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John Quiggin 
Regarding that, here’s the link to Chicken Nation’s “You Can’t Waste Your Vote” cartoon, which should be spread wide and far before every election.
@Sancho
That’s excellent and should be seen and understood by far more people.
But, there is no way in the world I am going to allow my vote to end up with either the ALP or LNP. I can do this in the Senate without “wasting” my vote, but in the House of Reps – because we don’t have optional preferential voting – that means I am forced to “waste” my vote.
But, just as in the cartoon – as these “wasted” votes pile up – it “might” make the elected (or narrowly unelected) candidate pay more attention.
The hypothesis that Australia’s politics cannot be radically transformed without major changes to its media has not been definitively tested. Perhaps it’s true, perhaps it’s not; we don’t have enough information to be sure.
The hypothesis that the appearance of an unambiguously left-wing party standing for election on a platform of unambiguously left-wing policies would be enough by itself to produce a radical transformation of Australian politics has been tested, repeatedly, and demonstrated to be false. The strategy has been tried more than once and no radical transformation of Australian politics has resulted.
Do you really think so? I see no evidence of it.
The Overton window isn’t static, though. The people writing policy for the last fifty years were products of the Cold War, and there’s little effect any more in pointing a trembling finger at the USSR every time a left-wing idea is floated. Even young Americans are becoming comfortable with the term “socialism”, possibly due to their desolate economic futures under the current capitalist format.
We’re about due for the pendulum to swing back toward the left, and Di Natale seems to be stepping the Greens slightly right to get in its path.
I’m an optimist, of course. But it’s that or wallow in despair.
Yanis Varoufakis: Why I Voted ‘Yes’:
There is a technical term for that kind of reasoning: Piss-Weak.
@Megan
It’s not entirely wasted, for the more votes that go to your number one preference, the better funded they get to be, even if the vote ultimately selects your second to last choice (be it LNP or ALP). So, whatever the scenario, I’ll push my vote to Greens first, then … and then the two major parties at the end. To quote from the Australian Electoral Commission:
ALP cynicism is a truly wondrous thing.
It turns out that “Labor 4 Refugees” is actually nothing of the sort. It is, and obviously has always been, a stooge outfit of the ‘right’ designed to take any real steam out of the segment of ALP supporters demanding humane treatment of refugees.
Is there anyone with a functioning brain-cell and a shred of humanity who still supports the ALP?
After weeks of teasing – fed to and promulgated by the establishment media – that humane treatment of refugees, and particularly opposition to ‘tow-backs’, was going to be a big issue at the ALP conference it turns out that the “whatever it takes” crowd is and always has been running this script from the outset.
Sick.
@Collin Street
Thanks CS,
I really misunderstood the meaning of efficiency here. I don’t intend to spend much time educating myself on economics (many other priorities) but I hope you will be willing to answer many more ignorant/silly questions.
@Megan
Can you please take your vomit somewhere else.
You do not know what civil discussion is.
keep it up Megan. i read everything you write: you tell it like i would if i harboured enough hope for the future to be angry about the present. its nice to see. yrs, alf. venison (fwiw).
@Ivor
A wide range of views is a good thing; you don’t have to read any of the comments here.
I agree with Megan in principle, but I wouldn’t die for those principles because they might change.
I think what is happening with the ALP is a very good thing for my project to change the hearts, minds and votes of at least some of my red-neck neighbours.
The ideas are a great conversation starter at the Post Office and the pub, and possibly will lead to the conclusion that the LNP are really really useless and that anything, even Labor, would be better.
Voting for the Greens would be even better but there seems to be some sort of very real irrational phobia against that!
@Megan
Thanks for linking to that.
The description I would use is not ‘piss-weak’ but ‘missing something vital’. Vanis Yaroufakis writes ‘my main goal is to protect the unity of SYRIZA, to support A.Tsipras, and to stand behind E.Tsakalotos’; but he gives no explanation of why that is his main goal. (He does write that he explained this in an earlier article, but this is not so; the earlier article also contains the statement that the unity of SYRIZA is the main goal but it also gives no explanation of why that should be so.)
Organisations (including political parties) are tools. It makes good sense to take care of your tools and protect them from damage; but it’s a means to an end, never a goal in itself. Sacrificing your tools to achieve their purpose may make sense; sacrificing the purpose to protect the tools doesn’t.
@Julie Thomas
If you make effective use of anything Megan has ever written to induce anybody to consider voting Labor, Megan won’t like it.
@J-D
One has to be a bit careful when inducing people to be followers, for ethical reasons as well as the problem of unforeseen consequences. So before the last state election here in Qld, I was very much not telling anyone who asked who to vote for. I took the line that one should vote for anyone you like but put the LNP last.
Forgot to talk about what is to like in a party or candidate and recently I found out that one young mum had been going to vote Green but had actually voted for Family First because she thought they would be even ‘better’ than the Greens. Face palm.
So there are people, young people mostly who have been too apathetic and turned off by political stuff to take any notice of what has been going on but they are now interested and I do realise that I may not have much chance of changing the votes of the rusted on rednecks but they seem to be less angry than in previous years.
People have been seriously misinformed and uninformed which is most of the problem. The web of false beliefs that exist about the wicked ways and nefarious aims of the hard left are very thick and tightly knit and it is the small things that seem to be convincing to some people.
This actually happened; there is one lady who knits golly dolls (those dolls that are modelled on black face entertainers from the US and used to be called ‘golly wogs’) and puts them in the craft shop. But the person who rents us the shop front quite seriously said “You can’t put them in there!”
I said why not? He said because those things are banned; you’ll be charged with racial abuse or something. He was serious and he’s clearly above average intelligence given his occupation, so that’s not the reason he chooses to believe this nonsense about the way the far or hard left are trying to change our way of life.
I did convince him that it really would not be a problem if we just call them gollies or golly dollies and that there was no law that had been passed to make it illegal; it was just that there is no good reason to call a doll a word that some black people think is insulting. Unless he wanted to upset sensitive black people and why would you do that?
I didn’t manage to convince him that it was okay to sing “baa baa black sheep” though. He knew that had happened.
@alfred venison
Thank you.
@Julie Thomas
Focus.
Policy is one thing, but civil discussion is another.
Calling people
– fascists,
– die-hard ALP zombies,
– stooge outfits,
is not civil discussion. It is a deliberate attempt at self seeking attention grabbing knowing that more mature people will not drag themselves down to this level.
It is also fraudulent because those who raille against existing mass parties never state which party they belong to. This is cowardice.
Megan is an example of all that is wrong with these people. They are more interested in splitting progressive movments into fragments than pusuing real democratic social changes.
They spin hate.
@Ivor
I have to say the flaw in your argument is the implicit assumption that the contemporary Labor Party is a progressive movement. It is not. Its policies are now far too reactionary for any label of that kind to apply.
I think it is reasonable to say to people, “Look, if you want progressive polices you will now have to vote for the Greens, Green Left or International S*o*c*i*a*l*i*s*t*s and so on.
In a free-speech democracy, anyone is entitled to pass a personal judgement on any political party. Megan is entitled to say what she thinks of the Labor Party. She is not under any obligation to soft-pedal her criticisms for fear of offending your (rather dictatorial) demands for some spurious “left” unity. I say spurious because the Labor Party is simply not a party of the Left anymore, if it ever was. It’s always been a capitalist-accommodationist party in essence. In late stage capitalism, it is simply now showing its true colours as any genuine Marxian thinker would precisely expect it to.
@Ivor
Yeah well, progressives might want to set some examples for the right about how a decent person responds to what they judge to be ‘abuse’.
You want censorship in this case because …. and I’m focusing, but all I’m getting is the idea that you are cranky for some reason and judging Megan on the basis of personal attributes that I would not have thought to make about her, and being a bit of a drama queen myself and the sort of person who jumps to conclusions, I’m dubious about judging what behaviour is attention seeking and so suspect.
And, I’m not a member of any party and never have been. I marched for peace and love in the ’70’s and even got arrested – for resisting arrest would you believe but I was underage so just got a suspended sentence in children’s court – but I never registered to vote until I had to one day when the man turned up at the door. So now I’m worried that I am not really a progressive. 😦
I think progressive movements will only succeed when we can be cohesive and tolerate diverse views and I think that any right wing people who read Megan’s comments – sorry to talk about you Megan – will only be impressed at the fact that ‘teh left’ can have disagreements about how to get where we are going because we basically agree on the values that we are aiming for. No?
@Ikonoclast
You can recommend people vote for the IS organisation if you like, but they can’t actually follow that recommendation, for two reasons:
(a) the IS organisation ceased to exist under that name in 2008, when it merged with two other groups to form an organisation called Solidarity;
(b) IS didn’t, and Solidarity doesn’t, run candidates in elections.
@Julie Thomas
False accusations of censorship impress no one.
Good manners is not censorship.
If this individual conducted itself like this is a staff room or workplace they wouldbe shown the door.
They would then be in the corridor crying their hearts out about “censorship”. The last refuge of scoundrals.
@Ikonoclast
But I know so many people who are in the ALP who are geniune and active progressives.
So your point ends here.
If you really think that Megan can express views in those terms, then why shouldn’t other people express their views about her in equivalent terms.
Good manners prevents them. So why should the foul mouth be the sole megaphone of sectarian diatribe?
According to Samuel Johnson “Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel”, and he wasn’t referring to patriotism in general but to the false use of that term by cynical manipulators for their own gain – especially by getting elected to power. Which is kind of germane to the topic at hand.
@Ivor
“I know so many people who are in the ALP who are genuine and active progressives.” – Ivor.
That may well be. However, I would ask the questions;
(1) Why cannot they get the Labor Party to have truly progressive policies on matters like refugees, climate change and ownership of the means of production?
(2) Are they indeed an (ignored) minority in the ALP?
(3) When will they realise that the ALP is not a progressive party but capitalist-accomodationist party?
And you ought to know, in the scheme of things, a “foul mouth” (your term not mine) is a very minor sin. It might not be the best style of rhetoric but it is minor compared to the real obscenities of duopoly party policy in this country. You are worried about “foul mouths” but are you worried about the concentration camps being run in Australia’s name in Nauru and elsewhere? Now, I do indeed assume you are concerned. That being the case I wonder why you compare the most minor of sins, a “foul mouth” (so-called) with a concentration camp. You ought to be worried about the real moral issues, not what is such a quintessentially petite-bourgeois obsession, namely worrying about whether people “speak nice” or not.
Jungney, Donald – the announcement that an ETS and strong renewables targets are going to be Labor policy did surprise me. Let’s see what they actually take to the next election but I remain disappointed at a sustained history of being ineffectual on climate, especially given how often the LNP leads with their jaws, just asking for something to connect. Labor spokespeople don’t seem well read or well briefed about these issues and aren’t showing themselves to be quick on their feet in debate. Even saying ‘that doesn’t sound right, can we get a fact check’ on Q&A seems preferable to letting an Alan Jones or equivalent throw up imaginary numbers without challenge.
I think it’s wishful thinking that we’ll get ambitious climate policies through a rise of The Greens to mainstream power although it will help a lot in my opinion if they grab a long running balance of power position; it needs the mainstream political parties seeing the problem as real and so serious that tactical dodging and deception can’t replace actual policy commitment. I keep thinking new media models, perhaps some kind of news and current affairs search engines with reliability and credibility indexing or something even more novel. Informed people are more likely to be offerred better policy.
@Ikonoclast
You obviously have different standards to me.
Your three diversionary questions are not relevant and anyway have simple answers.
There is no petite-bourgeois obsession.
You do not defeat capitalism by shouting at it, and people cannot make up for their own lonely failures by resorting to filthy politics and foul mouthings.
Megan,
“It turns out that “Labor 4 Refugees” is actually nothing of the sort….
Speaking to New Matilda today, Co-Convenor of Labor for Refugees Shane Prince, refused to confirm whether the group would even move a motion calling on the party to take an anti-turn back stand.
Instead, Prince argued that as turn backs were a breach of international law the party platform was in fact already opposed to them.”
I think there are some good people in the ALP who are speaking out on the refugee issue. I think it is a really big problem at the moment.
Robert Manne wrote an article a while ago about how the refugee issue can’t be allowed to dominate as the Liberal party don’t have any proper climate change policies at all. I think this is not the right approach, as a good climate change policy should not support turning our backs on some of the most vulnerable people in the world. Plus, the current high numbers of refugees in the
world at 50 million has been affected by climate change, which was one of the causes of the Arab Spring and the subsequent civil wars and violence in the Middle East.
On the other hand, I also think it is not entirely fair that refugees who take boats are resettled faster than refugees who wait in camps to be resettled. Some refugees can wait in camps for twenty years and still not get resettled (some don’t want to be resettled and just want to stay in camps until they can go home, like some Palestinian displaced people).
But now at 50 million, we have the highest number of refugees since WW2, and it took until 1968 to resettle all the refugees from WW2.
But I think you are wrong to be dismissive of everyone in Labor, when we met with our MP Lisa Chesters she said she and I think some others were trying to get Bill Shorten as Labor leader to offer to host an international conference on refugees following the next election. I think an international summit is a good idea as really there needs to be a global plan to temporarily or permanently resettle such high numbers of refugees.
@Ivor
We now see that the Labor conference has voted down the attempt to stop Shorten’s “Turn Back the Boats Too” policy. Thus we see proven (once again) that Labor as a party is totally morally bankrupt (though not all the individuals in it necessarily are). I am not surprised. My very low expectations of Labor were fulfilled yet again. It’s peculiar how certain people can see that concentration camps are concentration camps except when they implement them themselves. What a grievous lack of moral, historical and political insight.
BTW, on the other matter, you don’t defeat capitalism with accommodationist policies. Labor is most assuredly petite-bourgeois when it is not being something considerably worse as it was at its conference today.
@Ikonoclast
The outcome of policy always depends on the membership. This is dominated by the right because of childish abstention deliberately encouraged by looney-left sectarians and all those middle class do-gooders, mavericks and blogging warriors who are missing-in-action where it counts.
So I blame you.
@ZM
That’s not really a correct description of the reality.
Australia has now had an absolute ban on accepting ANY UNHCR refugees at all, from anywhere – including refugee camps – since last October. The ALP is silent on this atrocity of course.
There are reports that a Transfield concentration camp guard had his throat slit last night and his body dumped off a bridge on Manus. This is an ALP concentration camp.
We can, and should, be adhering to our obligations under the Refugee Convention and that would include taking in as many refugees as possible regardless of whether they are currently in a camp or try to come here by boat to seek asylum. The argument about taking one over the other might have more weight if we were already fulfilling our entire immigration numbers (about 200,000 annually) solely with refugees from camps, and even then I couldn’t accept turning a boat back to sea with desperate people aboard.
The ALP has very deliberately adopted the Abbott/LNP policy on treating refugees inhumanely. They are completely free to do that and their supporters are entirely free to keep supporting them regardless of that, but they can’t pretend they haven’t taken that policy as their own.
I find it deeply disgusting that this party pretends to have any “values” whatsoever.
@Megan
If a party did exactly the same things but described itself as having no values whatsoever, would you find that any less deeply disgusting?
@Ivor
So those who refuse to join a completely flawed and morally bankrupt organisation are to blame for that organisation’s behaviour? I guess you would want that inscribed on Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s tombstone.
@Ikonoclast
Society is completely flawed and morally bankrupt.
Capitalism is completely flawed and morally bankrupt.
Free trade is completely flawed and morally bankrupt.
Fossil fuels are completely flawed and morally bankrupt.
Western culture is completely flawed and morally banrupt.
How many tombstones do you want?
What tune do you want to sing?
Are you a member of society?
@Ikonoclast
So tell me, how do you defeat capitalism?
@Ivor
Megan:
Notice the quality of her evidence.
The actual situation is described here:
Dept Immigration
In essence:
Australia’s fundamental obligation under the Refugees Convention is to not return a person
to a country where there is a real risk that they may be killed, tortured or suffer cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
There is also provision:
Complementary protection may be provided to people who are not refugees as defined by the Refugees Convention but who face a real risk of significant harm if they were to be returned to their home country.
Finally:
While a substantial proportion of places remains available in the programme for vulnerable refugees offshore, most of whom are referred by the UNHCR.
The situation for boat people is mandatory detention. For this group the UNHCR says:
Abbot’s government reduced the humanitarian programme from 20,000 resettlement places in the fiscal year 2012-2013 to 13,750 places in 2014-2015, of which 6,000 are expected to be available for UNHCR-referred refugees. In September 2014, Australia and Cambodia signed a memorandum of understanding for the relocation of recognized refugees from Nauru to Cambodia.
You can search under Australia on the UNHCR website.
Megan:
Notice the quality of her evidence.
The actual situation is described here:
Dept Immigration
In essence:
Australia’s fundamental obligation under the Refugees Convention is to not return a person
to a country where there is a real risk that they may be killed, tortured or suffer cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
There is also provision:
Complementary protection may be provided to people who are not refugees as defined by the Refugees Convention but who face a real risk of significant harm if they were to be returned to their home country.
Finally:
While a substantial proportion of places remains available in the programme for vulnerable refugees offshore, most of whom are referred by the UNHCR.
The situation for boat people is mandatory detention. For this group the UNHCR says:
Abbot’s government reduced the humanitarian programme from 20,000 resettlement places in the fiscal year 2012-2013 to 13,750 places in 2014-2015, of which 6,000 are expected to be available for UNHCR-referred refugees. In September 2014, Australia and Cambodia signed a memorandum of understanding for the relocation of recognized refugees from Nauru to Cambodia.
You can search under Australia on the UNHCR website.
@Ivor
You are a tribalist. You cannot admit when your own “tribe” has done and is doing wrong grave moral wrong. “My political tribe right or wrong!” is your motto.
“The Labor national conference has voted down a motion to reject the policy of turning back asylum seeker boats after an emotional and passionate debate.” – ABC News
So we can see Ivor you are in favour of sending people back to their deaths and also in favour putting people and even children in concentration camps. This is the centrepiece of ALP refugee policy and you support the ALP so you support this.
You have zero moral credibility. I am not going to bother replying to you again.
@Ikonoclast
I am not a tribalist.
I am not in favour of sending people to their deaths.
I am not in favour of putting anyone in concentration camps.
You are not qualified to judge.
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/07/10/nine-month-pause-unhcr-referrals
I wish I had a better source, but I’ll trust this over the Department of Inhumanity and Death any day.
Anyone in favour of supporting the ALP is, by definition, supporting a party that put people in concentration camps, sent people to their deaths and now wants to tow refugee boats out to sea.
Children in concentration camps – put their by the ALP – are being abused.
But if anyone criticises this statement of fact they are bizarrely a “sectarian” and an idiot.
@Ikonoclast
If Ivor is trying to recruit “left” or “progressives” into the ALP, I think he’s going about it the wrong way.
On the other hand, if he is trying to discipline me or anyone else into silent obsequious obedience to the ALP line, he’s kidding himself.
The ALP is a fascist clown outfit and today died on the issue of humanity toward refugees.
Never mind though, tomorrow the big issue will drown out that minor event: gay marriage – the most pressing moral and political challenge we face as a nation.
@Megan
I agree. Julian Burnside got it right.
SPEECH TO THE LABOR NATIONAL CONFERENCE
“What I have to say to you today is not what I would have expected to say.
I do not expect you to agree with me.
Let me start by saying that in my view the current Prime Minister is the worst in our history. The current Government is probably the worst in our history.
But we also have the least effective Opposition in living memory.
It will not be news to you that a lot of people – at least those who think about their vote instead of voting out of habit – must be wondering whether either of the major parties is worth voting for. In my opinion, they aren’t.
There was a time when Labor stood for something. If it still stands for anything, it has been conspicuously quiet on the matter.
On asylum seekers, Labor’s record is patchy and getting worse. In the 2013 election campaign Labor tried to out-promise the Coalition on the cruelty with which it would treat boat people.
I know that asylum seeker policy might be seen as a niche issue, but we are now at the stage that it calls in question the character of the nation.
Labor’s refugee platform speaks in high-sounding terms of fairness and humanity, but it stays silent on the fact of deliberate, intentional cruelty to boat people.
How many Labor MPs have even been to Manus Island or Nauru? When was the last time a Labor parliamentarian went to Manus Island or Nauru? How much do Labor parliamentarians know about the shocking conditions in offshore detention? Labor has not used its position to expose the cruelty and hypocrisy of the Government’s position.
The Coalition’s rhetoric says they are worried about asylum seekers drowning in an attempt to reach Australia, so they punish the ones who don’t drown. It is an intentionally hard line. It is a hard line which depends on a cruelty.
To an outsider, the only difference between the two major parties is this: the Coalition treat boat people and boasts about it; Labor would mistreat boat people, but is ashamed of it.
A voter recently wrote to 45 Federal MPs asking two simple questions:
“In your personal opinion, are asylum seekers who arrive in Australia by boat treated humanely?
“Do you consider that people who arrive in Australia informally and seek asylum should be called ‘illegal’?”
Nineteen of the MPs were Labor MPs. Fourteen of the Labor MPs ignored the letter. They didn’t even acknowledge getting it.
One of them forwarded the letter to Richard Marles (the Shadow Immigration Minister) which is a strange thing to do when a personal opinion was asked for. But it didn’t matter because although Marles replied, his reply did not answer the questions.
Four other Labor MPs responded to the letter but did not answer the questions. They did say it was important to treat boat people with compassion and fairness, in a dignified humane way. Well, maybe Labor could advance those ideas publicly.
Do any of you have any idea how cruelly people are treated in offshore detention?
If you understand how shocking things are on Manus and Nauru the answers to that voter’s letters might have been different.
But how many Labor MPs have been to Manus or Nauru? When was the last time any Labor MP visited Manus or Nauru?
Either you have not bothered to find out the facts, or you know the facts and don’t care. Either way, Labor should be ashamed of itself.
The Opposition has a chance to be the second-loudest voice in the country. So why are you so quiet about these things?
Labor supported the Australian Border Force Act, which makes it a criminal offence to disclose anything about conditions in detention, including instances of child sex abuse.
There is a defence in section 48, which permits disclosure for the purpose of reducing a serious risk to the life or health of a person. But Labor’s Shadow Minister seemed to be unaware of section 48, and instead defended the legislation by pointing to the more onerous provisions of the whistle-blower legislation.
The only available inference is that Labor supported the legislation without understanding it, and without regard to the obvious chilling effects which the legislation is bound to have.
If Labor actually believes that people in detention should be treated with dignity and compassion, it should not have supported the Australian Border Force Act.
But that’s the problem: viewed from outside, it looks as though Labor does not actually believe in its own rhetoric. In fact, it looks as though Labor does not believe in anything much at all.
If that is where today’s Labor Party stands, it will not long survive.
Labor today looks like a weak centre-right party which does not believe in itself. A party that believes in nothing except power will end up with nothing at all.
If Labor refuses to stand up for the principles it espouses, to articulate them and then argue for them, it forfeits its right to any political support.”
Perfect words by Julian Burnside which sum up what Labor is now.
@J-D
“How to defeat capitalism”?
Colonise it? Asset strip it – take all the ideas that this ideology and its adherents have used to force their preferences on other people, and show these ideas to be only useful for economic man, not any other individual or institution on the planet.
Tell a story about progress and progressives that makes it obvious Capitalism and Conservatism are regressive and only for those who enjoy stealing from differently abled people.
Ask regressives why they focus so much on the behaviour of the poor and needy and exaggerate the negatives in this group but they focus on the imaginary benefits of working for the rich and greedy and why they go to such lengths to excuse these people of their sins.
Don’t be like them and don’t exclude individuals because you don’t like the way they behave in society; it’s not your society; it’s not your progress; it’s ours and there are many paths and different ways to achieve our goal.
Ivor I still can’t see any rational basis for your emotional response to Megan’s words; are you too angry to be rational? It happens you know.
There is an article at The Conversation by Sarah Joseph that you might like to read. I can’t comment there; my account is locked because apparently I violated community standards by abusing some person who really deserved it. So unfair.
@Julie Thomas
At the height of feudal and theocratic power in the Middle Ages, it would have seemed impossible to defeat those powers even if one could conceive of their defeat and any different kind of order. As it turned out, it took something like 500 years.
Depending on how you date its beginnings, capitalism has to date lasted roughly about 250 years. Shifts to radically new systems play out over long historical periods. Capitalism really does not have to be defeated. It will defeat itself. It is a self-defeating, self-limiting system. It is an unsustainable model both ecologically and in political economy terms. In fact, capitalism is already obsolete. Developments have already occurred which will render bourgeois representative democracy and market economics obsolete. I will write on these matters when we get another sandpit.
Those who are mired in the current paradigm (bourgeois representative democracy and market economics) are just like the benighted souls of the middle ages. They can conceive of no other system than their own and believe that their current system (feudalism then and capitalism now) is the end and apotheosis of all history. History has shown no system is indefinitely stable. Capitalism in turn will give way to a different system. The signs are already here if you can read them. As I say I will write of these matters when we get a new sandpit.
hi Julie Thomas – do you mean this article:- https://theconversation.com/operation-sovereign-borders-offshore-detention-and-the-drownings-argument-45095 ? i think its a damned shame you’re blocked from there – i’d love to see your stuff at the conversation – any chance of a reprieve? -a.v.
@alfred venison
Probably, I would have to ask Cory the mod who locked my account, nicely and perhaps apologise and that seems to be something I can’t force myself to choose to do. And the regular commenters seem to me to be doing very well without me. 🙂
Icon, I read John Ralston Saul some time ago and was totally impressed with his critique of both capitalist and socialist ideologies as being merely ways of dividing up ‘wealth’. My memory of what he said, and the bit that I took as being the most salient point was that buddhism is the only existing real ideology because it incorporates the reduction of desire as fundamental for any complete human system or society.
I agree that it – capitalism – is already dying. Many pundits have been predicting that but what is to take its place is still in the process of becoming or emerging or self-organising onto a new attractor state – the paradigm shift in econ is a big part of this transition or shift – but the recognition that complexity is the question and the answer now seems to be nearly mainstream in some societies.
Did you read that statement by the Business Council President, Catherine Livingstone? There is very little response from the commentariat about this radical claim.
“”We are experiencing what physicists would call a ‘phases change’ in our economic environment, where previously held assumptions about causal factors and relationships no longer seem to hold,” Ms Livingstone said.
And as you say, the emerging new paradigm or attractor state will be one in which constant growth – but growth of what? – is part of the process.
and ..I’m listening to Nick Cater I think it is on “Outsiders” saying that Shorten will lose because the educated left and the ‘hard right’ of the ALP will never be able to get along.
Is that going to be true?
@Megan
Using “if”s to insert deliberate lies is anathema.
Trying to play the victim is pathetic.
And to call the ALP a “fascist clown outfit” means you are a rude and crude inveterate sectarian.
You cannot provide evidence, just sectarian diatribe and while slandering the ALP you have kept your own group hidden.
Pure cowardice.
@Ikonoclast
It looks as if what you’re saying is that you needn’t do anything and you don’t propose to do anything, but long after we’re all dead you’ll be proved right.
I know that nothing lasts forever. Everybody dies. Capitalism will not last forever, the human species will not last forever, the planet Earth will not last forever. Knowing these things, however, does not help me make choices about how to act now, during my own life.
The thought that one day this world will be a different place seems to be one that gives you comfort. Although I know it’s true that one day this world will be a different place, I don’t draw comfort from the thought, because I know that the range of possibilities includes those where things get worse as well as those where things get better.
@Julie Thomas
Are you doing these things? Do you know of other people doing these things? Are their actions bringing the defeat of capitalism measurably closer?
Julie Thomas can respond or not to that part of your question directed to her, but, for my two bits worth, capitalism is moribund, J-D, the burning question is whether it will be superseded by democratic socialism or corporatist feudalism. the nation state is on the skids too & whether or not it will survive capitalism is unclear at this time. in my opinion rationality, as we have known it since the birth of capitalism & the modern nation state, will not survive the displacement of print literacy – its forms of knowing & the centrality of the social/institutional supports that have perpetuated it – by the emergent electronically mediated oral culture of the internet. a period of warring states, rolling climate disasters & death on a massive scale is looming. magical thinking is on the rise – subversion of democratic processes by corporate money is on the rise – mass deception by corporate propaganda masquerading as news is on the rise – deliberate subversion of democracy by governments is on the rise – legalistic privileging of corporations against nation states is on the rise – corporate banking bankrupting nation states for the benefit of corporate investors is on the rise – &c., &c., &c. the goal should be to do everything within our power to assist the replacement of capitalism by democratic socialism while doing everything in our power to forestall the replacement of capitalism with corporatist feudalism. -a.v.
Just for the record, should the blindingly obvious have escaped anyone’s attention – I do not have a “group”.