Although I disagree with some of what Dr Beljac has written, I do think that this article describes a very important situation in Australian class history, and the outcomes of fifty- and sixty-year processes of fundamental change.

I started working in factories in the mid-sixties, and found from the outset that most of my work-mates were immigrants, Italians, Greeks, Yugoslavs, the odd Turk and German and Britisher, but the leading hands, supervisors and managers were all Australian-born Anglos. I moved around a lot, but everywhere I worked, the pattern was the same. Australian-born Anglos had moved up, and out, of the working class. And clearly, their children would never, on the whole, have to work on the factory floor again.

In some industries it must have been different, the building trades, the wharves, transport. That would have been where the Labor Party got its strength from. But over a couple of decades, as the factory-floor working class became, if anything, more multicultural and less Anglo, and as technological innovations transformed the work they were doing, and the need for labour altogether, and as companies moved their operations off-shore, clearly the children of those immigrants weren't going to obediently go into the factories to do the sh!t jobs and continue - and strengthen - the division between Anglo and non-Anglo workers. Like the children of the Anglo workers a generation earlier, they were off to uni.

As well, the wharves mechanised and containerised. The building trades were transformed into independent tradesmen, a petty-bourgeoisie rather than a working class, people working for themselves. The immigrants moved up and out, onto their own farms and fruit blocks, and into their own shops and businesses.

Clearly the Labor Party has been hollowed out from many sides, its older adherents moving up the professional scale, its factory fodder immigrants moving out and making damn sure their kids did also: up, out and into the professions. Technology transformed work-places, workers became petty-bourgeois and moved away from the Labor Party.

[TBC]

[continued]

Then along come the Greens, to swipe the Labor Party's professional and affluent pseudo-Left supporters. The old principles of equality and justice and internationalism and anti-exploitation have been replaced by preoccupations with same-sex marriage and superannuation. Frankly, I'm surprised that - on the basis of those changes - the Labor Party can muster more than 30 per cent of the vote nationally, and hold power in two States (and, of course, the ACT).

So, what's the middle ground these days, the population which Labor must win over ?

Wouldn't be dead for quids !

Joe

Support for the LABOR party is tepid at best amongst its raison d'être (real Workers) and now can be described as being "anti-nominative deterministic".

I would also go so far as to suggest most "out and proud" Laborites would cross the road to avoid a real worker so as not to catch cooties. The nearest they want to get to Workers is to order a "skim, soy, chai latte mocha-chino (and be snappy about it)". Workers now know it and resent this.

Yes you're right Marko, the left just haven't got any class!

But worse than that, if they shared a single brain between them it'd likely be lonely, or still rattle inside a thimble?

On the bright side, the left're still way out in front as intellectuals, when compared with the always right greens, who as ever, can't see the forest for the trees?

Who nonetheless, still do better than the coalition, who's moist mealy mouths only ever foolishly fundamentally flap, whenever a warm willful wind whistles wistfully from the wicked west?

Where two wigged Wongs wiving in a weaver wigwam, [Wikipedia] don't make a white or even a wosty; just a white woyal whatsit?
Rhrosty.

Marko is right; The decline of class politics has left a large part of Labor's traditional constituency feeling alienated from a Party that no longer talks as much as it used to - to their lives, their interests, their experiences. The Liberals play 'divide and conquer' by playing on anxieties and uncertainties re: identity politics. Labor strategists long thought they could take the working class for granted. And now swinging upper middle class voters are perhaps thought of as being 'more strategically important. (I argue this in light of difficulties I have had arguing for redistributive policies which benefit the bottom 80 per cent to the expense of the top 20 per cent) Perhaps the problem is that Labor is increasingly dominated by its own political class - people who don't get it that $100,000 wages are completely beyond the reach and the experience of most workers. There is a lack of a sense of proportion as to who I relatively privileged in our society and who is not... Today workers want security as they always did. So why not offer Medicare Dental and National Aged Care Insurance? Instead Labor is struggling with its own historic acceptance of 'small government'; and of policies of tactical expediency - 'robbing Peter to pay Paul; "one step forward, two steps back'". Labor has to do better - And its National Conference in July is an opportunity to set a new course....

I can understand a certain nostalgia for the old left. Marx’s emphasis on class war as the main engine of socioeconomic change gave the left an analytical framework for political and economic debate, and a clear moral touchstone. Trouble is, his analysis and prognostications were mostly wrong, and this has affected not just core Marxism but also others who borrowed his ideas.

The collapse of the Soviet Union revealed both the moral bankruptcy of the governments of the communist block, and the self-deluding or cynical failure of the western communist parties to acknowledge the reality of life under communism (the Trotskyists being the notable exception). Every government that claimed to be Marxist or Communist, and that lasted more than a few months, turned out to be a totalitarian nightmare that bore no resemblance to Marx’s utopian visions.

The growing prosperity and comparative economic stability of post-war western economies gave the lie to Marx’s predictions of increasing immiseration under capitalism. Not only are most Australian (and European and American) workers rich beyond the wildest dreams of Marx’s 19th century contemporaries, work has changed so that the physically demanding unskilled labour of the stereotypical working class is now the exception not the rule. Most workers identify as middle class, not working class. The people at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder are mostly those who, for a variety of reasons, cannot work full time; many are those Marx dismissed scornfully as lumpenproletariat.

Identity politics and environmentalism now seem the order of the day for the left, often in direct conflict with the interests and values of the traditional working class. I can’t see that changing any time soon.

Rhian; Your analysis of Marxism is faulty for what it neglects to mention. Yes the Trotskyists opposed Stalin. A redeeming element for them. But they were not alone. Democratic Marxists of various sorts also opposed Stalinism - and indeed Bolshevism - in the post 1917 period. Here I'm talking of radical (Marxist) Social Democracy. Think Kautsky, the Russian Mensheviks, and the Austro-Marxists for a start. And remember there were other socialist traditions as well. (eg: French humanist socialism as epitomised by Jean Jaures) Closer to the end of 'Communism' the efforts of Gorbachev were of merit - and indeed had the Gorbachev reform trajectory continued the former Soviet sphere probably would have enjoyed deeper liberties and deeper democracy than they do now. And there's also the New Left and the Eurocommunists - both of which rejected Stalinism.

Re: Living Standards - there are things to keep in mind there too. *Technology* has improved lives, yes. But the wage share of the economy is shrinking. Workers' identity and consciousness is fading. This has seen resistance to the worst features of capitalism 'slipping away'; with assaults on industrial rights, social welfare, the public sector. And its been bad for distributive justice - and sometimes even bad for capitalism. (ie: because privatisation does away with natural public monopolies which deliver efficiencies to entire national economies)

Also equality in Australia has been long fading - re: attacks on welfare and labour market regulation. Many Australians could not dream of affording a roof over their head. And even worse for the working poor in the United States who face extreme exploitation.

You're right though that increasingly workers no longer identify as working class... That's due to old prejudices that need to be done away with. Many white collar workers today face menial, repetitive labour in ways akin to the old blue collar workers. Many also face exploitation and low pay. Its time for a return to class politics; in the context of a 'movement of movements' which builds alliances amongst diverse constituencies - including an internally diverse working class.

Tristan

Many leftists opposed Stalinism, but mostly in academia and fissile sectarian micro-parties that had no real impact. I remember tedious and obtuse arguments between Albanian and Peruvian style Maoists in union branch meetings. They never won an argument, or anything of note for their members.

And it’s not just Stalin – Mao, Hoxha, Tito, Castro, Ortega, Mugabe (and Trotsky, for the brief period he actually exercised power) were all brutal tyrants. After a while, people start to notice a pattern.

A moment’s thought will tell you that the wage share of national income can’t have been falling since Marx’s time. In fact, the annual national accounts show the wage share of the economy trended upwards in the 1950s and 60s, peaked in 1974-75, trended down until the late 2000s, and has picked up a bit since 2008-09. For most of the past 50 years it has fluctuated between 50% and 58%. This has only marginal effects on wages growth, which is driven mainly by growth in output and productivity. In the past 50 years, total compensation of employees has grown at 9.0% a year. If the wage share had stayed constant at its average over this period, compensation would have grown at 9.1% a year.

http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/5204.02013-14?OpenDocument
(calculated from table 6)

Housing affordability has improved in recent years due to rising wages and low interest rates.

http://www.rba.gov.au/publications/submissions/inquiry-affordable-housing/pdf/inquiry-affordable-housing.pdf

Though Australia’s Gini coefficient has increased in recent years (indicating some growth in inequality), this is not a strong or consistent trend. Real living standards have risen across the board for all income groups. In my view, this is a much more important social indicator (it matters more how much the real income of the poor has increased than how much Gina Reinhart’s income has increased).

http://www.treasury.gov.au/PublicationsAndMedia/Publications/2013/Economic-Roundup-Issue-2/Economic-Roundup/Income-inequality-in-Australia

I agree that workers' class identity and consciousness is fading. But that’s a product of the changing labour market and the failures of ideology that proposed that a person’s identity is most importantly defined by their economic class

Rhian. Marx was mostly right: commodification has penetrated every aspect of life; monopoly capitalism reigns; concentration of wealth ( anti Marxists are now documenting the 1%); because of internal contradictions capitalism is subject to booms and busts; survival of capitalism depends on capital accumulation. How communist parties interpreted Marx and attempted to put their programmes into practice is an entirely different matter.

Leslie

Even with the Great Recession, economic cycles are far less volatile than they once were. Monopolies are quite rare and usually regulated. Yes, the rich have got richer, but so have most of the rest of us.

The essence of Marx’s analysis was

1. The material lot of the working classes would get steadily worse under capitalism
2. Capitalism would become more unstable and crisis prone over time
3. Revolutionary overthrow of the economic and political system under the leadership of the Communist Party would result in a better outcome for workers.

For which, the verdict of history and experience is:

1. Wrong
2. Wrong
3. Wrong

Rhian just briefly the Austro-Marxists, the German USPD, the left-wing of the German SPD after reunification were not 'sects'. They represented a continuation of the democratic Marxist politics of the Second (not Third) International.

You're right that wages tended to grow (I think) from the post-war period until the early 1970s. But its been downhill since then. There were tendencies for wages to fall proportionately before WWII as well; and downward pressure on wages was always a problem for capitalism in the sense that individual bourgeois benefitted - but inequality meant capitalists struggled to find markets to actually sell their goods.

Also there are some things Marx ultimately got wrong. But a lot of these issues were explored by Marxist Revisionists themselves - such as Eduard Bernstein. And you haven't effectively refuted the SPECIFIC issues Leslie raises. You've shifted the topic ; which gives the impression of 'refuting Marxism'. But in fact you've failed to engage with Leslie's points.

Tristan

I think you are confusing wages and the wage share of factor income. It is a logical impossibility that the wage share could fall or rise indefinitely. The wage share of factor income varies a bit over time, but it has been fairly stable. Total factor income (roughly equivalent to GDP) has grown steadily almost every year for decades. Sometimes labour’s share is a little higher or lower, but this share effect is swamped by the growth effect. Labour has a slightly smaller share of a much, much bigger pie than in the 1970s.

Real wages in Australia and most other developed economies (though not, on some evidence, the USA) have grown almost continuously for decades. Unfortunately the ABS recently rebased its earnings data, so we only have data back to 1994. In the 20 years to December 2014 nominal wages rose by 108% while the Consumer Price Index rose by 70%, resulting in real wage growth of 22%. This real growth was dampened to some extent by compositional effects, especially the rapid growth of part-time work. For full-time ordinary time male wage earners, growth was 137% nominal, or 39% real.

The triumph of the SNP, and consequent wipeout of Labour in Scotland, in the recent UK elections shows the extent to which working people will rally to a viable, non-neoliberal Labour alternative if one is presented to them.

The SNP campaigned on issues that really affect working people - especially anti-austerity and anti-privatisation (of the NHS in particular), while Labour simply offered more of the same.

Ditto Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain. Whether any of these political parties will follow through on their promises is not at all clear yet. However, their electoral successes are overwhelming proof of what working people, battered by almost four decades of neo-liberalism and a kleptocratic international financial system, are crying out for.

I was wondering when it was going to click for today's left that their obsession with identity politics will get them nowhere. In fact, it plays into the hands of the conservatives. The left's obsession with gays, feminism, and non-whites has only led to people resenting the left and those identities they champion. The majority of people are Anglo/white and heterosexual, so the conservatives will always win the culture war around identity politics, as long as those identities remain the majority of course.

Rhian; no specifically what I said was that in *proportionate* terms wages have fallen ; that is - the rate of exploitation has gone up. But *purchasing power* has increased because of productivity improvements driven by technology.

Also you still ignore Leslie's points by 'changing the topic' re: Marxism.

The only one saying anything of note or germane to the topic is Killarney.

As for Carl Marx, some of what he said may have been true or predictive.

However, the (animal farm) communism/Leninism/Stalinism that sprang from that was fundamentally flawed, in as much it did and does require slavery (re-education centres, extreme dehumanizing brutality and gulags) to survive; and not to be confused with inherently fair social democracy, the like of which is now gripping Scotland.
Rhrosty.

Rhian: as you will not debate the validity of the arguments that Marx developed in Capital ( and trusty Rhrosty obfuscates with “the (animal farm) communism/Leninism/Stalinism”), when you change the subject to “For full-time ordinary time male wage earners, growth was 137% nominal, or 39% real.”, have you factored in the 38 million people internally displaced due to conflicts around the world; and how do you reconcile your version of “wage share” with the fact that the wealth of the 1 per cent richest people in the world is worth about $110 trillion, 65 times the total wealth of the bottom half of the world's population- the world's richest 85 people( who could all fit comfortably on a double-decker bus) control about $1.7 trillion in wealth, equivalent to the bottom half of the world's population. And you can lightly dismiss Marx’s prediction of boom and bust, but the political response to the global financial crisis - including the actions of central banks and the austerity measures introduced by national governments - has made the rich fabulously richer. In the US, the wealthiest 1 per cent of the population grabbed 95 per cent of post-financial crisis growth between 2009 and 2012, while the bottom 90 per cent became poorer.
Rhian, to readily agree that my material standard of living is far higher than that of my father in no way constitutes an analysis of capitalism which is what Marx attempted over decades

Tristan

You wrote “wages tended to grow (I think) from the post-war period until the early 1970s. But its been downhill since then. There were tendencies for wages to fall proportionately before WWII” This suggests that wages fell in relative terms pre-war and absolute terms post the 1970s. That is wrong.

Marx expected the living standards of workers to fall in absolute, not just relative, terms. And even in relative terms, it is demonstrably wrong to claim that labour’s share of income inevitably declines over time.

Why do you equate the labour share of factor income with the rate of exploitation? Labour’s share of factor income is higher now than in the 1950s, while business income (both corporations and unincorporated businesses) is lower. The fastest growth in relative factor income has been in the contribution of “dwellings owned by persons.” So what?

I responded to Leslie’s points that I disagreed with and that can be debated meaningfully. I agree wealth has become more concentrated. I don’t think “commodification has penetrated every aspect of life” is capable of being proved or refuted. “Survival of capitalism depends on capital accumulation” may be true, but I don’t think it is a problem.

“How communist parties interpreted Marx and attempted to put their programmes into practice is an entirely different matter” is also a matter of opinion. I have often heard the claim that self-described communist governments weren’t really communist. But we have had many different self-described communist experiments, of many different ideological flavours, and they all yielded much the same result. That was the point I made earlier in reference to Stalin, Mao, Hoxha et al. It suggests either that Communism is unworkable, or that it inevitably degenerates into tyranny.

My main point in response to Leslie was that the most important plank of Marx’s argument was wrong. He was perhaps right about some things, but Marxism’s central thesis – capitalism immiserates the working class – has not been borne out by history. That has huge implications for any brand of leftism predicated on the virtue and necessity of class conflict

Rhian

'... Communism is unworkable, or that it inevitably degenerates into tyranny.'

Communism as an extreme is unworkable, but so too is capitalism as an extreme. The latter inevitably degenerates into unworkable inequality and exploitation. We are fast reaching that point in Western capitalism. Forget wage growth. Debt is the ball and chain that is sinking the Western working class.

The most workable system is a combination of the best of both - i.e. a market economy balanced with a socialist-based social contract.

Also, to be fair, the communist examples you give do not look at the wider factors that have made communist regimes 'unworkable'.

Firstly, regimes like the Soviet Union and Communist China replaced violent capitalist/feudal tyrannies that had themselves become unworkable. In the new power vacuum created after revolutions occur, the new regime usually has to carry on many of the tyrannical aspects of the old regime in order to survive.

Secondly, the West - in particular, the US - makes no secret of its hysterical hatred and fear of socialism/communism. Neither does it make any secret of its malicious intent to destroy and destabilise any regime that is communist or even mildly socialist. Chile (under Allende), Cuba, Venezuela (under Chavez and now Maduro), Vietnam, North Korea, Bolivia and Ecuador, Iran under Mossedeh, Afghanistan in the 1970s, the Ba'athists of the Middle East, Indonesia (under Sukarno), and even Australia under Whitlam.

The economic and political viability of these countries have all been seriously undermined and compromised by Western belligerence - through political isolation (especially via the UN), embargoes, sanctions, terrorism/assassination campaigns, proactive destabilisation, externally provoked civil wars, and media smearing and disinformation. Though the tactics vary, the one destabilisation constant is always the 'monsterfication' of their leaders.

How many Western capitalist countries would remain economically or politically viable after years/decades of living under this level of stress?

Rhian; The first Social Democrats were Marxists. They were the most ardently democratic movement of their time. You ignore the Austro-Marxists, the Second International, the Eurocommunists - because they don't fit in with your narrative.

Also Marxists of different sorts have believed in ABSOLUTE OR RELATIVE IMISERATION. Today few Marxists believe in the schema of absolute imiseration, though - given improvements in productivity and technology. But private (capitalist) wealth continues to grow more and more quickly than wages.

Also the world economy is structured at different levels in such a way as to radically intensify exploitation. At one extreme we have corruption in the exploitation of African resources and labour; In Bangladesh we have extraordinary exploitation of textiles workers who receive less than 5% of the product of their labour and whose lives are constantly in danger for unsafe working environments and practices... Within the US itself we have a class of working poor whose exploitation props of middle class consumption. Capitalism survives on the basis of ever-increasing intensity of exploitation. It appears to 'work' at home in Australia - but should that intense exploitation stop the system would be rocked by the consequent instability and discontent.

ALSO the business cycle continues as a feature of capitalism, as do overproduction and a falling rate of profit - the consequence of disproportionate over-investment in 'fixed capital'. Capitalism is driven by competition - and that drives price and quality signals - drives innovation... There's a place for this. But the inefficiencies are masked by the living standards that flow from innovation, intense exploitation of 'peripheral' economies and classes, and because of technology.

'What can be done' to begin with is to return to a 'hybrid' economy. With efficient cost structures through public infrastructure including natural public monopolies. Though theoretically at least we have the resources to drastically reduce the working week and yet maintain very good material living standards. Capitalism gets in the way as it is predicated on constant expansion into new markets. When this fails it intensifies exploitation in order to maintain stability at the political and economic 'core'.

Leslie

Marx produced some insightful analysis, and some of the things he expected of capitalism did eventuate. But the most important ones did not. This doesn’t mean that Marx was partly right. He set out to describe underlying laws governing the dynamics of capitalist economies that must inevitably produce certain effects. Increasing poverty, declining profits and monopolisation are not mere hypotheses or even predictions. They were “laws”.

This is important in the context of the article we are debating because the most important things Marx got wrong relate to the effect of capitalism on workers.

Modern Social Democracy, which sees workers’ welfare as dependent on successful private and public sectors, mediated by government regulation and redistribution (progressive income tax was one of Marx’s good ideas!), has proved more effective than Marx dreamed in raising workers’ quality of life.

It’s time to leave class war behind.

On your specific points:
- Australian real wage growth does not cause foreign wars.
- I discussed the wage share measure because Tristan raised it. It measures income, not wealth. I agree wealth disparities are widening.
- I don’t lightly dismiss Marx’s predictions of economic cycles, but Marx expected them to get more severe and more frequent. They haven’t.
- The fact that most of us enjoy much better living standards than our parents disproves Marx’s Law of Increasing Poverty

Killarney.

I agree, a mixed economy is best.

The USA has done some vile things, mostly where it perceives its direct interests are threatened. But I don’t think it can be blamed for every failed socialist regime.

On your earlier post, I suspect the SNP vote was driven by nationalist sentiment and a backlash against Labour for supporting the “No” case in the independence referendum. Nationalism was also much more important south of the border. UKIP got more votes than the Lib-Dems and Greens combined, though just 1 seat.

Miliband, arguably the most left-wing UK Labour leader in years, was trounced.

Tristan

“Social Democrat” has meant different things at different times and places. The Communist Manifesto speaks of alliances with Social Democrats, so they clearly weren’t identical with Communists. I use it above in the modern European sense of a leftish mainstream party.

I understand that Marxism and neo-Marxism have been through many iterations and reinterpretations since the 19th century, and there are many different currents of thought within them. I lived in the UK in the 1970s and 80s and watched the Euro-communists with interest. That was the first time I became aware of the move from class to identity politics, which my Trot friends bemoaned though they shared the EuroComs’ hostility to the USSR. But none of them has succeeded in persuading the outside world that they have anything useful or important to say.

On your specific points:

Modern Marxists may not believe in absolute immiseration, but Marx did.

Profits are cyclical but the dividend yield shows no structural decline.

http://www.rba.gov.au/chart-pack/share-markets.html

Wealth inequality has risen in the last few decades but fell over most of the 20th century.
http://www.google.com.au/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CCMQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Feconomics.uwo.ca%2Fpeople%2Fdavies_docs%2Fcredit-suisse-global-wealth-report-2014.pdf&ei=8V1cVfztG-XBmwWd5oGIDA&usg=AFQjCNFZEbPpTEHCG-mIfi4tFa6vbx7yJg&sig2=Z2Nzd2joWUcNV6UGdvgmSg

We already have a hybrid economy, as do all prosperous societies. Our main arguments are about where the balance between public and private activity should sit. Labor is not going to privatise the banks. The Liberals are not going to abolish Medicare.

Rhian you say 'Its time to leave class war behind': Tell the Liberals that! And tell anyone who's pursuing an agenda of austerity; criminalising industrial liberties; winding back labour market regulation; taking privatisation to the utmost extreme etc.

The fact is that a minority holds the vast majority of wealth; and hence exercises a practical 'veto' on public policy - especially economic policy. If you try and question that you will be accused of 'class warfare'. The double standards are blatant - but it's probably no surprise its rarely questioned in the MSM.

Further Rhian;

a) Show me where in the Communist Manifesto Marx talks of alliances with social democrats; I'm not even certain the term existed in 1848!

b) The Euro-communists effectively reclaimed the terrain of (Marxist) democratic socialism. Social movements have ups and downs. The Western communist parties suffered greatly from the impression of 'the end of history' after the collapse of the USSR. That doesn't mean they 'had nothing to say'; And indeed you can see the Left making a comeback in Spain and Greece now because of the crisis in the EU. Capitalist crisis isn't over. Neither is democratic socialism or social democracy. But its an uphill battle because of triumphant capitalist ideology; and the omnipresent Ideological conditioning...

c) Its also worth mentioning that the democratic Marxist movement PRECEDED Bolshevism and Stalinism. To take 'big 'C' Communism' as 'the real and authentic Marxism' compared with which the others are merely variations - would be a mistake.

d) Re: imiseration - Yes Marx got some things wrong; but do you throw the baby out with the bathwater?

e) Finally: You say we're a 'hybrid economy': But not very much! Privatisation has gone so far; and they're not finished yet! A meaningful hybrid economy would include strategic government business enterprises, producers and consumers co-ops, natural public monopolies; democratic collective capital formation.... But all these are marginal compared with the position of private-monopoly capital.

Rhian. Thanks for your responses; but we are going nowhere as we talk past one another, because I insist that to debate capital and class we have to adopt a global perspective- so that as well as local wage statistics we also have to take into account, for example, Bangladesh garment factories producing clothes for British retailers are forcing girls as young as 13 to work up to 11 hours a day in appalling conditions.
From a personal, selfish point of view, I wish I could share your optimism about booms and busts, but the reality is that the world economy after 8 years has not yet recovered from the GFC, despite frantic stratagems like “quantitative easing” (printing money making the rich richer) and low interest rates ( which has destroyed the living standards of independent retirees). What is your alternative to Marx’s explanation of the cycle of booms and busts since the 19th century?; please don’t say greed. As you think in terms of local , empirical evidence, the clue is H Normans “no payment for 36 months”.

Tristan

The reference to social democrats is in Chapter IV. Position of the Communists in Relation to the Various Existing Opposition Parties.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch04.htm

I agree the left is making a comeback in some countries the aftermath of the GFC. But even Syriza are hardly Marxist.

My preference is for a mixed economy; your “hybid” is rather different. I have no objection to the co-ops and so on you would like, if they are efficient and socially useful. Likewise I have no objection to privatisation, if a business can be run efficiently by the private sector and government can use the capital more productively elsewhere. Though government may have privatised some assets it is still a major player in the economy. Government consumption spending as a percentage of GDP peaked at 38% in 2009 and is currently only slightly lower, at about 37%.

Re immiseration: in my opinion, this is the baby, not the bathwater. The whole force of Marx’s argument is that capitalism is bad for workers. That is also still the dominant narrative from parts of the left. He’s not a commentator I normally like, but Clive Hamilton summit it up beautifully a few years ago:

“Difficult as it may be to admit, social democrats and democratic socialists have a psychological predisposition to believe that the mass of people are suffering from material deprivation. We thrive on the imagined wretchedness of others. When the economy goes bad we feel secretly vindicated, for our reason to condemn the system is renewed. We revel in a collective schadenfreude. But we must face up to the facts of today's world. While rooted in historical fact, the left's ''deprivation model" is today the opposite of the truth”

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2002/05/13/1021002429844.html

Leslie

I’m happy to debate the global or the national perspective, but I do not accept your inference that rising real wages in Australia are causally linked to refugees fleeing conflict elsewhere.

I agree the world economy is not fully recovered from the GFC. But the GFC was mild compare to the Great Depression or the 19th century recessions witnesses by Marx and Engels.

I also agree it’s tragic that Bangladesh garment workers have much lower wages and poorer conditions that us. But I do not think the left has a realistic better alternative to offer them. Almost every country we know of that has escaped abject poverty has done so by building a manufacturing industry initially based on low wages and exports (the exceptions are blessed with abundant valuable commodities such as oil). That was what Marx witnessed in 19th century Britain. As productivity and the skills base rise, living standards improve, and poverty declines. This is what happened in Europe and North America, and more recently Japan, Korea and Hong Kong. It is happening in China, which has recorded the largest and most rapid decrease in poverty in human history.

The early stages are ugly, as Marx saw, and we see in Bangladesh. But the only real alternative is to remain a feudal agrarian society where most people live in absolute poverty. Another thing Marx got right was that, for all its faults, capitalism “rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life.”

From a truly global perspective, the story is similar. We recently achieved the UN’s Millenium Development Goal of halving the number of people living in absolute poverty. Across most indicators of human welfare, things are getting better. Real incomes are rising. Life expectancy is increasing, and infant mortality falling. Illiteracy is declining. More people have safe drinking water. Malnutrition is declining, and mass starvation has virtually disappeared.

http://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/mdgoverview.html

Of course, many people still live in abject poverty. Things could be better, and more could be done. But every experiment in trying a radically different economic model has failed

Rhian

'On your earlier post, I suspect the SNP vote was driven by nationalist sentiment and a backlash against Labour for supporting the “No” case in the independence referendum.'

Fifty-five per cent of Scots votes voted 'No' in the independence referendum.That means that more than 1 in 2 Scots were not driven by nationalist sentiment in the recent UK election. Of those who voted 'Yes', the majority were over age 55 - enough to sway the total vote in favour of staying with the UK.

So, given the factors that motivated the Labour wipeout in Scotland in the UK election, even those who voted 'No' were not willing to go along with the Westminster austerity/neoliberal consensus. While the over-55 voters preferred the assumed security of staying with the UK, they rejected neo-liberal austerity.

Corrction: In my above post, I meant to say: 'Of those who voted 'NO', the majority were over age 55 - enough to sway the total vote in favour of staying with the UK.'

Rhian; Then maybe we're arguing at cross-purposes. Because the most important social democratic party of the time - the German Social Democrats - weren't formed until 1869 and didn't merge with the Lassalleans until 1875.And the original social democrats - or Eisenachers - were Marxists. The Lassalleans were also very radical in their own way. As most of the world knew it in the mid-late to late 19th century Social Democracy was a mainly-Marxist movement.

Also Rhian - The economy may be mixed in your book; but the traditional mixed economy that arose in the mid 20th century went much further. It included nationalised communications, transport, energy, water; It included strategic government business enterprises; and it included more services which were provided publicly. Believe me there is VERY LITTLE left after decades of privatisation. You want to claim 'the moderate ground' and a 'relatively mainstream' term - 'the mixed economy'. But if that is the case then the term 'mixed economy' has lost its meaning. We are at the point now where government does not even provide roads without resort to privatisation and tolls. After decades we are approaching the extremes of neo-liberalism.

Forgive me for suggesting that most commentators here are making the same error that Marx did, of treating the working class as a given, a sort of Black Box, always there, unchanging, while economic changes and policies changed around them.

No, it's not. Compared to the fifties and sixties, there is almost no working class (numerically speaking) in Australia any more. The vague hope that somehow "it" would come together, rise up and overthrow capitalism, was a pretty vain one even in the fifties (probability = 0.001), and its probability now is vastly smaller again.

Let's face it: Marx got another thing wrong: that the working class is somehow inherently revolutionary. That's certainly a convenience, but honestly, it has always been a fiction. Of course, workers stick up for their rights, but so does pretty much every group, farmers, bureaucrats, miners, Aborigines, truckies. The working class has fought for better wages and conditions, but never for the complete overthrow of the economic system which provided, however miserly, those wages and conditions.

I'm not saying that's necessarily wrong: why should some bloke on a building site or a woman on an assembly line sacrifice their job for the lofty ideals of a fundamentally pseudo-intellectual clique ? My parents were both in the Party and my mum told me once that they were the only working-class people in her branch - in a working-class area: Chullora, for god's sake.

So much of this 'debate' is akin to arguing about how many angels can stand on the head of a pin, or point of a needle, whichever; Marx tried, but he couldn't predict history; in fact, he got much of the trends of contemporary history wrong.

Move on, boys.

Joe

Loudmouth, I agree that the working class is not inherently and essentially revolutionary. I agree it was a mistake for Marxists to assume otherwise. Self-avowed 'Post-Marxists' like Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau have developed a theory to the effect that revolutionary subject identities have to be 'articulated' in the context of counter-hegemonic strategies. That many workers turned to fascism in the 20th century showed this was true even then. But that's not to say there's not revolutionary *potential* in the working class and other groups - hopefully allied together in 'a movement of movements'. Look to Spain and Greece today.

A couple of points also a) by 'revolutionary' I mean qualitative change and not violent insurrection.

b) I'm interested in your idea of the 'working class'; because for Marx they were the class of wage labourers. And even here he theorised a 'labour aristocracy'.

c) Marx could not project forward 150 years ; He identified real and emerging tendencies for his time. Some of his ideas on alienation, surplus value, the business cycle, falling rate of profit as a tendency, the intensification of the rate of exploitation; the corruption of government by wealth - remain valid. Indeed class struggle remains a valid notion ; though not necessarily taken to the critical point of revolution.

d) The point re; the working class is the strategic power of wage labourers to withdraw their labour. There needs be an alliance with other forces, yes. But the mass strike remains a potentially potent weapon. This is relevant in a context where rights are being wound back - wages and conditions, age of retirement, industrial liberties; and at a more political level Conservative attacks on free assembly for a start...

None of this means I'm kidding myself a revolution is around the corner. But some important *tendencies* identified by Marx still persist.

Hi Tristan,

In our continuing obituary for Marxism - Mouffe and Laclau's 'post-Marxism' is already forty-odd years old - I would sharply differentiate radical, progressive and revolutionary:

* everybody is pretty much radical in their own interests;

* in my arbitrary schema, a progressive is someone who goes into bat in defence of somebody else's interests, the oppressed, abused ad/or brutalised, not just their own;

* a revolutionary seeks to transform the whole of society, in the name of all oppressed classes.

I don't see the activists in Greece or Spain as anything but 'radical' in this sense: people who want to protect their own featherbedded jobs, early pensions, low or no tax regimes, that the huge government debt with no prospect of repayment, shouldn't be repaid, in fact Germany should pay Greece more to maintain their lifestyles. I don't see anything much progressive about that, let alone 'revolutionary': who are the Greeks going to overthrow, their own bourgeoisie who contributed to this mess ?

Bottom line is that Marxism had its historical moment, between say 1860 and 1930, and blew it. No workers' revolution in any advanced capitalist country.

And every country which claimed to have launched a Marxist-oriented socialist revolution turned totalitarian. It didn't help that they succeeded totalitarian regimes almost everywhere, so perhaps we can blame their role-models, the sorts of power relations the people simply expected.

So let's be honest and move on: the Marxist experiment has not had a single success, and its moment has passed, forever. Many of us have wasted much of our lives living in hope. Let's just consign Marxism to the dust-bin of history and be done with it.

Joe

Joe
Obviously we have shared similar disillusionment; but, given your usually well grounded and lucid contributions, I am disappointed that you follow others in confusing a critique of the validity of Karl Marx’s analysis of capital and class with
“every country which claimed to have launched a Marxist-oriented socialist revolution turned totalitarian…Let's just consign Marxism to the dust-bin of history and be done with it.” Even in his lifetime, Marx had to disown “Marxists”

Hi Leslie,

If even Marx was disillusioned with 'Marxists', then I suppose I'm in good company :)

So what comes after 'Post-Marxism'? Or do we have to go back to the progressive aspects of the Enlightenment, and re-build a program from there, given present and possibly-future circumstances ? Can a genuinely progressive/revolutionary ideology for the future be put together ?

Joe

Killarney

It is not necessarily inconsistent possible to vote “No” in the referendum and SNP at the general election (clearly quite a few people did). Anyone wanting greater, but not complete, self-determination for Scotland could well vote that way.

Tristan

Yep, “Social Democrat” has been a pretty fluid term over the years.

In the mid 20th century government was a far smaller share of the economy than it is now. The nature of its activities may have changed a bit, but its overall size has grown enormously