Dear readers/participants...

everyone reading this - pls note that another article of mine probably should be published here soon. (within the next week or two) I'm pitching it as "Social Contract and the Struggle for Social Justice" - but that might change by the time it's published. Hoping to hear from you all then too.

Thanks Tristan.

I enjoy your articles and the discussion that follows. It is a pleasure to disagree with you!

I don't agree with the comment you made about the Accord. The Accord was an example to my mind (and I know this will sound predictable) of class collaboration in which certain sections of the trade union bureaucracy were incorporated into the state decision making process at the expense of better wages and conditions for their members over time. During the period of the Accord the balance of shares of GDP shifted towards capital. ( I don't have the figures handy but the shift then was remarkable from memory and has continued to this day.)

The Accord then laid the groundwork for the destruction of rank and file movements and control or influence, and coupling that with a weak leadership unprepared to strike or support strikes for better wages and conditions, union membership plummeted and continues to drop.

The Accord laid the ground (together with the ruling class policies of Hawke and Keating) for the rise of Howard. He was the logical extension of the class collaboration at a union and at a political level.

I understand the mixed economy argument; I just don't see how that addresses exploitation (ie the expropriation of the surplus value workers create) or avoids the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

Anyway, Tristan, I look forward to discussing your next article. I'm writing one on food which I think, if it is any good, may be published in June on OLO, assuming the Financial Review doesn't pay me big bucks and snaffle it up before then!

Friends - just thought you might be interested in a 'letter to the Editor' I submitted to The Age yesterday. Unfortunately they refused to publish.

Still interested in your comments, though...

Dear Editor,

The most vulnerable: including the disabled, aged pensioners, students, the unskilled, carers, the unemployed - have been hit hardest by spiralling increases in the cost of living.

Such increases include hikes in the cost of petrol, of food, and of housing.

Labor is constrained by its promise to restrain taxes as a proportion of GDP. But implementation as soon as possible of an emissions trading scheme is technically not a tax - and could literally reap in billions.

The Aged Pension should rise from 25% of Average Weekly Earnings to at lest 30%. And other pensions should follow likewise after this example.

The ends of social justice can be furthered also by raising the minimum wage, restructuring the PAYG income tax system, and providing tax credits for the low paid.

The conservatives have posed, recently, as champions of pensioners. If the Opposition is true to its word, though, then it should offer support for a bi-partisan consensus: for compassion, decency and justice.

And if Labor is true to the faith that the Australian public have placed in it – then It must act immediately.

Tristan Ewins

Tristan,

Thanks, I agree with your letter, except the bit about the carbon trading tax (see http://candobetter.org/node/510).

I agree with your point about the merits of European style social democracy (although I don't consider it a perfect solution). Many of the far left seemed to have a propensity to view all capitalist systems from as equally bad. In some cases (although I can't substantiate this with documentation) I recall an attitude being put to me in the 1980's that neo-liberal globalisation was in fact to be welcomed as it was considered that this would make the contradictions of capitalism more acute and hence would actually make the achievement of socialism more likely. I would be interested to see if anyone would be prepared to either confirm or dispute this impression that I gained.

Whilst your article raises interesting points, it fails, as I said, to address some of the hard political questions including 'politically incorrect' considerations such as population and immigration (see http://candobetter.org/population http://candobetter.org/immigration ). Unless these are tackled head on, we stand no chance of achieving a sustainable society, let alone a "Good Society".

We are the market. We're employed to produce the commodities for sale. We're more or less forced to sell our right to socially own the wealth we create, when we accept wages in exchange for our skills and time. We do this 'to make a living'. If we socially owned the means of production and produced for our own needs, we would live in a much more democratic society, a good society in short. An increasingly commodified society is not a good one for the overwhelming majority nor is it healthy to be treating Nature as a commodity to be bought and sold for profit.

A good society would be one in which we had more free-time. Being tied to the employers' workplaces for longer and longer hours is closer to wage-slavery than it is to living the good life. Why are we working longer and longer hours when productivity has increased by leaps and bounds over the decades? Should we be able to enjoy greater and greater free-time because we can produce so much more per working hour than in the past?

just re: The Accord...

The Accord saw a decline in the wage share of the economy - which was compensated via tax cuts...

Regardless of these cuts, though, workers clearly lost - for the cut in taxes was accompanied by a decline in the social wage (eg: social medicine and education) - and also the introduction of user pays mechanisms...

By this reckononing - because accompanied by declining social expenditure - I do not consider the tax cuts a 'social wage' in any meaningful sense... (even so - tax credits and a more progressive tax system would be welcome...)

Superannuation gave workers something in return - but discrimianted against women, casuals and the low paid...

And there is the danger that it might see the Aged Pension marginalised in the future... Those dependent upon it may suffer austerity - as the better off (with sizable superannuation investments) - resent the resonsibility of helping the less-well-off...

What was necessary was a scheme that compensated workers in the form of collective capital share... But not just following the logic of share value maximisation... Instead - such a scheme should have been democratically managed, linked to a fair and equitable pension system, and based on the principle of social need...

This is the kind of Accord that Carmichael and others envisaged... But is just shows - when the ALP resorts to half measures - to please business - it is workers who lose out...

Finally - I am waiting on confirmation that my next article - on liberal democratic compromise, civil disobedience etc - will be published this week...

Everyone who discussed this article - feel welcome to discuss my next article too...

most sincerely,

Tristan