File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-02-05.012, message 23


Date: Mon, 03 Feb 1997 17:38:55 +1000 (EST)
From: Gary MacLennan <g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au>
Subject: M-I: Class  & Populism


Class & populism.  

I have been thinking for some time about the question of class in
contemporary thought as expressed in the media.  This is a serious topic and
deserves much more systematic thought than I can give it here but Doug's
very interesting asides about the pragmatic filth such as Greenberg that
advise Clinton have quickened my interest in the topic.

At one level there is a simple generalisation to be made.  the subject of
class is a taboo.  Officially especially here in Australia, it simply does
not exist.

This however leaves the bourgeoisie and their intellectual henchmen with a
problem.  To be effective they have to model the world.  They have to cope
with reality.  They do this primarily through the dissemination of ideology
or false consciousness, a central mechanism of which is the reduction of
reality to actuality.  It is in this precise moment that the spin doctors
with their little focus groups and polls come into their own.

But as well as indulging in ideological reductionism bourgeois intellectuals
have to produce work which will help their masters keep control, and so they
have to broach the question of class.  

So here my observations which are extremely impressionistic are that class
turns up in references such as to an "under class" and the associated social
problems.  The under class are not inserted into a class system but they are
the subject of concern.  There is little of course thought as to where they
have come from.

Class also emerges in oblique references to "middle Australia".  This is
code of course but precisely what for is not that easy to grasp.  Presumably
it refers to the great Australian myth that there is only one class in
Australia and that is the "middle class".  the "class" has dropped of and
the good petty bourgeoisie have now become the middle kingdom as it were.
The glorious centre of their own universe, where they patrol the status quo
on behalf of the upper 5000 as Marx once said.

More recently from Reagan's America we have got the term - the chattering
classes.  Again this is a very vague term, but what is meant by it would
appear to be the educated professional middle class who have espoused
progressive causes.  These are generally contrasted with the "silent
majority".  Keating's Labour Party was supposed to have catered primarily
for the interests of the chatterers and to have ignored the silent majority
- the solid citizenry of Middle Australia.

There is a kernel of truth to this. Keating and his predecessor, Bob Hawke,
ruled in the interests of the rich and the powerful.  That meant lowering
wages, and raising the rate of exploitation through the removal of controls
on employers etc. But Keating especially attempted to articulate a
progressive program. For example he alone of all Australia's Prime Ministers
admitted the brutal realities of a white colonial settler nation when he
acknowledged the destruction of Aboriginal culture.

In many ways this was a brave and decent thing to do, and we on the Left
should say that.  But we also  should not be blind to the fundamental
reality of Labor in Australia.  As Doug has pointed out with the Democrats,
real social-democratic change is ruled out in advance.  We are then left
with the gesture, the photo opportunity, the media moment that is designed
to satisfy us.  But more than ever the emperor has no clothes and hard
material reality is pushing people towards irrational resentment.

With the election then of the Conservative Liberal Government here in
Australia we have come to the end of the progressive gesture.  But this
poses a problem for the ruling parties.  What do they replace it with?  How
can they continue to fool all the people some of time? 

Here I think we have the explanation for why certain conservative
politicians have begged the new Prime Minister, John Howard to take up the
cause of Australia becoming a republic.  This is quintessential gestural
politics.  But Howard is a traditional 1950's style Monarchist and will not
hear of any such thing. So if social-democratic change and the progressive
gesture are ruled out a priori, what are we left with?  The answer is the
deliberate promotion of the irrational especially the politics of racism.  

A classic example of this was provided before Xmas when the Treasurer,
Costello, attributed the budget deficit at least in part to the blocking in
the Senate of his anti-migrant proposals.  He actually said that "battlers"
would suffer because new migrants would be able to access welfare.  Racist,
of course and contradictory in that it is above all designed to divide and
ultimately destroy the Australian civil society that the conservatives claim
to want to preserve.  But I especially want to emphasise that this is the
politics of irrationality.

This will be the subject of another post.



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