can think of ways to build alliance with many different kinds of people towards, say, reducing Australian military power. I may not be able to find agreement on method, priority or utility, but I can plan with others in mind and make my own work more effective.

The “left/right” divide is bullshit, and we defeat it by refusing to acknowledge or respond to it.

re: Beyond right and left: a review

John,
Menzies was a conservative representative of a consensus which was forced on the powerful by fears of the upheaval of both the Depression and the Second World War. He was far from radical, he was in fact a 'consensus' leader. Churchill was a ruling class radical who sought to crush working class dissent in the 1920s, but who was deeply opposed to UK ruling class compromise with fascism, and as a result was instrumental in saving Europe as well as the UK from Nazi Germany. He will always be rightly remembered for that stand, because he was one of the few from his background who understood the nature of the menace facing liberal democracies-certainly on this issue, his understandings were light years ahead of the lazy provincial authoritarianism of Menzies at the time.

Neither political representatives are relevant now, because the historical circumstances giving rise to them are long gone. Instead we face our own times of crisis and authoritarianism, overlaid with a superficial gloss of asset inflation boosted prosperity. I am confident that things will get much worse before they get better, and I am also confident that people campaigning actively will make a difference, and will be successful in bringing about amelioration of the current madness, and in changing the politics that currently prevails.

re: Beyond right and left: a review

With the emergence of the lumbering over active giant called the Capitalism, we are no longer served by politicians who are directly elected to carry out our wishes for the benefit of all, we are now governed by politicians who are pliant to the hands of a few major corporations who have been allowed to take a stranglehold over the well being of all.

We no longer see laws for the benefit of all, where once we owned our major essential services, i.e., Electric, Gas , Water, Public Transport to name a few, Pliant politicians have caved into the money markets and either privatised, corporatised, or tendered out these institutions to Public Listed Companies, whose sole interest is not to the people as a whole, but to the few investors they might have.

Where prior to the eighties, apprenticeships were plentiful, mainly due to the large numbers taught trades through the government owned and operated enterprises, now we see very few, and further to that, we now have to import tradespeople, as we no longer train our young, remember, not everyone has a dream to go to Tafe or Uni, there are a lot of people out there leaving school who just want to learn a trade as a plumber, electrician, carpenter, etc, not everyone desires to be a doctor, rocket scientist or other degree holder.

We now have the likes of Howard, Bush, Blair, Sharon, Beazley and our six state and two territory leaders, whose sole interest in serving the community, is to suck up to corporations in the hope that they may receive a rasher of bacon for all their begging, at the same time as these corporations are stripping millions from ordinary people in ever larger profits, whilst at the same time cutting jobs, service and raising fees.

Until the people take back the policies of Australia from the likes of Howard and Beazley, and start installing candidates in their seats whose commitment is to the people, not the parties and their corporate backers, we are going to see this country fall into a situation where we start becoming one of the third world countries like Zimbabwe, Liberia, Nigeria, India, etc, where their is no support for the poor, health and education will decline, yet the ruling class, live in Mansions and Palaces surrounded by walls, whilst the rest of the population starve.

Is this the legacy that we wish to leave to our Kids and Grandkids, I think not.

No more will I ever class Menzies or Churchill as radicals, after all they pale into insignificance when we look at who we have representing us now.

re: Beyond right and left: a review

There is nothing about right-wing ideology that has ever been in reality left-wing, but there has for a long time been much about the practice of left-wing ideology that has in reality been right-wing.

Most so-called left-wing ideologies have always started out with the very best of honest and sincerest intentions but as soon as any headway is made with this ‘left-wing ideology’ gaining any semblance of power so the ideology always seems to become corrupted; it seems to morph from left to right while still insisting that it is to the left and still insisting that it is maintaining the true spirit of its ideology. It has been this ideological conundrum over the years, particularly during the years of the Cold War, which has provided the ammunition for the right-wing in all its many forms to denounce so-called Communist and so-called Socialist regimes which, in turn, reflected on truly unaligned left-wingers who are active in non-communist and non-socialist capitalist states in trying to create a more socially balanced society.

The idea of communism has always been, and for some still is, an attractive idea that adherents insist would solve all of the world’s ills. The moderate right has always insisted, usually with a patronising air, that, while the idea may be fine in theory, it could never be put into practice because it was far too Utopian to be practical. The extreme right, of course, simply rejected the idea outright for a myriad of reasons ranging from blind hatred of anything that is likely to deprive the powerful of their power and/or redistribute their wealth to claiming that the loss of individualism and the freedom to deprive freedom was in itself iniquitous especially when the espousers of such right-wing ideology believed that they had some kind of God-given right or some special racially superior right to rule over and enslave others while enriching themselves at their expense.

One wonders if communism could ever have actually been considered ‘left-wing’. Its professed practice has always resulted in what is in reality a right-wing government complete with its dictatorial political elitists, its underling political class structures, corruption, inability to fulfil its obligations to its people because of its intrinsic and institutionalised corruption and its lack of compassion. No one could ever say that the government of the USSR was ‘left-wing’. It may have started out that way but, as with all other revolutions, never ever ended up that way.

The tight and narrow-viewed so-called left – a pseudo-left if you like – that failed during the twentieth century experiments in ‘communism’ and ‘socialism’ were never really ‘left’ at all. The world has yet to see a truly left egalitarian, multicultural and socially balanced government free of corruption, dishonesty and injustice but there are some great opportunities, I believe, coming up very soon as the world witnesses the failures of the current right-wing experiment in foreign and domestic policies especially in the US and increasingly here in Australia.

But in order to succeed the broad left that is required must have its act together.

The concept of ‘left’ and ‘right’ has never really changed. Only its perception has changed through misrepresentation, ignorance and deliberate manipulation by those that have abused the true left concept for their own right-wing purposes.

re: Beyond right and left: a review

Ian,

Thanks for the well written review.

It is rare that political commentators get past the linear left-right groupings and for this, notwithstanding that I personally disagree with many of his conclusions I think McKnight has added to the level of political discourse.

Also his view on the consequences on un-fettered immigration at least approach the real world although I prefer Hoppe’s explanation by way of private property rights.

Unfortunately from a paleo-libertarian perspective and common with many on the left his view that an economic system that provides freedom of choice or ‘neo-liberal capitalism’ is incompatible with the environment and the family is flawed or immoral fails to consider the negative externalities that occur when the state trample peoples ‘natural rights’.

A compassionate society will occur without forcible redistribution from Peter to Paul at the behest of the state.

It is in a rational person’s best interest to ensure this is so.

re: Beyond right and left: a review

Malcolm, your task orientation seems to me to be a way of avoiding the imperative to seek out a "bigger picture" for use as a frame of reference when dealing in areas of uncertainty. My friend, I believe I'd call you a serial offender in this regard!

I see the law as relatively straightforward and simplistic in this sense - for the most part it (necessarily) argues and judges on the basis of written rules or principle or an implied (and non-static) set of values enshrined in precedent. But, "la loi, ce n'est-ce pas moi", I need to frame things in some way that lets me feel good about having come to a decision, interpreted or formed a point of view on whatever challenges me.

Some complain of the disconnect between what our intermediaries, the politicians, do in our names. Of course they will follow a range of agendas other than those they are elected on, but one would see that behaviour in oligopolistic power elite. The mechanics of power seem to work thus.

Let's imagine we might solve that problem by introducing direct democracy via the internet and let's all vote on every major policy direction. Let's take the risk of corruption out of the hands of the unrepresentative swill, and ban their involvement in anything other than an administrative capacity.

What would happen?

I confess I can't clearly imagine the outcome, but I'd guess it would be fairly populist and short-termist in character as we came to make decisions in our own way based on which of Maslow's levels we happened to be sitting at on the day.

No, we need a framework. We need some coalescing set of values, paradigms, norms - call them what you will. They may be religious, they may be secular, but they must afford our actions and decisions the legitimacy of some logical construct. It needn't be lofty or grand, it could be entirely self-serving and visceral, but it needs to be there, as we are largely social creatures who cannot create these intellectual constructs alone.

It is useful to postulate alternatives to the simplistic left and right. Thus far our various commentators have been limited to three dimensions by a natural inability to get over the fact that the physical world so limits us. Still, that's two better than tradition.

In mathematics there are many more than three dimensions, but it's fair to say they are difficult to grasp. In the physical world, consultants and marketeers draw attractive spider web-like constructs from time to time to analyse complex brands or sets of organistinal capabilities. These diagrams make the point that while there are multiple dimensions one can assess, or analyse something against, they cluster, they are not independent.

So, I'd argue that we need advocates, as most of us can't make sense of PowerPoint slides and Barbara Minto. We need to have frameworks put to us and argued so that we may construct our own. They need to be put to us in a way we can relate to, and when I say "we" I mean the big "We".

I'm reminded of telling sketches that appeared all through the Chaser's outstanding election coverage last year. A real person, interviewed vox pop on the street saying something completely outlandish about something politically important. Freeze frame after the killer sound-bite and a big rubber stamp comes across the picture saying "This person votes". Yes, they do. That's democracy.

re: Beyond right and left: a review

A thought provoking review and a lot to absorb. A few points

However I think Left and Right do continue to be defining and useful terms, but not the only ones for grasping the interaction of policies and ideas in political discourse.

They are better charted on two axes rather than one.

The first axis can be from those favouring unfettered market forces based on legally guaranteed property rights (or banditry if one wants to be extreme) flowing through to its other end marked by bureaucratic or political redistributive and restrictive economic practices based on political values/ interests. So this axis is primarily about economics, who gets what and how they get it. The bedrock underlying it is how things are produced (which as Marx pointed out will have major influence on who gets what)

The second axis ranges from individual freedom and human rights through to elite decision making in an authoritarian politically and ideologically controlling manner. This is a political axis and most democrats will be somewhere towards one end of it, but those perhaps concerned about security issues, or attracted to or trustful of authority, will be moving toward the other end.

A second point - the battle over just how much the market should penetrate and control society, and in just what spheres of life it is appropriate, and how it should be applied, continues to dominate political and policy debate. The current IR debate is precisely split at one level between those who are happy to see labour as part of labour market, an input of production, and those who see labour (and consumption) as abstractions of just one aspect of human beings, and therefore take the view that the value of human beings as something more than this precludes them being placed simply at the mercy of market forces. Howard's government has been primarily about extending the spheres of life in which the market applies, though he also is happy to regulate and intervene and maintain a large state with great redistributive and market controlling power in certain areas. Think tax takes on the one hand and grants, tenders, regional rorts and privatisations on the other. Moreover the role of political force in structuring and creating and continuing the market should never be forgotten. The market is not "natural".

The third point - ideas may "win the day" or "become dominant" but they rarely do so just because they are more powerful or better argued. Rather they usually have real material power in the shape of resources behind them. And they have that because people who find these ideas attractive, and justifying, and advancing of their interests/way of life, are happy to put resources into them. And to invest resources into blocking or attacking ideas they don't like. Forces of distribution and repetition will go a long way to trumping force of a better argument. Thus the success of the new right didn’t just appear from a bunch of thinkers getting together, they were backed and financed.

In a sense there has been a war going on in Austrlaia in ideas and policy that is really very much about left and right, who gets what and the regime under which we live. Howard is a warrior in it and he knows it. The question is do the warriors who should oppose him even know they are in war, let alone how to win it.

re: Beyond right and left: a review

The point of view of a decomposing ethnic composer, trapped in the compost heap of ideology.

Left right, cubes, whatever, in the end, where is the soul and spirit of the individual?
The few who can conceptualize these paradigms do not speak for most of humanity; they try to control most of humanity, so it really makes little difference in the end, a thought process is just that, a thought process used by institutions and powerful groups for their advantage, no matter left or right.

Those who can conceptualize at this level are the same people who benefit from the institutional environment of privilege.

My social class benefited at a certain point in history from certain ideological concepts only because the historical circumstances allowed it to, but that benefit was given to me only as an abstraction, and had nothing to do with my humanity as a creative individual, in fact I rebelled for most of my life because of the hypocrisy of the dominant cultural group, probably the same group that a lot of my fellow travelers from the left belong to, yet I know deep down inside of me my identity as a human being was dissolved in the rhetoric.

Identity and its relationship to cultural time and consciousness take precedence over the psycho-political spatial metaphors discussed here, that is, psycho-political thought process’s, that are nothing more than vehicles for controlling the masses, by using individuals from within the dominant culture, who’s thought process’s transmit ideology, and lay the trap for a true creative relationship to self and identity.

The creative individual soul is lost once it accepts these spatial paradigms, which are nothing but an attempt to give concrete form to that which has no concrete form that is the self, and used as extensions of mass institutional control. The concepts discussed here are used to dissolve self’s awareness into the mass.

re: Beyond right and left: a review

Jane Doe: “I think that political alliances and programs are less about values, and more about interests.”

You are not wrong there. Remember the slogan John Howard used in the last federal election? For all of us? There could be no more apt reminder that political parties are all about presenting a sectional interest as the general interest.

“That might make me an old fashioned pragmatist, but hey, it's a label, and I am happy to stick it on my back!”

For my part, I am a bit of an old fashioned skeptic. Even if I wanted to be a ‘pragmatist’, I find the word too hard to use with precision re politics these days. But when over there working in the shed, I am definitely one.

John Henry Calvinist: “...while I welcome your approach to ‘separable attitudes to change, power and privilege’, I feel your examples show that there is at least one other necessary dimension. Because, to my mind, attitudes to violence should be added... as, if you think about it, this can be seen as a crucial test dividing - to use only your examples - Marx/Gandhi and Trotsky/Christ. Since most, I think, would find any typology that didn't widely separate these inadequate, I think you'll have to admit that even three dimensions are not enough.”

Three dimensions are not nearly enough to separate the existing world population on every possible issue, including violence. Though I am sure most of us would prefer to live in a non-violent world, I see the issue of violence vs nonviolence as being more about means than ends. I found the realisation that Marx and Gandhi had so much in common (both inclusive libertarian radicals) to be quite a stimulus to further thought.

On their respective attitudes to violence: I am not sufficient of a Marx scholar to pronounce on the subject, but would be surprised if Marx did not support violence when used in self-defence, including self-defence by workers against those he pilloried as their capitalist exploiters. Gandhi did oppose violence, even in self-defence, but was not successful in removing use of violent means from the cause of Indian independence, and whether or not the independence struggle would have succeeded without it is debatable. How long would the Indian people have remained loyal to Gandhi in the face of a stubborn British refusal to yield? Alongside Gandhi’s open non-violent movement there was also a growing underground army dedicated to the overthrow of British rule. This was the Indian National Army (INA), which had begun as a result of the British defeats by the Japanese. It was largely created and trained by the Japanese in the period 1942-45, and became a major factor in Indian politics.

INA soldiers were captured and put on trial by the British at the end of WW2. When I was in Malaya (before it became Malaysia) I met two former INA officers, both Sikhs, and learned something of their experiences in the war. (At the end of the war, both had been captured and one condemned to death by a British court. Intervention by Nehru on his behalf got this commuted to life imprisonment. Then he escaped from custody.)

One of them told me that for him and many of his former comrades, the Japanese had taught them the most important lesson of all: that the British were not invincible. Similar conclusions were also drawn by all the peoples of Asia and Africa. Though the Japanese defeat of the European and American empires in Asia was reversed by the allies, the Japanese had in that dimension mortally wounded them all.

From the Wikipedia article on the Indian National Army:

When the people of India realised that all the major communities of India were put to trial they participated in massive public demonstrations imploring the British to free the prisoners. In Calcutta and Madras the British resorted to firing on unarmed demonstrators thereby killing cripples, women and children taking part in the protestations. All over the Indian subcontinent, the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League, divided by ideology, joined hands in demanding freedom of the I.N.A. prisoners of war. The I.N.A had for them, so visibly elucidated by Mahatma Gandhi, achieved what individually the Congress, the League and Gandhiji could not: putting the cause of the Indian nation state above communal, sectarian and divisive ideologues and thereby joining hands to expel the British. The greeting of Jai Hind [the INA’s slogan, meaning ‘Victory to India’ - IM] had transcended all other religious and communal oriented greetings.

A sadly ironic postscript to the life of Gandhi: the modern India he did so much to help create has strong armed forces, and nuclear weapons.

Christ preached against use of violence in self-defence, and by Gospel accounts practiced what he preached. But his followers over the succeeding 2000 years honoured the non-violent principles as set out in the Sermon on the Mount far more in the breach than the observance. As is well known, he was not against violence under all circumstances. His reported use of it in the course of his (political) campaign aimed at the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem and ultimately at the Roman occupation, was arguably an expression of the authoritarian side of his nature. Trotsky took that attitude a bit further and founded the Red Army. While both were authoritarian, both were inclusive, and both were radical. Attitude to violence does not separate them absolutely.

By the way, thanks very much for the Kingdon link. You wrote a most interesting review, which has made me want to read his book. My own area of interest at the moment is the significance of night vision insofar as it affects competing theories on the origins of bipedalism. I would be interested in finding out if Kingdon has anything to say about it. Please email me c/- Kerri Browne if you wish to discuss this further.

Damian Lataan: “The tight and narrow-viewed so-called left – a pseudo-left if you like – that failed during the twentieth century experiments in ‘communism’ and ‘socialism’ were never really ‘left’ at all. The world has yet to see a truly left egalitarian, multicultural and socially balanced government free of corruption, dishonesty and injustice but there are some great opportunities, I believe, coming up very soon as the world witnesses the failures of the current right-wing experiment in foreign and domestic policies especially in the US and increasingly here in Australia.”

I am reluctant to believe that the principal makers of the ‘twentieth century experiments in communism and socialism’ (Lenin, Trotsky, Tito, Mao, Ho Chi Minh and Castro) were from the outset of their careers obsessive and ruthless control freaks, even though they all (perhaps with the exception of Ho) became such after gaining power. But there is a common thread: in the anti-imperialist civil strife their parties became involved in, there was a great deal of torture, atrocity and death. Their own lives were all often at risk, both before and after they took power. Introduction of any sort of democratic electoral process would unfortunately have brought with it substantially increased danger for each of them personally. Thus the power they originally sought became a liability once they had it. They could not afford to let it go, even if they were inclined to. Just one illustration: at one stage Mao was captured by Kuomintang soldiers and was being marched away to summary execution when he made a run for it and managed to reach a nearby river. Thanks to the fact that the soldiers were worse at shooting than Mao was at swimming, he escaped. But one such an experience, I would assume, would be enough to incline anyone to avoid a second.

Of all the political leaders I know of, the one I have greatest respect for is Guiseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882). The greatest military hero of the Italian Risorgimento, cheered through the streets of major Italian cities and London as well, offered a Union command by Abraham Lincoln, he had the world at his feet. But once the campaign for national unification was over, he declined all offers of honour and glory and chose instead to retire to the island off Caprera off the Sardinian coast, where he became a potato farmer. A wonderful man.

Rob Wearne: “A compassionate society will occur without forcible redistribution from Peter to Paul at the behest of the state. It is in a rational person’s best interest to ensure this is so.”

I hope you are right.

Tony Phillips: “The current IR debate is precisely split at one level between those who are happy to see labour as part of labour market, an input of production, and those who see labour (and consumption) as abstractions of just one aspect of human beings, and therefore take the view that the value of human beings as something more than this precludes them being placed simply at the mercy of market forces. Howard's government has been primarily about extending the spheres of life in which the market applies, though he also is happy to regulate and intervene and maintain a large state with great redistributive and market controlling power in certain areas.”

The inconsistency of Howard over IR reform, as at least two Webdiary commenters have pointed out, lies in the fact that he nowhere seeks to include himself and his fellow politicians in it. If he did, politicians’ pay and conditions would be outcomes of negotiation between them and their employers, which means subject to democratic approval.

In these proposed IR reforms, we have a selective deregulation of the labour market very much to the advantage of Howard’s institutional supporters. The selectivity is both a reflection and expression of the class nature of it – that is, where the underlying social reality is of two classes with divergent interests, as expressed in the established Labor/Coalition parliamentary divide. Employers vs employees is still the main game.

“Think tax [sic] takes on the one hand and grants, tenders, regional rorts and privatisations on the other. Moreover the role of political force in structuring and creating and continuing the market should never be forgotten. The market is not ‘natural’".

The role of ‘political force’ in controlling the exchanges possible between individuals in the market is arguably the most important consideration of all. The economist Bruce McFarlane once remarked to me that in his opinion there was no such field as economics. As it was impossible to separate it from politics, there was just political economy.

But at the same time, ask yourself how many sales or purchases you have made recently against your inner will, and because some third party forced you, or persuaded you against your better judgment. I have made a few that I now regret, but all seemed like a good idea at the time. And now this brings us to the difficult concept of consciousness as it applies to political questions. To what extent do people act against their own objective interest, however defined? If they do so, what causes them to do so? How do subjective perceptions influence peoples’ political dispositions?

Once radicals of the Marxist and feminist persuasions started debating questions like that, it really got them somewhere. Namely, straight into the bog of postmodernism. Once in, few have managed to escape.

“…(T)he success of the new right didn’t just appear from a bunch of thinkers getting together, they were backed and financed.”

Nowhere in his book did David McKnight say that it did. What he did highlight well was the extraordinary rapidity with which the New Right (‘neo-liberal’) agenda took hold, and displaced the old protectionist thinking amongst the politicians of both major parties. Though Treasurer Paul Keating operated with characteristic elitist secrecy when he floated the dollar in 1984 (as he would later as PM with his pathetic and sycophantic Suharto treaty), his action was not responded to with hostility by the ALP backbenchers.

I think the domination by multinationals of the commanding heights of the Australian economy goes some way to explain this. But I still find the absence of a protectionist reaction from both local business and the ACTU a bit baffling. At the time as I recall it did not go beyond a token knee jerk.

Charles Camilleri: “The creative individual soul is lost once it accepts these spatial paradigms, which are nothing but an attempt to give concrete form to that which has no concrete form that is the self, and used as extensions of mass institutional control. The concepts discussed here are used to dissolve self’s awareness into the mass.”

In The Social Contract we find Rousseau’s famous statement, “Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” That put in a nutshell an issue at least as old as class society (which means civilisation) itself. Getting rid of the various chains was what motivated both reformers and revolutionaries, and keeping them on (by whatever means, including contesting both their existence and dispensability) was what preoccupied conservatives. Both Rousseau and Marx lived at times when European society was far more directly involved in the institutions of forced servitude than it is today. The creation of the 'spatial paradigms' of Right and Left was part of the process of a movement away from the 'mass institutional control' that you refer to.

I would also argue that the introduction of the concepts of Right and Left to political and historical thought was a useful step forward in what Marx (and the most sincere and least opportunist of his acolytes) always saw as a process of freeing individuals everywhere of their institutional and/or physical chains. That was the proclamation of Marx and Engels in the second last paragraph of the Communist Manifesto.

I see increasing the liberty and dignity of the individual as the underlying goal of any program of political change. The communist movement founded by Marx failed in large part because it could not or would not make liberalism (which the bourgeoisie in its rise had seen as essential) the very bedrock of its platform. In large part, that reflected the prevalent categories of thought, and the traditions of the countries where communism took hold and developed a mass following and where socialist revolutions all produced variations on one authoritarian and bureaucratic theme.

If avoiding a slip backwards into totalitarianism or barbarism is a worthy end, then continued analysis of what people are actually about (as distinct from what they say they are about) is a vital part of it. I have found that such analysis involves abandoning the old right-left dichotomy in favour of something a bit finer tuned to reality.

Unfortunately, the leaps of economic daring and faith required for a workable and humane socialism were beyond the classical and revolutionary Marxists, just as they were for the Diggers, Levellers, Sans-Culottes and others who preceded them.

I do not blame radicals and revolutionaries of the last 200 years for wanting to escape the proletarian condition, nor the conservatives for wanting to avoid falling into it, which most of them knew was all too easily done. To be for maximising the personal freedom of each individual on the planet is in my opinion, to be for the only cause worth joining. The name of the game is still as it was for John Stuart Mill: the greatest happiness for the greatest number. That was what so many people I have known on the Left over the years believed they were ultimately about.

Time may still prove them right. Our species has been around for at least 200,000 years (the oldest fossils of Homo sapiens have been dated at 195,000 +/- 5,000 years BP). If our species lasts as long as that again (and the next 300 years or so will be a major test to pass) then enormous possibilities abound, considering the changes over the last 300 years. But meantime within the social and economic framework we have, greed makes excellent sense. Unfortunately.

re: Beyond right and left: a review

Ian MacDougall, I'd have to say that I've never bought the means/ends distinction that you appear to adhere to here, re: "I see the issue of violence vs nonviolence as being more about means than ends."

Me, I'm like Shevek in Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed ... since all means are ends in themselves - except in the long run when, as Keynes famously said, we're all dead anyway - in essence we need to evaluate both means and ends by the same criteria... albeit we can (very carefully) accord special consideration to specific individual cases - which is why we can't spell-out law sans interpretation, eh Malcolm?

However, Ian, this is clearly NOT what you are arguing here...

On the other hand, I also don't agree with Bryan Law that "the 'radical' v 'conservative' axis [is] artificial and transient"... so, I guess I'm stuck with a political spectrum that is akin to Einstein's four-dimensional space-time continuum...

To Bryan... the axis you want to abandon is merely the shape of all possible reform agendas - as most citizens would view them most of the time whilst, Ian... you appear unwilling to accept the basic truth that almost all said citizens would NEVER accept as adequate a model which did not distinguish Gandhi (and Christ) from trigger-happy Trotsky! However much "a stimulus to further thought."

In both cases, I'd have to say, you two have glossed-over the essential truth of democratic politics - in particular - which is that, in most things, most citizens are basically centrists. They very rarely support either radical change - or radical violence... and, at the same time, they are honestly doubtful of the efficacy of strict conservatism... or strict non-violence...

So, all I'm really saying - belatedly - to you both is that (perhaps) a four dimensional model might well leave NO significant gaps. Perhaps we don't need to emulate string theory - and go for nine, or twenty-odd, dimensions - but... I DO think we need four, however that may offend Euclid & co.

Think about it.

re: Beyond right and left: a review

Ian: "In The Social Contract we find Rousseau’s famous statement, “Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains”. That put in a nutshell an issue at least as old as class society (which means civilisation) itself."

“They hate our freedoms”. I use the terms ‘Self’ and ‘Mass’ in the context of Mass Conformity and Mass Communications.

Ian: “Getting rid of the various chains was what motivated both reformers and revolutionaries, and keeping them on (by whatever means, including contesting both their existence and dispensability) was what preoccupied conservatives.”

Yes and how do we get rid of the chains of apathy and mass conformity?

This is why I like the notions of identity, cultural time and consciousness as reference points for defining ‘self’ and freeing the individual.

Ian: “Both Rousseau and Marx lived at times when European society was far more directly involved in the institutions of forced servitude than it is today.”

Let’s see what has the legacy of the British Empire and the current American Empire brought us? Freedom to be slaves, environmental disaster, spiritual abyss, global poverty on a unprecedented scale.

Ian: “The creation of the 'spatial paradigms' of Right and Left was part of the process of a movement away from the 'mass institutional control' that you refer to.“

The spatial metaphors have limited meaning in a mass conformist state.

Ian: “I would also argue that the introduction of the concepts of Right and Left to political and historical thought was a useful step forward in what Marx (and the most sincere and least opportunist of his acolytes) always saw as a process of freeing individuals everywhere of their institutional and/or physical chains.”

This is pure fiction, that only the privileged can entertain. Globally human rights abuse is on the rise, slavery has made a come back.

If we are in a progressive movement forward, than my ear must be working in reverse. Have we progressed from Monteverdi, Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven?

I know both Mozart and Beethoven rebelled against the Aristocracy, and Beethoven succeeded to a large extent of freeing himself, but Bach’s and Mozart’s music is just as free and this shows up the ambiguity of the word freedom, and also shows why Australians are so apathetic about loosing their freedom.

Freedom has no meaning without a process relating to identity and self.

Ian: “I see increasing the liberty and dignity of the individual as the underlying goal of any program of political change.”

I agree.

Ian: “The communist movement founded by Marx failed in large part because it could not or would not make liberalism (which the bourgeoisie in its rise had seen as essential) the very bedrock of its platform. In large part, that reflected the prevalent categories of thought, and the traditions of the countries where communism took hold and developed a mass following and where socialist revolutions all produced variations on one authoritarian and bureaucratic theme.”

I am not sure of this; how exactly are you measuring success? If there has been a successful movement why do we need the methods of social control? My perspective is global.

Ian: “If avoiding a slip backwards into totalitarianism or barbarism is a worthy end, then continued analysis of what people are actually about (as distinct from what they say they are about) is a vital part of it. I have found that such analysis involves abandoning the old right-left dichotomy in favour of something a bit finer tuned to reality.”

That was my aim of introducing the decomposing ethnic composer. Identity, cultural time, consciousness are a much more powerful indicator of how successful we are in avoiding a backward slide into totalitarianism, which is a negation of identity and self.

Ian: “Unfortunately, the leaps of economic daring and faith required for a workable and humane socialism were beyond the classical and revolutionary Marxists, just as they were for the Diggers, Levellers, Sans-Culottes and others who preceded them.”

I must admit to being confused here, because from an individual perspective poverty can be an incentive for progress, maybe the same can be said for the collective will.

Greed and self interest are more of a reliable force for growth. I know this introduces a great big hole in my ethical philosophy, but go figure as the Americans like to say.

To me if I can use analogies of musical composition, Schubert’s music is powerful because of his venereal disease; Beethoven’s music is more powerful after he went deaf.

Know if it is possible to blow up the individual’s relationship to the collective it would seem to suggest that the individual and collective self only exists in struggle.

Greed and self-interest promote struggle more effectively in a world of limited resources but unlimited desires.

Ian: “I do not blame radicals and revolutionaries of the last 200 years for wanting to escape the proletarian condition, nor the conservatives for wanting to avoid falling into it, which most of them knew was all too easily done. To be for maximising the personal freedom of each individual on the planet is in my opinion, to be for the only cause worth joining. The name of the game is still as it was for John Stuart Mill: the greatest happiness for the greatest number. That was what so many people I have known on the Left over the years believed they were ultimately about.”

Yes, but we are faced with a terrible and in my opinion inherent human contradiction, the self exists in struggle, there is no point of rest and I think the dynamic nature of capitalism has been the reason for its success, but may well be the reason for its failure, because resources are limited, time will tell.

Time may still prove them right. Our species has been around for at least 200,000 years (the oldest fossils of Homo sapiens have been dated at 195,000 +/- 5,000 years BP). If our species lasts as long as that again (and the next 300 years or so will be a major test to pass) then enormous possibilities abound, considering the changes over the last 300 years. But meantime within the social and economic framework we have, greed makes excellent sense. Unfortunately.

Yes Ian I agree, strange because coming to the end and I see I come to the same conclusion.

re: Beyond right and left: a review

John Henry Calvinist, you say that I appear unwilling to accept the basic truth that almost all “… citizens would NEVER accept as adequate a model which did not distinguish Gandhi (and Christ) from trigger-happy Trotsky!”

Actually they do. Throughout the media and much of academe the simple left-right dichotomy with all its inadequacy is still in everyday use in describing political positions and differences. That was what David McKnight’s book was about.

You then say that I, “have glossed-over the essential truth of democratic politics - in particular - which is that, in most things, most citizens are basically centrists. They very rarely support either radical change - or radical violence... and, at the same time, they are honestly doubtful of the efficacy of strict conservatism... or strict non-violence...”

So what do we do then: have just one category (centrist) and gloss over those outliers that do not fit into it? One of David McKnight’s arguments, with which I concur, is that the left-right dichotomy does not fit well with the positions taken by individuals over a range of issues, where the same person can be conservative on some and for some degree of change on others. (eg Malcolm Fraser, who today comes out against Howard’s radical legal changes over anti-terrorism. Howard is the radical, Fraser is conservative, and on this I am with Fraser.) But to describe Howard as a ‘radical’ and leave it at that, even just on the basis of this issue, would be quite misleading, given that he is for concentration of power and wealth rather than its diversification.

Issues only get onto the political stage because people are pulling in two directions on them. If you are for no change, you are not in the centre, you are conservative. You do not need a separate category to describe the centre on a one dimensional axis, provided you have two distinct extremes on it. (A straight line has one point at either end and an infinity of points in between.) It then becomes describable in terms of those. Same for a two dimensional plane, or whatever.

On many issues, I would describe myself as a centrist, incidentally.

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.
© 2005-2011, Webdiary Pty Ltd
Disclaimer: This site is home to many debates, and the views expressed on this site are not necessarily those of the site editors.
Contributors submit comments on their own responsibility: if you believe that a comment is incorrect or offensive in any way,
please submit a comment to that effect and we will make corrections or deletions as necessary.
Margo Kingston Photo © Elaine Campaner

Recent Comments

David Roffey: {whimper} in Not with a bang ... 12 weeks 6 days ago
Jenny Hume: So long mate in Not with a bang ... 12 weeks 6 days ago
Fiona Reynolds: Reds (under beds?) in Not with a bang ... 13 weeks 1 day ago
Justin Obodie: Why not, with a bang? in Not with a bang ... 13 weeks 1 day ago
Fiona Reynolds: Dear Albatross in Not with a bang ... 13 weeks 1 day ago
Michael Talbot-Wilson: Good luck in Not with a bang ... 13 weeks 1 day ago
Fiona Reynolds: Goodnight and good luck in Not with a bang ... 13 weeks 3 days ago
Margo Kingston: bye, babe in Not with a bang ... 13 weeks 6 days ago