Date: Wed, 22 Nov 1995 17:00:44 +1000
From: g.maclennan-AT-qut.edu.au
Subject: Re: Update on the class struggle in Australia




On Mon, 20 Nov 1995, Louis N Proyect wrote:

> Has anybody noticed that every Australian on our list is absolutely 
> brilliant. How do you explain this? Is this because you started off, like 
> Malcolm X, as convicts? Why haven't you fostered the development of such 
> bizarre specimens as Gerry Healy or any of a thousand Maoist cult leaders?
> 
> What gives?
> 
> Anxiously waiting a reply,
> 
> the notoriously unstable Louis Proyect
> 
> 
Louis is too kind but that is the mildest of complaints from me.  
Actually the Left in Australia is unique in that it does not have 
"heroes".  There was an attempt by the CPA to make Lance Sharkey a hero 
when he was imprisoned, but it never took off.  Cults of personality just 
don't seem to flourish here.  They call it the "Tall Poppy Syndrome" and 
by that they mean that Australians are habitually irreverent towards 
their "superiors".  Really the colonial culture here is basically low 
level anarchistic in many ways.  To this day the only true working clas 
hero remains the 19th centruy Irish Australian bandit, Ned Kelly.

The current round of industrial struggle has ended with something of q 
victory for the unions.  The company CRA was forced to give the striking 
workers a pay rise.  But as usual the bureaucracy settled well short of a 
comprehensive victory.  CRA has retreated but it is still committed to 
using individual contracts to de-unionise its workfroce and other 
capitalists have signalled that they will follow suit.  Moreover the 
Federal Oppostion (Tory filth) has indicated that it will throw its 
wieight behind the individual contracts.  Though of course they pay lip 
service to the rights of unions etc.  What this means is that the unions 
still face a very troubled future.  The Labor party is divided over all 
this.  The Prime Minister, Paul Keating, supports individual contracts 
but there is apparently a growing feeling in the party that he has gone 
too far.  It will be interesting to see how the inner party tensions develop.

I tend to read it in terms of Nancy Fraser's paradigm of the politics of 
*redistribution* versus the politics of *recongition*. (NLR 212) Keating's 
base is the arts community, gays, and middle class progressivists, that is 
he makes the most running on the politics of recognition.  However as 
treasurer and Prime Minister he has done more than anyone to further 
enrich the powerful at the expense of the working class.

He can get away with this because the Left of the labor party has 
abandoned any class program except that of the most laborist variety i.e. 
tea 
and sympathy for the victims of the market but no challenge at all to the 
existence of the market.

So what have we all learned from the dispute between the unions and CRA?  
Well firstly that talk of the death of unionism is distinctly premature. 
Yet there is also a combativeness in the working class that is truly 
heartening to see.  It is of ccourse kept well under control by the 
bureaucracy but it is still there.  Thirdly I remain convinced that Labor 
won the next eelection last week when the Tory state government retreated in 
Western Australia and when CRA backed off.  The bosses will go with 
complian labor rather than risk the near rabid middle class tory parties 
as the next government.

But I am notoriously wrong in most of my predictions so we shall se..


Regards

Gary


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