Dear Tristan,

National leaders have been elected on a platform and then have departed from it with good results. Two examples are Roosevelt promising to continue the Hoover fiscal policies and then instituting the New Deal and de Gaulle getting elected with the support of the African colons and then evacuating Algeria. However, politics is the art of the possible. If you are going to depart from your mandate you better be able to get re-elected to continue the departure.

Turnbull is the strong leader that Nelson wasn’t. I think that if Rudd tried to promote a more overtly social democratic/liberal democratic socialist party he would be out at the next election or before, and Turnbull would be Howard-lite.

Roosevelt and de Gaulle could get away with it for two reasons. They were both elected as president with fixed terms of 4 years and 7 years respectively and were both overpowering personalities. In a parliamentary system not only does the prime minister not have a fixed term, but also parliamentarians from his own party can turf him out as Bob Hawke found out.

Rudd wrote excellent essays on Dietrich Bonhoeffer. However, I think he is a better essay writer than prime minister. I don’t think he has either the political skills or the charisma to follow the examples of Roosevelt and de Gaulle.

Dear plerdsus,

Your suggestions are at cross-purposes. If you want to wean Australia off the motorcar you subsidise train and bus fares so mass transit is cheaper. To raise them is hitting the poor and those who would like to use their cars less.

I also agree with all your ideas Tristan - for social justice and long term reform for pensioners and other low income groups.

However, we have to give the voters some credit. While governments are elected on mandates, events like a financial crisis changes the landscape in major ways.

Given the current economic situation, many voters will be more concerned about a 'looming' recession than whether all schools receive the benefits of the Education Revolution or that the Infrastructure Fund is raided to some extent. Many schools have already received their computers, these policies cannot be implemented in one swoop in any case. These election promises are still deliverable but perhaps not within the original timeframe.

I am not sure we need another election at this difficult time although I take david f's point about honesty in campaigning.

As a society we have become greedy and materialistic. Those who have lived off the exploitation of others can certainly live less so that others can live more. But as for fiscal restraint, pensioners and other low income groups have carried the burden for far too long.

Tristan

I think that Lenin's description of the ALP as a bourgeois workers' party is apt, and explains the tensions within the Party and its pro-capitalist actions when in power.

Thus, as you mention, the fact that Rudd is keeping 95% of Workchoices, is explicable in terms of its bourgeois orientation and philosophy and actions.

Rudd is not going to launch a full blown Keynesian revolution, but even if he did it wouldn't work.

The new deal didn't end the depression. World war II did.

While I share your desire for a more just and socially equitable society, Rudd will not deliver on that.

And I think we need to go deeper than just "extreme" capitalism, whatever that is, to understand the crisis. The stagnant rate of profit helps in that understanding. And that of course leads to questions about why is the profit rate low in many developed countries? This seems to me to lead to Marx's analysis of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

So unless there is the wholesale destruction of capital, and massive attacks on workers' living standards, and innovation that leads to lower costs of necessities for workers, then the slide will be on-going I believe.

Neither Keynesianism or neo-liberalism per se do that, unless the bosses use them as ideological cover to massively attack workers or capital is destroyed (eg war, value etc).

Rudd will be part of that attack on workers and their living standards.

The real issue is how to stop Rudd and the bourgeois bent of the ALP. To me that means more than pathetic ACTU Your Rights at work television ads. It means workers mobilising to defend their interest against the bosses (and the bosses' Government)

Passy - I think that you're right insofar as the falling rate of profit leads into an ever-greater logic of exploitation... In a way, though, it is fortunate for us - that even in this context, technological improvements have seen a betterment of material living standards for most of us...

The question, though, is: what can replace this system with its logic of exploitation?

One answer is to retain a market, including shareholders - but for collective share in enterprise to be taken as compensation for the reduced wage share of the economy...

The most important question, though, is: can material living standards be maintained - or improved?

The benefit of new technology remains... Our increased productivity and collective wealth means we have the capacity to provide for the needs of the poor, the vulnerable, the unemployed - even in the context of a global recession - without forsaking as much in relative terms, say, as would have been necessary during the Depression...

You're right, though, that WWII and the arms economy that followed - were core in overcoming the Depression's legacy...

Today we need to balance the need to allow some liberty in the function of markets - but not to allow destructive and destabilising profiteering, speculation etc...

Most importantly, we need to focus on the 'real' economy - including providing for real needs in health, education, aged care, communications, transport, parks and gardens, public space, participatory media - and so the list goes on...

What's important is that we have an economy that promotes human need first - and for this we really need to put the ghost of neo-liberalism to rest... The market alone is not enough. We need the right mix of planning, economic democracy, and responsive markets...