Date: Thu, 2 Oct 1997 21:51:34 +1000
From: Rob Schaap <rws-AT-comserver.canberra.edu.au>
Subject: M-TH: A shameless plea


Supplicatory greetings Thaxists,

It's my turn to present a public seminar on the 9th of October.  I am
toying with a marxist critique of Australian communications policy (not a
million miles from what my dissertation shall be about if I ever get 'round
to writing the thing).

Anyway, I find out at 6.00 pm tonight that I have to have an abstract ready
for promulgation by 9.00 am tomorrow!  I've tapped out what follows and am
much in need of anything anyone might have to offer.

I shall, of course, mention poor old Habermas in passing (highlighting the
formal citizenship/commodified information contradiction), but I'd love a
pointer on marxist takes on privatisation, the global cartelisation of
telecommunications, the fate of long privatised telcos (eg BT and TNZ) and
their customers, what happened in the States after the AT&T divestiture -
y'know, that sort of stuff.  That, and anything that makes a gutsy link
between Marx and communication in general.

I promise I give good citation.  I shall also post the write-up to the list
if anyone seems interested.

BTW, Has anyone got a citation for the Grundrisse quote?  My copy has gone
walk-about at the wrong moment (is it a sign of the times that people are
beginning to pinch books by Marx?).

Any takers?
Rob.

CRITICAL POLITICAL ECONOMY AND AUSTRALIAN TELECOMMUNICATIONS POLICY

SOME COMMENTS ON 1997

By Rob Schaap

1997 is a big year in the story of communications in Australia.  It is my
contention that a critical political economic sensibility helps lend some
shape and context to the issues that currently exercise our policy
community and concern our citizenry.

Today, I'd like to talk about the liberalisation of Australia's
telecommunications sector in July, some shifts in information policy
discourse in August, and the imminent privatisation of Telstra in November.


The underlying theme is a simple one: that Karl Marx was importantly and
presciently correct in his critical gutting of 'the commodity' (chapter one
of Capital) and that an observation he makes in chapter 7 of Grundrisse
should give us pause:

"The separation of public works from the state, and their migration
into the domain of the works undertaken by capital itself, indicates
the degree to which the real community has constituted itself in
the form of capital."


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Rob Schaap, Lecturer in Communication, University of Canberra, Australia.

Phone:  02-6201 2194  (BH)
Fax:    02-6201 5119

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'It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have
lightened the day's toil of any human being.'    (John Stuart Mill)

"The separation of public works from the state, and their migration
into the domain of the works undertaken by capital itself, indicates
the degree to which the real community has constituted itself in
the form of capital."                                    (Karl Marx)

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