Tristan Ewins,

Governments have long been moving out of the supply and management of public housing because it is a bottomless pit for which there are never enough tax dollars.

Even partnership with government is a certain recipe for cost and time over-run. Government cannot manage welfare housing because to be blunt, its clientele see the housing as all care and no responsibility. Very little care either.

What government is doing through the tenancy authorities is regulating the smaller investors who provide much of the welfare housing out of business.

Rental housing is far too high risk and too little return for larger investors, with rental tribunals who regard landlords as always wealthy and without needing any rights. Anyone who doubts that can check tribunal rulings on (say) damage to electronic items and to kitchen cupboards. Very short life items apparently. What about 'wear and tear' where carpets are concerned? :(

It would be very, very easy indeed for government to provoke a run of investment away from owning rental property. That wouldn't matter to foolish leftists who believe in State control. However their joy would be very short-lived at the immediate consequences of a retreat of investors, especially smaller investors. It would be nigh impossible to attract them back, because the tradition of 'investing'(sic) in rental hosuing is based on myths from the Fifties. The grandparents who divided bigger homes to make money from basic, practical, low-finish and low-appliance (ie low maintenance) flats are gone, as is the demand for them.

Regarding socialism, Labor Leader Shorten, a sly, cynical operator if there ever was one, has in been counselling Labor to drop the references to socialism, while maintaining the objective of International Socialism as the iceberg below. That would be in the tradition of the Fabians aka International Socialists aka 'Progressives', who describe themselves as the 'Wolves in Sheep's Clothing'.

Public housing is totally immoral.

It is just another way of taking money from those who earned it, & giving it to the bludgers to spend at the pub or the bookies.

Tristan

A few points for both you and Bowen. (1) The Objective is Clauses 2 and 3 together - that's where all the detail comes. (2) Do not equate "socialism" with Marxist "scientific socialism" - Labor is socialist in its pre-Marxist sense, the tradition perpetuated by Fabianism. (3) You cannot call distributive imbalance a market failure because that is how markets work.

My own response to Bowen was here http://www.challengemagazine.com.au/labor_s_values_and_objective

I've separately written for Rodney Cavalier's Southern Highlands Branch Newsletter on the economic narrative, markets, public enterprise and efficiency versus equity. Not (yet) online.

More recently I contributed my own thoughts on the Party's inability to deal with a genuine party discussion on our objective - the result being that Luke Foley is going to do Bowen's dirty work in trying to write a meaningless objective. See http://www.davidhavyatt.blogspot.com.au/2015/07/why-is-party-discussion-so-hard-for-alp.htm

David, Thankyou for your comments.

I think it would be wrong to describe Labor's socialism as either 'purely Fabian' or "Purely Marxist'. Personally I prefer a mix. I believe in guiding policy gradually through government - through influencing politicians and other public figures through intellectual and cultural engagement - with the ultimate consequence of qualitative change. But I also agree with a great deal of Marxist analysis. And I was personally strongly influenced by Marxism before I joined the Fabian Society. As a Marxist - or perhaps today a Post-Marxist - I believe in class struggle and not just 'changing the world behind peoples' backs'. We have to take people with us through struggle as well. And many of the fundamentals of Marxist analysis and values continue to apply as well. Ameliorating the division of labour - empowering people to partake of culture, philosophy, science and art; Doing away with exploitation and the abuse of market power; dealing with the waste, unjust distribution and instability of capitalism... Extending democratic rights and institutions... All part of the Marxist traditions. (if you exclude Stalinism)

I'm going to read your article now too. Will post here again to let you know what I think. :)

Socialisation means different things to different people. There is the sense in which you say - 'making relations social' - which were observed by Marx as well. Its also useful to see socialisation as involving democratic ownership and control of enterprise, infrastructure, services - which can occur either through public ownership, or through co-operatives or mutualism; or through collective capital formation, co-determination etc. 'Socialisation' AS AN OBJECTIVE - has limited use for us unless it is connected with democratisation.

The problem arises with that term 'exploitaiton' - whether or not we accept a Marxist definition. I think both Marxist and non-Marxist definitions are legitimate in different ways.

You sound like you're better read on Labor Party history than I am. But as I argue I think recognition of the plural nature of the Labor Party is valid. And we have never been anything like a Marxist-dominated social democratic party after the way of the original social democratic parties of Europe. (though anarchism and humanist socialism were strong in Spain, France)

But neither has Labor been 'purely labourist'. We have been influenced by the European social democratic traditions so deeply marked by Marxism. We've always been "a melting pot" of democratic socialist and social democratic ideologies ; and probably influenced by Catholicist social-Centrism as well. Though its impossible to deny that more recently - since the 1980s - we've been 'emptying out' the practice and consciousness of democratic socialism. That makes us vulnerably to 'being swallowed up' by the dominant Ideological Liberalism.

You're right that there's a problem with Doug Cameron's inference the Objective shouldn't be viewed as an issue because it barely influences our discourse... With Marx I think we need to be open about our politics and our objectives. Again: we can't change society behind peoples' backs.

You're right that class consciousness is important; and its damaging for us that it is fading. Another reason why we need to contest the Ideology that "the bosses know best" and replace it with an agenda of economic democracy.

Still reading your article; Will add more later...

TE: "The inflated property market actually suggests the usefulness of a big investment in public and social housing"

Tristan, the inflated property market actually confirms the destructiveness of an economy run by and for merchant banking speculators. This is hardly some new phenomenon.

Your monetarist "cure" - more a placebo - by pumping more funny money actually suggests just why you cannot justify your claims to offer a genuine alternative. It would simply fuel more debt and speculation to a system controlled by private banks!

Tristan, check your history: FDR's government overcame the bankers' Depression, then managed to win World War 2 as the materially strongest power on Earth (the USSR was arguably the strongest in sheer sacrificial spirit). FDR's achievement was largely due to banning the speculators from the USA's commercial banking sector, while running mass infrastructure projects for the whole economy instead of the usual liberalist fashion of doling out payola schemes to financier bosses.

Fabianism is a fraud of fake "leftism"; it just betrays the people as its "wolf-in-sheep's clothing" symbol suggests.