I suppose it comes down to the two concepts which have formed the mainstay of libertarian action in Australia in recent years.

Employee rights and the privatisation of services.

The most obvious examples of these are the implementation of workchoices, and the privatisation of Telstra and Qantas.

These issues are about finding balance. The workchoices legislation appears to be geared toward serving an economy that is enjoying strong growth. With skills shortages acute at the present time, I suppose I can see some benefits in redressing the advantages of employees/employers as they stand at present, however when the economy enters a downturn I'm of the belief that they will be exploited.
I'm reserving my judgement of them at present, as most of the instances of workchoices being abused have been, at the very least, misleading. But with the economy being the way it is at present there's been no reason for savvy employers to abuse their employees, as they are a resource in short supply. This won't always be the case.

In regard to privatisation - Governments will legislate all they want, but when a company is privatised, its ultimate goal shifts from providing equitable services to receiving profit. Some core industries should always be geared toward equitable distribution of services instead of profit.

This was evident in the Telstra selloff. The government attempted to a) make Telstra profitable while b) ensuring they are responsible for telecommunications infrastructure and not being able to properly charge competitors for usage. They have created a situation where Telstra is crippled, but is now forced to race against other competitors in an open market. When Telstra does manage to become competitive, it will be after it has jettisoned unprofitable services. This won't be good for rural Australia.
Issues like this have a flow on effect to urban areas - by making regional zones less attractive, it will only encourage centralisation and the problems it causes for urban infrastructure.

I don't really see how the privatisation of Qantas will ultimately benefit Australia, as it has been a successful government owned company for many decades.

Shorbe,

“tao: Your base argument is disingenuous because you want to condemn any other ideology's worst excesses and argue such systems inevitably lead from A to B. However, you're not willing to accept any of the inevitable excesses of Marxism.”

That is precisely the point. I’m not prepared to accept, and no-one should accept without thorough investigation, that Stalinism or Maoism or Castroism etc are the inevitable result of Marxism. People who claim, and unquestioningly accept, that they are, are making a causal clam where no direct “cause” has been established. It is an unsound and invalid argument that is perpetuated by capitalist, and Stalinist, propaganda. Philosophically and scientifically speaking it is nonsense.

Similarly, I’m not prepared to accept, and no-one should accept without thorough investigation, the claim that capitalism (or Christianity etc) is the benign and beneficent, or “pluralistic”, economic system that its proponents claim that it is. Philosophically and scientifically speaking it is nonsense.

You don’t even have to be a Marxist to be suspicious about such claims, just engage in some critical thinking. As an example, in a first year uni course on critical thinking I was given the following causal claim to analyse:

A study was done of 1000 long term smokers, 500 of whom had decided to give up on the advice of their doctors. It was found that the 500 who gave up had higher stress levels, higher rates of heart attacks, and higher death rates than those who didn’t quit. Of those who tried to quit and failed, stress levels were even higher, and their health outcomes were worse than those who didn’t quit and those who did. The causal claim that made was that quitting smoking caused higher stress levels which caused worse health outcomes than not quitting, and that trying to quit and failing was even worse.

cont...

There were a number of problems with this causal claim such as: (a) we weren’t told how the sample was selected, (b) we weren’t told whether there were any relevant differences in the sample, e.g the smokers who had decided to quit might have already had higher stress levels and worse health, which is why their doctors had advised them to quit, or there could have been other lifestyle factors, (c) we weren’t told how things were measured e.g. was the measure of stress objective or subjective, (d) it was implied that increased stress was the cause of worse health outcomes, but the causal link could have been reversed, or both could have been caused by some other factor, etc., etc.

Therefore, it would be foolish to go about saying that giving up smoking causes high stress which causes heart attacks and higher death rates. No doubt you wouldn’t do it.

Similarly, it is foolish to go about claiming that Stalinism, Maoism etc, are the “inevitable excesses” of Marxism.

The first mistake which is made is that people treat Marxism as some theory of power hungry madmen which was created in a vacuum and imposed on Russia. Also apparently, prior to its imposition, Russia was a fantastic place to live, and afterwards Russia existed in a vacuum unaffected by outside forces.

Another mistake which is made is that Europe was a fantastic place to live for ordinary people before and after WWI.

Another mistake is the belief that what happened in the Soviet Union after Lenin’s death, and Stalin’s usurpation of power, was based on Marxist theory, or that it was “socialist” or “communist”.

Other mistakes made are that the Chinese and Cuban revolutions were workers’ revolutions. Also, that the apparent benefits of capitalism gained by workers in the post WWII boom were the inevitable result of beneficent capitalism.

There are many more errors that people make, but these are just some fundamental ones which go to make up the overall misconception that Marxism, socialism and communism, are bound to produce oppressive national regimes.

cont...

To go back to my smoking study example, consider point (d) that rather than quitting smoking being the cause of higher stress which is the cause of worse health outcomes, it could be the reverse causal relationship, or that there could be something else which caused both.

The idea of socialism, and Marxism itself, arose out of the objective conditions of capitalism and the progression of humanity’s thought, just as capitalism arose out of the objective conditions of feudalism and the progression of humanity’s thought.

In 1917 Russia was still feudalist in political and economic form, with a backward and weak capitalist development, but nonetheless part of the global capitalist economic system. It was affected by, and a part of, the objective conditions of global capitalism.

In simple terms, the Russian Revolution was a product of objective capitalist conditions, and Marxist theory, however the capitalist conditions were at the root of both Marxist theory and the Russian Revolution.

After the Revolution, Russia was surrounded by aggressive capitalist countries – 13 capitalist countries gave financial and military assistance to the counter-revolutionary White Army. During WWI and the wars of intervention after the Revolution (i.e. capitalist wars), millions of Russians were killed, including hundreds of thousands of the most advanced communist workers. This exhaustion of human resources, coupled with Russia’s backward economic development, made for hard-going. Also the leaders of the Revolution believed that revolutions in other more advanced capitalist countries, particularly Germany (i.e. international revolution), were immanent and Russian workers would be assisted by international workers and their advanced technology. However the German uprising was betrayed by its leaders and defeated by the capitalists – paving the way for Hitler and the Nazis. All of this, and more, allowed the counter-revolutionary Stalin to usurp power – Stalin then purged Russia of all opposition, including “true” Marxists, such as Trotsky etc.

cont...

So to suggest that there is a straight line from Marxism to Stalinism, and that the horrors of Stalin are a direct outcome of Marxism or are “Marxist”, when the Revolution was enveloped - from start to finish, and on all sides- and invaded by capitalism, and when both Marxism and the Revolution both arose from capitalism itself is in your term “disingenuous”, and completely philosophically unsound. Or, as you say, full of crap.

As for “pluralistic” ideologies which are allegedly not forced upon people, I suppose you mean capitalism. Does capitalism tolerate other ideologies (except of course the opiates of the masses providing they adapt to capitalist ideology)? Can I, and masses of other people, live any other way than under capitalist economic relations? Do I not have capitalist ideology shoved down my throat daily?

As for my comment “Pessimism the great panacea”, I was merely pointing out that while you accuse Christians of peddling the panacea of blissful afterlife, and socialists of peddling the panacea of utopia on earth, you peddle the panacea of pessimism – because nothing will ever be better i.e. humans are inherently bad or stupid or selfish or whatever, they are destined to misery. Therefore, if we only stop hoping for something better, we will all, if not be happy now, at least not be unhappy. Such a view, and philosophy, comes from your misanthropic disposition – you have no faith or optimism in humanity – and so, you go about spreading your unconstructive pessimism and implore people to do nothing and accept the status quo. :-) Didn’t you get the joke? ;-)

If you would like to have a constructive discussion, and stop relying on capitalist perpetuated “common knowledge” and facetious pessimism, I would be happy to oblige.

tao: A constructive discussion is never going to happen because you claim to have a monopoly on truth and for you there is no compromise. A basic example of this is that you claim that the practical examples of socialism haven't been real socialism, yet you want to rip into capitalist theory for practical examples based upon a non-free market system. That's fine. Ultimately though, there won't be a workers' revolution not because people have been brain-washed, oppressed or exploited, but because most people aren't idealists or ideologues and they do compromise.

I actually do think that in many ways, there is hope for the future (and my misanthropy is half tongue in cheek), and that real progress has been made in many areas of human endeavour. Certainly, there are going to be ups and downs and any improvements we do achieve may very well be tempered by drawbacks. I just think that people aren't the two dimensional charicatures painted by any ideology, which is where I believe you make your mistake.