IEW SUMMER 1986 No. 98

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The Chamberlain Case; China’s Environment: Manual Handling.

FEATURES AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 98 THE ‘MORAL’ MEETS THE ‘NEW’: RSrrY 0 F W oLoN G Alliances on the Radical Right SUMMER 1986 The New Right has been in the news. According to government and media alike, it’saU about a new fashion for free market revivalism. But the radical right is about much more than economics - it’s also about bringing the private sphere in to the public domain, and a bout the PRINTER AND PUBLISHER stuff of people’s daily lives. This 'm o ral'side o f the radical right revival is one we ignore at our

RED PEN PUBLICATIONS PTY. LTD. Pcnl' KAREN COLEMAN 4 DIXON STREET, SYDNEY 2000.

EDITORIAL COLLECTIVE AFTER THE ACCORD: Looking For An 13 Alternative Economic Strategy BRIAN AARONS. ERIC AARONS. HILDA ANDREWS, MALCOLM ANDREWS, DAVID BURCHELL, In the ACTU’s debates, renegotiating the Accord came across as meaning little more than STEVE CATT, MIKE DONALDSON. grasping the nettle of “wage restraint*. What got left behind in the debates around the two- LYNDELL FAIRLEIGH, BERNADETTE tiered system was the broader social and economic framework embodied in the original FOLEY. GLORIA GARTON. JANE INGLIS, IAN LISSER (SYDNEY). accord, but never implemented, Can an alternative strategy bring these broader issues back SHERIL BERKOVITCH, LOUISE onto the political agenda, and where do wc start? CONNOR, JIM CROSTHWAJTE. HANS LOFGREN, SOL MARKS. PAVLA FRANK STILWELL MILLER. ANITRA NELSON. KEN NORLING, JOHN SCHMID, OLGA SILVER. JANNA THOMPSON THE WELFARE DEBATE: The Stakes Are High 18 (MELBOURNE) ACCOUNTS AND DISTRIBUTION The crisis of the welfare state has been treated with comparative indifference on the left. Our ideas of alliances tend to take a coincidence of interests between the public and community DIRECT SALES: HILDA ANDREWS sectors for granted; our definitions of the economic tend to relegate the private sphere to the AND MALCOLM ANDREWS (SYNDEY): margins. Taking welfare seriously requires re-engaging with our basic principles. It also OLGA SILVER (MELBOURNE) means engaging in a debate which at present is almost being lost by default. NEWSAGENTS: WRAPPAWAY DIST­ RIBUTORS. I CHALDER STREET, MARRICK V1LLE, NSW 2204 ADAM FARRAR Ph; (02)550.1622 AFTER CHERNOBYL: Peace, Rights 26 DESIGN AND LAYOUT and Freedom

MARIUS FOLEY Chernobyl reminded us — if we need reminding — that nuclear power, like nuclear KAREN VANCE weaponry, is never ‘manageable’. But does the overwhelming urgency of the need for BETH GIBBINGS disarmament mean that all of the other social issues on the international agenda have to be TYPESETTING put on the backburner? How far isdisarmament compatible with concerns about justice and human rights. East and West? GLORIA GARTON KEN COATES

COVER POLITICS AND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE 31

SNJEZA GJURACIC Why is it that politics and pleasure seem almost a contradiction in terms? in making its politics popular, the left has a lot of thinking to do ... CORRESPONDENCE AND ENQUIRIES CARMEL SHUTE DAVID BURCHELL AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW TIME OUT 37 BOX A247, SYDNEY SOUTH SYDNEY 2000 AUSTRALIA The Spanish Civil War Remembered; The Cricket Season; Op-shop Fashion.

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Our new occasional column on books and publishing. 2 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW BRIEFINGS

For one thing, reading a book Whittaker, nurse and social worker rather than digesting disconnected said calmly “ It means we are Christian daily media reports over the years people.” Chamberlain begged them to brings the issues into perspective — at pray and then, after going outside, least as far as the evidence of what shouted “I am a minister of the happened over six years ago. Many gospel.” Such bizarre responses people may now be sick and tired of aroused the suspicions of the police, the Chamberlain case — a luxury now particularly when, after a couple of available to those of us who could not hours, the Chamberlains appeared to make head nor tail of it, but not to its calmly accept their loss. (Though even victims, their friends and their church, Christian faith couldn’t prevent Lindy the Seventh Day Adventist. For Chamberlain from bursting into tears many people, it is unthinkable that hours later and then, from time to Lindy Chamberlain could have been time, through the two inquests, the innocent and yet sentenced to life murder trial and the appeals.) “No imprisonment for murdering her normal mother would behave like daughter. “There must be something that" then became a widespread in it,” was a common response of a expression of the reason why she had couple of years ago. Yet, as the Royal to be guilty. (Wasn't it one of novelist Commission of Inquiry unfolds, it Albert Camus' characters who was appears that there was nothing in it: if convicted of a murder with part of the you leave aside trial by media, police evidence being that he “hadn't cried at bias, shoddy scientific evidence and the funeral of his mother?”) Some popular prejudice. feminists picked this up, but few others Members of the left and the on the left did. Lindy Chamberlain labour movement have historically wasn't “normal", just as none of us are often been the subject ol grossly unfair in another way: though she broke police and legal actions. One has only down many times in the court, during to recall McCarthyism in the 1950s her trial she barely concealed heranger and. earlier, the Sacco and Vanzetti and contempt for the prosecutor who judicial murders, in Australia, was committing in her eyes, the Aboriginal people would have a fair monstrous crime of accusing her of claim to being the main contemporary killing her own baby. Her own counsel victims. The puzzle is. why was the left privately asked her to be "more virtually silent or unconcerned about demure", or perhaps he should have the Chamberlain case? If the said more "ladylike" or "motherly”, Chamberlains had belonged to some Just one small example will left sect (or been Aboriginal), rather suffice to outline the police-journalist than the Seventh Day Adventist relationship which helped jail Lindy Church, the matter would have been Chamberlain. While drinking on a seen very differently. One difference plane flight, a policeman hinted to two was. of course, that it wasn't a case of reporters, in that confidential way religious persecution in the same way which occurs when someone has some that frame-ups of left wingers are often hot gossip, that the killing of Azaria part of a wider campaign. was probably some weird religious The Nevertheless, suspicion and hostility ritual. Bryson outlines it: to a non-mainstream religious group Chamberlain definitely played a role. D u rin g the search of the Chamberlain's But of course it was more than house at Avondale the detective had Case just popular prejudice. The discovered a Bible in which a passage Chamberlains, on all the evidence, marked in the Old Testament, described a forced themselves to "accept" the ritual slaying inside a tent. The weapon It’s a strange experience of deja devastating loss of their daughter was a tent peg. The victim's head was cut off. The story was outlined in red. Apart vu, reading John Bryson’s Evil Angels because it was God's will. It was their from the presence of a tent in the narrative, while the Royal Commission of life-jacket right from moments after (here was not much to connect it with Inquiry is proceeding into the the child was snatched, when Michael A/aria Chamberlain. The slain was a conviction of Michael and Lindy Chamberlain stumbled into an charioteer, the captain of an invading army Chamberlain for murdering their nine- adjoining campers’ tent and yelled ... the captain was not decapitated after week-old daughter Azaria at Ayers “You are playing Christian music, death, even if. as the police supposed, Rock in 1980. what does that mean?” Amy A/aria was. For all that, the story enjoyed BRIEFINGS AUSTRALIAN LEFT jREVIEW 3

exalted currency in the press rooms and around policc depots. The one particular which did not change in the retelling was the vivid and convincing detail (hat Ihe passage was coloured in some versions underlined — in red ... I The Bible had been in Li tidy 1 Chamberlain's family, according to an inscription on the fly leaf, since 1884. In j keeping with ihe fervour of the times, the stories were generously illustrated, with a process not much different from etching. This is not now a popular technique [ because it breaks down, and transfers colour to the opposing leaf.

The “special connections” which ' a number of journalists had with the police was a material factor in the grotesque miscarriage of justice of the L Chamberlain case. Another, perhaps I more important, factor within the courtroom was the “expert evidence" which helped construct the scenario of a baby’s throat being cut in the car, the “arterial spray” within the car. and the placing of the baby in Michael Chamberlain’s camera bag. The expert evidence is now in tatters, particularly that which specified the presence of baby's blood (foetal haemoglobin) in the car. The third leg of the Chamberlain case was outlined by Denis Barritt, the magistrate in the first inquest who upheld the view that Azaria was taken by a dingo:

Police forces must realise, or be made to realise, that courts will not tolerate any standard less than complete objectivity from anyone claiming to make scientific submitted, the case became complex. proprietors, reactionary governments observations. It would have been a lot of work to or business interests. But this realm of understand it. But other people, not The NT police, it is said, were out to cultural politics, in the broadest sense disprove the basis of this criticism only Seventh Day Adventists, worked of culture, is becoming more and more out what was happening. So there from then on. important in understanding social were other factors, including I On each of these questions: the attitudes and how they change. Not reliability of the police, popular suggest, the left’s narrow definition of only that, it must be said that the left prejudice against minorities, politics. The Chamberlain ease was probably shied away from the ease questioning “experts" and trial by not “political” — yet it occurred because of its association with what because of prejudices and processes media the left has a position based was perceived as a “crankish” religious on its own experience which should that, in other contexts, would be seen group. have alerted it to the possibility or as highly political. So, while the left is pondering its probability of a frightening Another important reason may future and about social change in miscarriage. Yet there were no articles have been that the left’s instinctive Australia, it might do well to ponder analysing the case in the left press, no reductionism cannot explain the on the deeper reasons why one of the petition campaigns, no participation events. The combination of popular most celebrated cases of legalised in what became a grass roots campaign prejudices with the actions of injustice to an individual passed it by. for justice. Why? Partly because, as journalists, policc and forensic experts layer on layer of evidence was cannot be reduced1 to the will of media David McK night 4 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW BRIEFINGS

conservative Australian politicians, Some parts of the country are so China’s with their touching faith in the magical lacking in fuel that farmers burn their qualities of tall glass hotels and stubble for very necessary winter Environment curving concrete dams. However, the warmth. The loss of organic matter Chinese vision acts to reinforce the necessitates fertilisation. Fertilisation most effective of their environmental is also required to improve yields to hina has a population of over policies — one child per couple. The compensate for the loss of arable land one thousand million in a posters of people in technological to high-rise apartments, roads and C country only slightly bigger wonderland show parents and single factories. Fertilisers demand daughter with heads proudly raised in irreplaceable fossil fuels that are also than Australia. The people of China the sky. These advertisements are essential for transport, electricity have a low standard of living, although plastered on mud brick waits along generation and industrial activity. all are fed, clothed and housed. Most rough dirt roads full of people, Fossils cannot indefinitely fuel Chinese would like to experience a puddles, chooks and dogs. There are growth. Increasing living standards higher living standard. A large no ornamental plants in the village must ultimately depend on adjusting population and the quest for economic gardens. There is no waste strip beside population to sustainable resources; growth are the major underlying roads, railways and streams. China thus the environmental virtues of the causes of most of the environmental would be very rich if it had only the one child policy. problems that affect or threaten China population of Australia, but the Unfortunately, even a one child today. present numbers at the present policy does not immediately halt The Chinese vision of the optimal standard of living strain against the population growth which continues to future contains flying machines and basic resources of arable land. respond to past fast increases through tali mirrored buildings. In some In well-forested Manchuria, half the medium of the reproductive age respects this vision resembles that of the harvested wood is used for heating. group. Thus, growth in industrial BRIEFINGS AUSTRALIAN LEFT .REVIEW 5

production is being planned and Sinica have sought to understand maintenance, hasty industrialisation implemented in a context of regeneration processes in order to be and an increasing reliance on fossil population increase. This industrial able to devise the most appropriate fuel bode ill forthe future. However, it growth produces some unfortunate silvicultural methods for those forests should be remembered that traditional by-products. Heavy metals pollute devoted to wood production. They Chinese agriculture, as still practised water where factories have been have been extremely successful in this over most of the country, is extremely dispersed to the countryside, while program, but the general feeling is that energy-efficient and is in harmony water and air pollution characterise natural forests are being cut at a rate in with the environment, unlike western the big industrial cities. excess of their potential sustained agricultural systems in which fossil The air pollution is heavily yield. However, the steep hills that fuels and irreplaceable soil are turned flavoured by coal. This sulphur abut the rice paddies of the wetter into food. Environmental impact on dioxide and particulate pollution has a countryside are increasingly used for human health is the third problem flavour and effect very different from the establishment of plantations, and area. Air and water pollution our petrochemical mixes with their their growth probably compensates problems are locally severe, but the nitrous oxides and ozone. The traffic for the loss of production from the main environmental health problem, in Chinese city streets is dense, with the native forests. that of providing enough food for the dominant vehicle being the bicycle. Although there are communicat­ people, has been solved. This non-polluting form of ion problems between scientists and The Chinese have demonstrated locomotion is leavened by a rich managers, the lack of a strong profit convincingly that starvation is a variety of petrol-driven vehicles and motive undoubtedly leads to more political, not a Malthusian, process in the occasional cart drawn by nappied rational land use decisions than those the world today. They may also horse. If the mix changes more to which occur in Australia where the demonstrate that the solution to the motor vehicles it is likely that the land use decision-making process is problem of low living standards is an Chinese countryside could suffer the heavily distorted in favour of adjustment of human numbers to the acid rain syndrome that is currently commercial oligopolies. desirable per capita sustainable yield destroying much of the European Environmental problems are of of the planet. Alternatively, they may forest estate, as this syndrome requires three types. The first is the attempt to follow a destructive quest substantial quantities of both types of maintenance of the heritage values of for economic growth at all costs, pollutant. the natural and cultural landscape. In following the model of the capitalist China has a higher percentage of this area the Chinese seem, at present, and state socialist countries of the rich its land under native forest than very advanced, although the Red and predatory parts of the world. Australia. These forests are extremely Guards were fond of smashing ancient rich in species, some of which, such as monuments in the not too distant past. the gingko and dawn redwood, are In the second area of productivity J.B. Kirkpatrick famous as living fossils. The forest estate has been declining, particularly in Manchuria where the rich volcanic soils on gentle slopes can be used for agriculture. One of the most popular Manual Handling crops in the higher part of this region is ginseng, which also grows naturally in n October, changes to legislative loads — contribute to about one-third the forests. and award restrictions on of work-related injury as well as As part of the UNESCO “Man I women’s employment were general ill-health. Workers in most and Biosphere" program, the Chinese announced at a national conference jobs and industries undertake manual have set aside forest reserves that put convened lo review the processes for handling. A participatory strategy to to shame the efforts of the various removing their discriminatory effects. prevent injury from manual handling Australian governments. For As a result, many topics are now on the would need to be a core part of any example, the Biosphere Reserve at occupational health and safety agenda workplace health and safety program. Changbai Mountain on the Korean which would probably not have been In keeping with the 1983 Accord, border covers 190,000 hectares (ha), addressed without pressure having the National Occupational Health and most of which is highly commercial been exerted to overcome the effect of Safety Commission has established a forest. These forests will remain in the old legislation. Working Party to develop a Code of their present delightfully virgin state, Practice on Manual Handling. The unlike most Australian forests. There After the conference, the ACTU Draft Code and an accompanying is only about 35,000 ha of tall eucalypt and the CAI (Confederation of Discussion Paper are to be distributed forest in Australia that is left in large Australian Industry) issued a joint in December for two to three months enough stands to have any chance of statement on areas of agreement. of public comment. long-term viability, and all this area is Manual handling is at the top of their The commission has no power to threatened. list. Manual handling activities — enforce standards, except in areas of The scientists of the Academica pushing, pulling, Itfting, and moving Commonwealth government 6 AUSTRALIAN LEFT .REVIEW BRIEFINGS

employment and the territories. The Draft Code of Practice can be picked up in state health and safety legislation; and it can be developed for specific industries and work processes and then incorporated into negotiated agreements on workplace health and safety. The notorious “weight limits” — of Wollongong Jobs for Women v. AI&S fame — are the only existing legislative provisions for manual handling. These limits are set for juniors and adult women (16kg) but not for adult men. These provisions are grossly inadequate and can operate to restrict women rather than restricting hazard. Sex-specific provisions of this kind are inconsistent with affirmative action and the Sex

Discrimination Act. Beyond a paper together. The possibilities and inconsistency, they contribute to the problems are similar too — see the sex-segregation of the workforce and special supplement on Affirmative to the exclusion of women from many Action in ALR No. 96. areas of work. They can also be used In some industries and unlawfully, as was shown in the case workplaces, the level of manual against AI&S. handling is already being limited and The Working Party on Manual reduced by smaller packaging, job Handling is proposing a compre­ redesign, and co-operative work hensive preventive approach involving practices. Both the QNU (Queensland hazard evaluation and, where Nurses Union) and the BWIU, for necessary, redesign of the job or task. example, have recognised the It is consistent with the principle (and problems created by the heavy, formal purpose of state occupational cumulative loads their members health and safety laws) of fitting the handle over a work shift; the BWlt) job to the worker and not the worker has started a campaign to reduce these to the job. The principle of prevention problems by limiting the size and encourages reduction of load-bearing number of besser blocks. and consultation between trade Taking risks and performing unions, employers and workers. The heavy, arduous work in certain kinds proposed Manual Handling Injury of jobs is identified with masculinity, Management Plan, to be undertaken although not so much with the through consultation in the economic and authority relations that workplace, requires systematic keep men pen tim ing very heavy and reporting of injury, and job analysis to wearing work. Querying existing identify job demands and potential relations, and proposing alternative hazards. The Draft Code, therefore, ways of organising work could focuscs upon the working threaten patriarchal relations and the environment rather than categories of sta n d ard defence (w hat Hester workers to be rejected. Eisenstein calls ‘class/income/ Implementation of the Draft masculinity protection') against Code of Practice on Manual Handling women entering areas of work where is remarkably similar to affirmative the prevailing system of values can be action as a strategy to obtain equal challenged. employment opportunity. With the involvement of unions, work for both Chloe Refshauge the affirmative action and manual handling plans can be undertaken FEATURE AUSTRALIAN LEFT .REVIEW 7 THE MORAL MEETS THE NEW: Alliances on the radical right

Karen Coleman*

p until the last few months it might almost have seemed that U Australia was going to remain free o f any concerted m obilisation o f New Right forces, unlike the UK or USA. There, since the elections of Thatcher and Reagan, the rhetoric and politics of what has variously been called neo-liberalism, libertarianism, neo-conservatism, monetarism, supply-side economics or just plain Thatcherism or Reaganomics have virtually dominated economic debate and provided the rationale for right wing assaults on Keynesianism , “big government” and the welfare state. Similarly, the backlash against the legacy of the “permissive” ’sixties has thrown into prom inence the likes of Mary Whitehouse and Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority. Their crusades against pornography, abortion and homosexuality have fVRNING been the moral arm o f the m ovem ent, in 1 IO AU. MOTHERS fighting to protect the family from the ravages of feminism and sexual V&M CHILD IS AT RISK! liberation and to restore authority, discipline and decency. ic:;:. "■ r. Recently, however, the ... ■ ■ \ 1 *.£" ■;■■■■ ■ ■ ' Australian media have given extensive coverage to a group of business leaders ■ ■■■ - r" '■ belonging to the H R. Nicholls Society who have been dubbed the New Right. Prominent among them are Andrew Hay, Chairman of the Australian deregulated labour market. Already Wallsend at Robe River. Federation of Employers, Charles they have achieved considerable Union-busting, though, is not the Copeman of Peko-Wallsend, Hugh successes — most of the major union only purpose of these economic Morgan of Western Mining, and ex- defeats suffered during the past year or “drys”. In 1984, Hugh Morgan argued head of Treasury, John Stone. The so have been credited to the efforts of that miners have divine right to any focus of their attack is union power various H.R. Nicholls members1 — resources on Aboriginal land and that and particularly the arbitration Mudginberri, the Queensland this, being conferred by God, had system, and their aim is the complete power dispute, the Dollar Sweets and automatic precedence over any dismantling of the present industrial Seymour abattoir disputes in Victoria, Aboriginal claims to land. They echo relations system and a free and and the recent sackings by Peko- their British counterparts in 8 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW FEATURE

advocating deregulation of the private too much power3, the sort of issues against the Equal Rights Amendment sector and privatisation of pursued by the moral authoritarian to the American Constitution. She government-owned enterprise such as arm of the New Right have the founded a national organisation callcd Telecom, Australia Post, OTC and potential to attach to some deep- Eagle Forum which successfully TAA, These policies, of course, are seated fears and anxieties in people. fought to prevent ratification of the coupled with demands for a reduction This is precisely the sort of strategy amendment in 1982 despite its in the size of state bureaucracies which that moral campaigners pursue; seemingly assured passage in the late would enable taxation to be obviously, fears of an AIDS epidemic ’seventies, Schlafly came out to minimised. could very easily be whipped up and Australia in April 1983 to address the There are very substantial gains in terms of manipulated by scare tactics to justify Women for the Family Conference economic efficicncy to be had from the repressive anti-homosexual laws; held at Macquarie University and development of a competitive concern about corruption in the police sponsored by F.O.L and W.W.W.W, environment, with privatisation actingasa and justice system and about drugs Whereas Schlafly’s public supplementary weapon designed to could lead to a punitive law and order speaking engagements were confined engineer further competitive gains and to campaign. mainly to the already converted, with wind back the size of the bloated public The Moral Right attempts to link Michael Levin’s visit we saw a SeCt° r Andrew Hay.1 the fears which people have about determined effort to convince both economic issues to their anxieties social authoritarians and economic Public attention to the New about their children, family liberals (loosely speaking) that the Right, then, has focused on this small breakdown and sexual promiscuity. wellbeing of the economy and but very powerful group and its The linch-pin in their two-pronged democracy is inseparable from the activities and aims in the economic attack is the women’s movement, moral health of society. Levin is a sphere. This is hardly surprising, given which they have scapegoated as the professor of philosophy at New York their prominence in the business sector arch enemy of both the free enterprise City College of some academic repute, and the potential economic and system and the family. They argue that he is also authorof numerous articles political clout afforded by their feminism is, on a fundamental level, on feminism which have been positions. Likewise, media current opposed to democracy, freedom and published in libertarian journals. His affairs coverage over recent years has liberty because it wants to engineer a itinerary showed twenty-nine public centred increasingly on “hard” society in which men and women speaking engagements. There were economic issues as if this is the “real would be the “same”. By naming the also press, radio and television stuff" of public debate. It would be enemy as feminism, an identifiable and interviews and he was invited to very easy to assume then that New relatively powerless group can be address a full meeting of National Right activity in Australia is limited to shown as responsible for the moral Party federal MPs at Parliament those questions of government and even economic problems besetting House just days prior to the party intervention in the market and free society. So, unemployment, the size of coming out in opposition to the Labor enterprise. the deficit, marital breakdown, government’s Sex Discrimination Bill. In fact, a number of groups and problems in the education system, His public speaking engagements organisations have been energetically promiscuity, pornography and a host included straight academic mobilising for some years over the of other social ills can be perceived not philosophical papers, papers delivered same moral issues which have as endemic to the structure and in academic settings on feminism and preoccupied their counterparts in the functioning of capitalism and/or freedom, addresses on university UK and USA. If trends there are patriarchy, but as actually curable by a campuses organised by conservative anything to go by, we could anticipate free enterprise system allowed to student bodies, fund-raising dinners that issues connected with the family, operate unfettered by the demands of for Women Who Want to be Women, ■ sexuality and law and order will be feminists and their allies. addresses to traditional rightwing introduced squarely onto the public A coalition of interests between organisations including the National i agenda in the future. Very likely, a what have been labelled “social Civic Council and the Knights of the Liberal-NCP victory at the next authoritarians”4 and economic Southern Cross, addresses to business federal election would see a resurgence libertarians has operated successfully groups (Australian Confederation of of demands for laws to control things in the United States and much New Industry who subsequently came out like abortion, pornography, Right philosophy and politicking against affirmative action programs, homosexuality and drugs, and for the there incorporates both strands into a and Melbourne Jaycees), addresses to repeal of the ALP’s Sex Discrimin­ cohesive (if somewhat contradictory) economic liberals (Australians for ation and Affirmative Action platform. Those successes inspired C o m m o n s e n s e , F re e d o m and legislation. groups here, groups such as Women Responsibility), and a variety of social Just as union bashing has been in Who Want to be Women and Festival authoritarian groups (Festival of the vanguard of the New Right of Light, to sponsor visits to Australia Light, Australian Family Association t economic offensive partly because it by Phyllis Schlafly and Michael Levin. and pro-life organisations). appeals to the “commonsense” beliefs Schlafly achieved considerable fame in Basic to both Schlafly's and of most Australians that unions have the United States by her campaign Levin's position is the proposition. FEATURE AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 9

which they claim to be indisputable, children, have given homosexuals socialist spenders are working for that males and females arc born the rights of marriage, adoption and affirmative action in jobs, which, on biologically, psychologically and spousal benefits, mandated tax her definition, means giving a job to aptitudinally different. For Schlafiy, funding for abortion, and given the less qualified woman in preference the difference is God-given; for Levin enormous power to the federal courts to the more qualified man in order to it evolves in terms of sociobiology and and bureaucracies to impose a gender- achieve a female quota in various is absolutely essential to social order, free society on people by denying them levels of jo b category. This constitutes cohesion and survival. They the right to discriminate between men a direct attack on the family, she define feminism as the belief that there and women. argues, because when a man loses out are no differences between men and In coalition with the feminists on a job to a woman it is his wife and women and that any observed against traditional values and children who suffer. The women’s differences are the results of artificial lifestyles, according to Schalfly are movement has undermined the self­ sex roles imposed by sexist education, homosexuals and lesbians, the esteem of the homemaker/wife and social conditioning and a conspiracy “profiteers of promiscuity” and the belittled the role. Its message is that of male chauvinist pigs. Apart from socialist spenders. The latter two are every woman should put her own self- narrowing feminism down to a intresting, but for different reasons. fulfilment before every other goal. caricaturc and ignoring the diversity of The profiteers of promiscuity are the And, she says, the women’s movement, this definition people who make money out of the ... that attitude to life is not compatible of feminism serves their purposes well. promiscuous lifestyle associated with with a happy marriage and it is not To any “sensible" person, the notion is feminism — abortionists and compatible with motherhood. A woman contraceptive manufacturers, for immediately and obviously “wrong" has to be self-sacrificing and put her child’s and flies in the face of commonsense. example, and all those who profit welfare ahead of her own comfort, Having “established” the irrefutable through pornography on TV, cable convenience and career. and irreducible nature of the sexes, television and video cassettes and both argue that feminist attempts to magazines like P la yb o y a n d But feminists, full as they are of achieve equality in or out of the Penthouse. By sleight of hand, envy, bitterness and hate, refuse to do workforce, to force girls and boys into Schlafiy thus includes as allies of this. They want to eliminate the role of what they call “unisex” behaviour by feminism some of the very groups to wife and homemaker and force alt non-sexist indoctrination will result in whom they are most opposed. The women into the workforce. This also appalling damage. socialist spenders are those people or serves their purposes as it means a Interestingly, the groups or groups who have a vested interest in windfall of taxes to increase the institutions that they see as threatened big government so that they can use power of government over people’s are not the same. Schlafiy fought the taxpayers’ money to carry out their lives, as many other duties and Equal Rights Amendment in the states political programs. activities — such as cooking and on the grounds that it would take away She claims that attempts by cleaning — which women traditionally from women privileges which they Ronald Reagan to cut out fraud in do would be mediated by the market already enjoyed at law, that it would government, to be more efficient and and thus subject to taxes. By changing disadvantage families and children, fulfil his mandate are seen by these the tax system to disadvantage single and downgrade the institution of people as attacks on women. They talk income families, they push women out marriage. She argued that it would about the feminisation of poverty, but to work and hence their children into have made women eligible for the the main reason why women are poor, feminist-run, government-funded military draft, it would have removed she claims, is because they get divorced child care centres, where they can be the supposed legal obligation on men — and that’s their problem, not that of indoctrinated with pro-feminist to financially support their wives and the government ofthe taxpayers. The ideology at the taxpayers' expense. 10 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW F E A T U R E

To neglect the obligation to take whatever and to the proper development of little Properly channelled, male aggression action is necessary to safeguard the moral, boys into men. He makes much of is transformed into the basic social and economic integrity of the family supposed innate differences between ingredient of the free enterprise system is to abandon the future to a bunch of the sexes, all of which reflect — the competitive spirit. The only marital misfits who are seeking their form of social organisation identity as Ms, mistaken about morals, pejoratively on women, but reserves misinformed about history, motivated by his fullest enthusiasm for the instinct compatible with male nature is pure the axiom 'misery loves company”, and of aggression on which males have a capitalism which will arise who want to remake our laws, revise the premium. He refers to it as that spontaneously from that nature if marriage contract, restructure society, “fantastic anarchical destructive feminists don’t interfere with the remold our children to conform to lib energy" and uses it to explain and natural order of male/female relations values instead of God's values, and replace justify the totality of social structure, in the family. the image of woman as virtue and mother the inevitability of hierarchies and the So, what's this got to do with with the image of prostitute, swinger and dominance of men in the family and freedom, liberty and democracy? lesbian. the workplace. Natural male Having “established” what is While Schlafly may be anti­ aggression is so powerful, even in little ■’given” in nature, Levin can argue that feminist, she is not anti-woman. She boys, that if it is not properly curbed feminist efforts to create what they argues that American women are and channelled in the family via the consider as a more equitable privileged and, if you are white and mother’s unconditional love and distribution of power must be middle class, you undoubtedly are. strong dominant father, we would fundamentallay coercive, because only The privileges she has fought to retain have a “Hobbesian state of nature, a by coercion can men be artificially are clearly those of a minority of war of all against all”. prevented from naturally rising to women — those with husbands able If the family is broken up by the positions of power. In libertarian and willing to support them. Her welfare state, as he claims feminists philosophy, coercion is an illegitimate wholehearted support for the free advocate, that “fantastic destructive incursion on liberty and only the bare enterprise system, for small aggression” is unleashed and the minimum is justifiable — to prevent government and decreased taxes “ resu lt is eig h tee n y ea r old the thwarting of other people's derives from her class position. sociopaths”. So, the preservation of freedom. For example, police can On the other hand. Levin is the traditional patriarchal family is the justifiably stop criminals from clearly misogynist. He argues that only thing standing between us and coercing others, while the state can use feminism threatens the institution of social chaos and anarchy. It exists to the military for the defence of a democracy and the values of liberty socialise little boys. (Little girls don’t nation's freedom. and freedom. Moreover, it constitutes seem to need socialising — In Levin’s interpretation, an obnoxious affront to masculinity presumably, they are closer to nature.) feminists have been most successful in using state coercion in two areas — education and employment. In this, h« caters to the two strands of the New Right: the social authoritarians who fear what is being done to their children by non-sexist indoctrination and the thwarting of the ’‘natural" development of femininity and masculinity; and to the economic liberals who fear that employers will1 be forced to hire inferior women in preference to men. What infuriates him most is that feminists have won governmental support for the implementation of their programs. Anti-discrimination legislation and affirmative action programs constitute government intervention in the free enterprise system and all such I intervention is against liberty and freedom. Indeed, those who endorse anti-1 discrimination legislation, endorse f slavery.

When you've got a situation where the I powers of the state can be used to male I F E A T lR E AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 11

people, resources and their money at the markets would achieve a social predominant here than in the States. disposition of others against their will, ecological balance just as nature does. Indeed, in the Australian context, this that's slavery. That’s what anti­ The driving motor of the system is the itself may be a limiting factor. discrimination laws are. entrepreneurial spirit derived from Nevertheless, I think that they masculine aggression. Taxation, have the potential to appeal to a far By nature, women would prefer to stay regulation and feminist charges of wider group of people, especially if at home and look after their children, male oppression have dampened and they do suceed in publicly linking he says. They are not biologically stifled the free and economically equipped to compete in the open moral issues with economic ones. The productive expression of the marketplace, and so they will have to family is the central focus of concern masculine ethos, thus leading to to both Schlafiy and Levin and, be forced to work and forced into stagnation of economic security. indeed, it is to social authoritarians positions of power — and this deprives generally. It is the social institution men of jobs that should be rightfully which mediates between the public and naturally theirs. Because of the They fought the Equal sphere of life (the economy, high taxes needed for the excesses of Rights Amendment in the production and consumption) and the the welfare state, a male breadwinner’s private sphere of personal relations, income is no longer sufficient to States on the grounds that emotionality and childbearing and support his family, so women who it would take away from rearing. Their view of the family is a prefer to stay at home are pushed out women privileges which “common-sense” version of that held to work. If the government chopped by the American structural the welfare state and hence the need they already enjoyed at functionalist school of sociology. For for high taxes, according to Levin, it law.______the latter, the institution of the family could reduce the deficit and inflation has two functions indispensable to would go down so that a single How can feminism be combatted? general social order. Firstly, it breadwinner could support a family, It can only be crushed if men cease socialises children so that they develop women would get out of the workforce being embarrassed by feminists and and there would be no unemployment. stand up to them. He says: into “autonomous” individuals who Unfettered by regulation, the internal can appropriately perform their adult Even feminists ... deep down inside each dynamics of free enterprise would social roles. Second, it provides an feminist if there is a shred of femininity left, emotional haven from the public ensure that all people who wanted jobs will respond to some sort of masculine had them, and had the job for which world where its members (particularly dominance ... Men are going to have to men) can withdraw to be rejuvenated they were most suited. All this gross start taking feminism seriously. And 1 just so that they are better able to return interference in the free market is anti­ have a vision th a t... suddenly a bunch of and perform their public roles in the democratic as it is carried out by the big. commanding, virile, masculine, unelected bureaucracy and via the dominant males are going to get up and say economic sphere. courts who impose hiring quotas on “Whoa! Now let’s start talking sense” and For all this to operate smoothly it employers to achieve equality of then the whole feminist superstructure is is necessary that men and women outcome regardless of qualifications. going to come apart. At least that's my conform to their appropriate sex roles. This, according to Levin, will result in dream. Such conformity ensures harmony permanent discrimination against men and balance both in the wider social I don’t think it’s necessary to since 50/50 equality will never be system and in the family itself. With point out the flaws in Schlafly’s or achieved because those women who such a view of the family and its Levin’s claims — they are abundantly can manage to do so will remain at functional relation to society, it is not clear. What I do want to emphasise is home. surprising that social authoritarians the concerted effort to marry the see feminism as constituting a Every time you pass over a man to favour a concerns of the two arms of the New malignant threat to social and familial woman you are actually penalising not Right and I think this is clear from organisation. A pervasive theme in only the man but also the wife and family. their arguments, and the organisat­ much of their anti-feminist rhetoric is You make it that much harder for a ional linkages they are forging. This the claim that feminist social working man to make ends meet, that alliance has proved successful in the engineering will spell the downfall of much harder to raise a family on a single United States, but in Australia neither income. And of course it makes it that western civilisation as we know it. group can muster the support they much harder for the father to earn the They point meaningfully to the respect of the family that he needs to need to effect change — despite some Roman Empire, indicating that the function and which makes family life successes. I think that the social causes of its demise can be found in the enjoyable. authoritarians are acutely aware of the sexual depravity consequent to a need to widen their appeal and have breakdown in "proper” relations For Levin, as for others on the looked to the American example. As it between the sexes. New Right who celebrate capitalism as now stands, their constituency seems What should not be overlooked in the perfect system of economic limited mainly to those people who trying to understand the motivations organisation because it evolves from pursue a fundamentalist form of of the moral right is the strength of human nature,6 completely free Christianity, and -this is much less emotional attachment to the family 12 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW FEATURE

and “family values”. After all, most the sexes as fundamental to social capitalism stem from its own internal people are reared in families and it is order: rigid sex roles, a fixed division dynamic. To maintain growth when the locus of a ferment of passions and of labour, a sexual hierarchy seem market expansion is no longer a desires. Family relations conjure up in natural or God given. Any questioning sufficient means to ensure the most people deep emotions of love and of these essential “givens" is therefore continued accumulation of capital, hate, security and anxiety. For women alarming and frightening. Simplistic technology replaces labour to who have experienced fulfilment as explanations like those offered by maintain profitability by cutting costs. mothers, and love and the security of Schlafly and Levin hold considerable In the words of the Myer Committee, dependency as wife, for men who have appeal: "a situation of jobless growth”. Again, their masculinity confirmed as •Firstly, they reassure them of the it’s the system which they support, providers and patriarchs, feminism “natural” order of things and, by rather than feminism or any other does constitute an ignominious and offering them answers to what they are scapegoat, e.g. Asian immigrants or devastating challenge to a way of life experiencing as social disorder, restore leftwing unions — which produces the that they find rewarding and a sense of certainty and “knowing” consequences. affirming. For the moral right, this is which, despite the successes of The conditions which have what the family represents to them and feminism gives them some sense of provoked the formation of many of what it should represent to all people. security. these groups won’t go away and will A stable and sex-role divided family •Second, they scapegoat an more likely deteriorate. Therefore, the unit they see as ensuring happiness for identifiable group as the source of potential for support for the sorts of its members and contributing to many of their anxieties. ideas which they espouse could well general social stability. •A nd third, by doing this, attention is grow. Their focus on issues connected totally deflected from the structural with the family and sexuality can tap Family relations conjure and systemic nature of the rapid and deep emotional responses in many anxiety-provoking social changes people. In the past, groups like F.O.L. up in most people deep confronting us. and W.W.W.W. have tended to be emotions of love and hate, The sorts of things that disturb dismissed by the left as mere fascists or them most profoundly, and for which lunatics and hence beyond serious security and anxiety. they blame feminism, arise from a political consideration. The success of patriarchal capitalist system which social authoritarians in the United From observing at some length relentlessly pursues the creation of States of America and the United those groups to which Schlafley and new markets by tapping into desires Kingdom indicates that such an Levin spoke, I gained the very strong and transforming them into demands. attitude may be short-sighted and even impression that fear is one of the So we are witnessing the emergence of dangerous. primary factors which motivates them a multi-billion dollar industry which *An earlier version o f parts o f I his article and makes them believe what these trades on the commodification of people tell them. Economic recession appeared in the WEL Newsletter, WEL sexuality — of which pornography is Informed, No. I3S. September 1984. under and unemployment make them fearful the most graphic, but not the only a pseudonym. of impending social chaos and disaster example. which has replaced the comfortable The mass media, particularly security of the long boom. They are television, in both programming and NOTES concerned about failings in the advertising, has become a primary 1. Business Review Weekly. August 22. 1986. education system, about the lack of agent of socialisation, interjecting 2. Sydney Morning Herald, 8 October, 1986. discipline in youth, about promiscuity itself between parents and children. 3. Davis. E,: “Trade Unions and the Media in and immorality. They want a return to Schlafly. for example, abhors violence a social order which is stable, to a Asutralia" in Power. Conflict and Control in and sex on TV, and enjoins people to Australian Trade Unions. K. Cole.cd.. Penguin. hierarchical order in which everyone switch off or to complain to the Ringwood. 1983. knows their role, status and position, advertisers. What neither she nor the 4. Edgar, David: "Bitter Harvest" in New where social control is embedded in right generally can countenance or Socialist No. 13, September-October. 1983. the internal organisation of the system dare grapple with, is the fact that mass pp. 19-24. in a rigid morality which excludes the marketing and mass advertising of the 5. Australians I'or Commonsense. Freedom and possibility of behaviour and values kind they despise, is an integral part of Responsibility (A.C.F R.) Are you Concerned? Undated pamphlet. C. 1983. changing. the free enterprise component of capitalism which they so wholeheart­ 6. Gilder, George: Sexual Suicide. London. What they see as the traditional Willington, 1974. family is, of course, the fundamental edly endorse, and are so eager to save unit of such a social system. from governmental interference. This KAREN COLEMAN teaches sociology it sort of structural blindness permeates Consequently, feminist critiques of the Kuring-gai College of Advanced much of the New Right thinking. family and feminist efforts to change it Education in Sydney, and is researching are particularly feared and resented. In similar vein, they cannot the area of sexual politics and the Right. The notion of a unisex society appals comprehend that the technological them — they see the division between and structural changes required by AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 13 AFTER THE ACCORD: Looking for an alternative economic strategy

industry policy and planned trade, and working class perspective, this strategy Frank Stilwell (iv) a more expansionary program of also suffers from the problem that the expenditure on the social wage. underlying theory is unso un d. Lowered wage rates lower the level of he economic policy of the federal Current negotiations over a new domestic demand for goods and government has become two-tiered wages system to replace the services and thereby undermines one Tincreasingly conservative. Accord Mark 11 have clearly revealed condition for economic growth. True, Potentially progressive aspects of the the government's commitment to Accord have been sacrificed on the enforcing wage restraint. As such, it wage cuts may also enable Australian firms to compete more successfully altar of conservative economic has acccpted — as have some sections orthodoxy. This article identifies the of the union movement the validity against importers and to reduce their competitive disadvantages in principal components of current of the argument that wage restraint is policy, points to their limited the key to economic recovery. The international markets. But whether effectiveness and adverse social extent to which the two-tier system these gains in terms of international competitiveness outweigh the effects consequences, and outlines a more would actually lead to further real of a more depressed home market is progressive alternative. wage reductions is not immediately obvious — some groups of workers in not self-evident. Moreover, the The four main components of powerful unions would prcsumablydo devaluation of our currency by over current policy are identified as (i) wage better than they have done under the thirty-five percent in the last two years restraint, (ii) financial reregulation, Accord Mark 11 but there is no should have given the necessary (iii) reliancc on the J-curve effect on doubt that the implementation of the competitive advantage to exporters. A the balance of payments, and (tv) system by the government and the couple more percentage points off the increasingly restrictionist macro- arbitration system would be motivated rate of wage increases is hardly likely economic policies. The progressive by the objectives of achieving a to succeed where that massive alternative includes (i) a more broadly- reduction in overall wage costs to devaluation has failed. Or is the based incomes policy, (ii) financial employers. objective to press on with such drastic reregulation, (iii) interventionist Whatever its demerits from a measures that our waee rates are

Placating the implacable: the Sydney Stock Exchange. 14 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW

reduced to the level of Hong Kong, the transactions on the Australian market expand exports have only led to an Philippines, or Indonesia? It is a long are purely speculative: even those increased flow of imports, particularly road to travel in pursuit of transactions which do involve in the form of capital equipment or international competitiveness. exchanges for the conduct of other intermediate goods not The experience under the Accord international trade are often timed so produced in Australia. The has been of significant wage-restraint. as to take advantage of expected dismantling of major sectors of There is revealed in the statistics on the market fluctuations. In these Australian industry has left the legacy redistribution of income from labour circumstances, deregulation adds to of an imbalanced industrial structure to capital: the share of wages and the volatility of economic conditions which is seemingly incapable of rapid salaries in the national income fell by and undermines the capacity of the import-replacement. five percent between 1982-83 and government to manage the overall The other major problem concerns 1985-86, and the gross operating economic system. the “invisibles” component in the surplus has risen accordingly. Profits balance of payments. This includes have been at record levels. However, items such as interest payments on investment has been low: only The hoped-for J-curve...is international debts (two-thirds of thirty-two percent of available looking like "Waiting for which has been generated by the investment funds were used by the Godot". private sector), tourism, shippingcosts business sector in the first half of the associated with international trade, last financial year, compared with and insurance. The negative balance forty-six percent in 1982-83. It is the The government’s principal on these invisibles has been failure by business to invest in policy for resolving the balance of approximately three times larger than expanded productive capacity which is payments problem has amounted to the trade deficit over the last year. the basic problem, not insufficient waiting for the competitive advantage Since many of these “invisibles” are wage restraint. generated by the devaluation of our not responsive to devaluation of the Deregulation of financial markets currency to manifest itself in higher currency, there is no general reason to has been justified by Bob Hawke as exports and reduced imports. There is expect a J-curve effect to operate. having “improved the ability of the no clear evidence of this happening financial sector to allocate funds to the yet, more than one and a half years Because of the failure of the most productive uses". This sits oddly since the major falls in the exchange J-curve to materialise, the government with the evidence just cited of a rate in early 1985. It is looking like has re-oriented its macroeconomic declining share of investable funds “Waiting for G odot”. policy towards a more restrictive approach. On this view, if devaluation being used in Australia. What we have In fact, there are some very clear observed is a major rechannelling of reasons why the hoped-for J-curve won’t reduce imports, then incomes funds into speculative areas, and into effect has been so unresponsive. have to be cut. That is the clear mergers and takeovers which involve International trade is influenced by message in current monetary and fiscal | financial gains without adding to many factors other than relative policies. Of course, deflationary' productive capacity. What we have prices. Some thirty to forty percent of policies are an extremely crude way of also observed are major increases in trade has been estimated to involve resolving a balance of payments Australian investment abroad: this has intra-corporate transactions. Quotas problem. In circumstances where | risen in value from $1.5 billion to $7 and other non-tariff restrictions are con sum ers spend ab o u t twenty} billion per annum over the last four widely used by other countries, such percent of their income on imported 1 years. Moreover, there is no evidence that Australian exports would have goods, their incomes have to be cut by1 that deregulation of financial difficulty in expanding market shares $5 to shave SI off the total import bill, j institutions has led to lowered even if they were more competitive in The alternative is to adopt policies which divert expenditure away from ! interest rates through the effects of price. Bilateral trade agreements are increased competition. common. In any case, much of imports without an overall adverse In a similar vein, deregulating the Australia’s exports are of primary impact on the level of national income, The government's “buy Australian" value of the SA in the foreign exchange products whose prices arc determiend appeal comes in this latter category, markets was originallyjustified on the on international markets. The success but the government is clearly reluctant grounds that it would lead to a balance of the devaluation-led recovery to use more systematic means such as of payments equilibrium and reduce strategy depends more on ourcapacity import controls to redirect the incidence of speculation against to export manufactured goods, and expenditure to domestically produced the SA. The reverse has occurred. The the marketing expertise in that sector goods. volatility of our exchange rate has is often conspicuously lacking. been associated with greater balance On the import side, the development The irony of the situation is that an of payments problems, and the of Australian import-replacing increasingly restrictionist macro­ incidence of speculation on foreign industries has been likewise slow to economic policy is being adopted al exchange markets has reached materialise. Some importers have the very time when economic recession unprecedented levels. Even trimmed their profit margins to threatens. GDP growth has stalled, conservative estimates acknowledge maintain their shares of our domestic and the registered unemployment rate:j that more than nine-tenths of market. In other cases, attempts to has risen again to over eight percent AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 15

Neither can the devaluation of the Australian dollar be retied on to generate them: as we have seen, the devaluation makes imports more expensive and cheapens our exports, but it is all too clear that this has not reversed the balance of payments deficit. Hence the need for selective government intervention to promote import-substitution,export expansion and industry modernisation. Industry development agree­ ments can be developed as a means of achieving these objectives. Trade protection and bounties could be provided in exchange for commitments on job-creation and modernisation. The problems of outdated and inefficient capital equipment can be thereby addressed. Industry development agreements involving union and workforce participation in the decision-making of firms also open up avenues for improved industrial relations and co­ operative planning of the changes in functions, skills and location of Traditional Keynesian prescriptions in participants, even to the extent of employees in the process of industry these circumstances would involve causing a recession. restructuring. more expansionary policy measures, These four policy components These sorts of policies can be including increased budget deficits. add up to a program of conservative extended to include incentives for However, the constraints which the economic management. The innovation, investment allowances government imposed on itself by potentially progressive aspects of the and export market development adopting the Trilogy have inhibited original Accord have been set aside in grants. Increased public investment this response. True, the taxation leg of the process. In certain respects, the can stimulate the development of the Trilogy was exceeded in the last current policies Can be seen as paving Australian industry, using the federal budget, but thecommitment to the way towards the more draconian Australian Industries Development a reduced overall deficit continued the measures advocated by the New Right. Corporation as a vehicle for “deficit fetishism’’which had bccomea One obvious task for the left is an government equity and loan finance. general feature of fiscal policy in the oppositional one, emphasising the Support for new industries can also be preceding years. The Keynesian inadequacies, inconsistencies and provided through measures such as notion of budgetary policy being inequities of the current economic accelerated depreciation allowances, geared to the manipulation of the level policies. But there is also a need to go research and development grants, tax of domestic economic activity has further in developing an alternative subsidies and infant industry been jettisoned. In its place we observe economic strategy, and mobilising for protection. What is involved is not a policy geared to satisfy the the implementation of at least some unconditional subsidies to capital but expectations of international aspects of it. specific arrangements geared to the speculators. This may be a “realistic” The continuing problems of provision of employment. approach in circumstances where unemployment and an adverse Selective import controls can also financial deregulation has given those balance of payments require a be used in conjunction with industry speculators unprecedented power to systematic and selective program to policies to encourage import- destabilise the economy. But even develop Australian industries. The substitution. This trade regulation Keating's unexpectedly low deficit necessary policies involve involves the application of the figure of $3,5 billion did not satisfy the countering the de-industrialisation of principles of national planning to the speculators, judging by the response of Australian industry and promoting external as well as the internal the foreign exchange markets in employment growth through import- economy. Without it Australia is practice. Thus, the government is substitution, export expansion and locked into the uneven development pushed into increasingly conservative industry modernisation. and volatile situation which fiscal policy in a vain attempt to satisfy These positive structural changes characterises the international the demands ol these market will not comc d1>out automatically. economy. 16 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW

It must be conceded that such democracy and national/regional The problem is that the incomcs controls may raise prices of goods economic planning. This provides a policy component of the Accord has bought by local consumers. This effect framework, not simply lor the not been properly implemented. Its needs to be set against the effects on management of the capitalist narrow concern with wages policy incomes of not having the controls. In economy, but for the construction of needs broadening to include other practice, the benefits of having access embryonic socialist institutions, which incomes such as professional Ices, to an array of imported goods would extend the principle of democracy into executive salaries and income from be sharply eroded by the falling levels the economic sphere. capital in the form of interest, rent and of employment and consumer dividends. The evidence clearly W hat would be the main incomes. In currcnt circumstances, indicates that the limited incomes components of a more progressive import controls are needed to prevent policy under the Accord has favoured alternative economic strategy? The growing balance of payments and capital at the expense of labour. A following policy proposals are unemployment problems while more broadly-based incomes policy presented as a contribution to the industry policy brings about a planned can redress this imbalance while urgently needed debate on that issue. program of import-substitution. retaining the advantages of an orderly They build on various ideas emerging wage-fixation system over a from the labour movement. What is The original Accord clearly deregulated system in which the attempted is to synthesise them into an involved a commitment to redress the powerful gain at the expense of the integrated program of policies which cuts which the Fraser government weak. could be implemented to deal with the made in areas like health, education, current economic problems if only we In the immediate context, what is housing, social security and welfare. could sweep aside the dominance of unfortunate in this respect about the This commitment remains incomplete, more conservative economic proposed two-tier wage system is its and is now being reversed by the orthodoxies. tendency to narrow the focus of current fetish of fiscal restrictionism. The proposals are presented in economic policy to wages policy — as. It is the more urgent in the face of an two parts. First, a set of four policies is it has often been argued, has been the imminent recession. A program of outlined which directly counters the tendency with the Accord since its expanded government expenditure four policies discussed in the first half inception. Moreover, while there is a can simultaneously stimulate domestic of this article, and which is a useful formal conncction with a more production, mobilise unemployed basis for immediate pressure to broadly-based program of control resources, improve socio-economic “change the direction". Second, a set over prices and non-wage incomes and welfare and redress poverty. It is of further policies is more briefly policies which link wages policy with potentially of particular importance in indicated which could form the basis other aspects of economic policy such redressing the “feminisation of for building a transitional program to as investment, technological change poverty" — the stark over- and labour retraining, it is hard to see representation of women among those this being implemented in practice, below the poverty line. What is unfortunate about given the government’s record. The There is certainly much scope for the two-tier wages system is task is to re-establish the need for expenditure which simultaneously its tendency to narrow the incomes policy to embrace more than generates employment and satisfies focus of economic policy to wages policy: even within its own social needs, e.g. in housing, transport frame of reference, the government’s and social services, Nothing could be wages policy. call for “restraint with equity” is more irrational than to have vacuous without this broader policy focus. unemployed people and unfulfilled a more socialist-oriented economy. It In a similar vein there is a clear ease needs for social facilities and services. goes without saying that such a for stricter pricc controls. The creation Employment in the public sector has a program can be no more than of an equitable incomes policy I key role in this respect. Expanded utopianism without the popular requires such controls as an indirect j government expenditure can do more support necessary to make it effective. chcck on excess profits. The existing than generate jobs: it can However, it is surely useful to have a operations of the Prices Surveillance simultaneously meet specific demands vision of an overall strategy within Authority are inadequate in this that have emerged from the which more specific struggles can be regard and stronger legislative community, e.g. for retraining given direction and coherence. schemes, improved education and provisions are necessary. In conditions j comprehensive child care facilities. incomes policy was a key element where there is a resurgence of in the original accord, designed to inflationary pressures this is 1 These proposals for an alternative provide a brake on the inflationary particularly important. It should be economic strategy can be further tendencies that otherwise arise stressed that this proposal is not developed to include progressive tax because of the vicious circle of wage intended to involve a wholesale! reform, policies for technological and price increases. It is also a potent replacement of the pricc system by change and labour retraining, selective means of influencing the distribution bureaucratic decisions. The principal ‘ public ownership, industrial of income. target is monopoly and collusive I AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 17

oligopoly pricing. In much of the to international capital movements, different regions in Australia, economy, priccs are already much of which involves property decentralisation on a regional basis is “administered” rather than set by a speculation and takeovers of firms particularly appropriate. The comprehensive market mechanism. rather than investment in additional development of a system of integrated What this proposal involves is a productive capacity. Permission to regional planning would involve change in the form of administered raise foreign loans can be linked to identifying the resources available and pricing from one geared exclusively to criteria of local employment policy instruments appropriate for the profit-maximisation to one in which a generation and local procurement of development needs of each region. wider range of social and economic goods and services. Regulations are Likewise, the extended application of criteria is applied. needed also to control the extent of industrial democracy potentially has a profit and dividend repatriation The federal government's policies major role to play in a transitional of deregulation have increased the overseas and the extent of overseas program, contributing immediately to corporate debt repayment, economic power of financial and productivity while also laying the basis speculative interests. This is a major for movement towards a more egalitarian and participatory constraint on the possibilities for other What is ultimately at issue more progressive economic and social economic system. policies. It needs to be reversed in is the social control of the These proposals are wide- order to reassert a greater degree of investment process. ranging, but together they can form national economic control. the basis for a coherent alternative Most obviously, there is a need to economic strategy. In effect, they build make our economy less vulnerable to What is ultimately at issue is the on the progressive features of the fluctuations in the exchange rate. The social control of the investment original Accord, but apply the Hawke-Keating decision to float the process. The social power of private principles of equity and regulation dollar on international money markets property exercised through profit- more consistently to all aspects of the may well turn out to be comparable to oriented decision-making processes economic system. The principal Gough Whitlam’s decison to appoint must become subject to social alternative is for government John Kerr as Governor-General. The regulation and control. Otherwise economic policy to slide further into consequent power of currency public policy remains at the mercy of conservative economic management speculators over domestic economic capital strikes, transfer pricing and in the futile attempt to satisfy the management has been clearly destabilising capita! movements. insatiable demands of speculators and illustrated by the major falls in the Likewise, an alternative economic multinational capital. value of the Australian dollar. The strategy must involve a greater The main political precondition need for a greater degree of emphasis on economic planning rather for this alternative economic strategy than simply responding to market management of the currency has come is widespread popular support. It conditions.. In a sense, economic to be acknowledged and has been needs that support to establish its planning already exists — a system of reflected recently in a greater degree of place on the political agenda. It would planning by large corporations Reserve Bank intervention to stabilise need that support to defend the designed to reduce the uncertainties of the market. Moving back to a program from the predictable the market. An alternative economic situation of a fixed exchange rate docs responses of vested interests in the strategy would seek to replace this by not eliminate the problem of national and international economy. planning to serve a broader range of speculation — indeed, there is always However, given that support, there is socio-economic and environmental the problem of “bunching” of the potential foran economic program objectives. Initially, thiscould take the speculative movements when periodic which replaces reliance on inequitable, form of indicative planning, but adjustments to the rate are anticipated volatile and disruptive market ' increased public ownership, import — but it would reduce the effects of processes with democratic control short-term speculative activities which controls and regulation of foreign over the economic system. The investment would provide the have had a continuously destabilising conflicts and contradictions effect and have imposed major preconditions for more effective associated with the Accord and its constraints on other macroeconomic overall control of the allocation of renegotiation make the consideration policies. resources. of this progressive alternative all the Firmer exchange controls on capital Planning is no genera! panacea, more necessary. movements are also needed. Foreign despite its connotations of rationality investment is an important influence and foresight. At the national level on the changing structure of the there is a potential conflict between Australian economy, though much of economic planning as a technical FRANK STILWELL teaches economics at Sydney University. His sixth book,77k it takes place out of past profits of exercise and as a process involving Accord and Beyond, was published by foreign enterprises operating in widespread public participation. Pluto in Spring. Australia. Tighter Foreign Investment Decentralisation offers a partial Review Board guide lines a re needed to solution. Because of the size and limit the vulnerability of our economy distinct patterns of development of 18 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW THE WELFARE DEBATE: * The stakes are high

A dam Farrar

ecently in Sydney, the Com m unist Party took steps to R fill what it perceived as an urgent theoretical gap on the left today by providing a series of lectures and discussions on the economy. As it turned out, the snag was that no speakers were available. They had already been booked for a swag of similar series. Suddenly, the volume of the left's economic voice has been turned up; and if it’s not disturbing the neighbours yet, it's pretty noticeable in our own quarters.

Unquestionably, this is as it should be. But the accompanying relative inattention to the transformation of the politics of the community sector and what, over the past five years, has becomc known as the crisis of the welfare state, is almost inexplicable. 1 think it tells us something about the recent renaissance, the regrouping, of the left. At its worst, it may tell us that, for alt its new energy and (in some ways) sophistication, the left has failed to sec where the front line is; has failed to see what not very long ago seemed blindingly clear to many of us, that the changes which have taken place in the community and welfare “sector” are profound and profoundly radical. On this view, the recent changes in the welfare state had begun to change beyond recognition what once might have merely been a “temporary settlement” between labour and capital. Perhaps we all recognise at some level that that temporary settlement is currently under attack in just the same way as the arbitration AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 19 * system, economic regulation and the economy is will bechanged. Lastly, suspicious that they are simply being organised labour is under attack. it was agreed that campaigns must used to bolster an industrial campaign There is a battle on over the welfare unite unions and the community - which, at bottom, is not about them. state. But here it’s a whole social vision particularly the organised This brings me to the general which is under attack; and, sadly, that “community sector”. All of this point about the narrow understanding makes it rather different from what’s genuinely undermines any notions of of the connection between unions and at stake in the battle over labour and hard and soft political issues. the community sector. The public financial deregulation. Now, I don’t for a second believe sector is not the same as the What t really want to talk about that the participants underwent any community sector or, indeed, the are some of the substantive problems conversion. Most of these assertions welfare state. of the battle for the welfare state. But remain no more than that. It is, in fact, To make the familiar, but first, it is important to fly some hard to know what action the first of important, point: they stand on warning flags about the new the list demands. On the last item, the opposite sides of the counter. This, of articulation of the left alternative. It awkwardness and limited success of course, was the impetus for the may even give us a few further the campaigns which have been development of community-based glimpses into the current period of initiated so far between unions and welfare organisations, for self-help crisis; and that, too, is a topic which we community sector show that a lot groups and so on. With this in Australia have not faced head on, needs to be learned. That’s going to development has been a slow, but very although we have had brief skirmishes take quite a separate step to the significant, attempt to pull down the with some of its raiding parties. genuine desire to work together that counters — to blur the edges between So what is to be made of the way does exist in places. So far, nobody client and services deliverer. And it’s the left is dealing with the welfare state knows how that separate step will be from this point that alliances between and community politics? So far, I taken. unions and community have to be don’t think there’s much sign that the built up. mainstream left — and that’s w hat’s For all its new-found What’s worse, the assumption regrouping around the banner of the that the natural alliance is between the broad left — has got a clue. Of course, energy and...sophist­ beneficiaries of the welfare state (the this is not true of the left that has been ication, the left has failed to community) and the agents of that involved for years in the politicisation see where the front line is. stale (the public service, in particular of community issues — young public sector unions) reproduces the people, child care, refuges, Aboriginal narrow and distorted view of the Perhaps more than that, there is a struggles, ethnic communities — and welfare state and public spending problem about the narrow way that it’s not true of some of those active which is the basis of current rightwing the basis for unity is conceived. within the Labor Party. attacks. It is the view that limits Generally, it’s seen as a strategy to But that’s just the point. If “welfare” to a safety net for those who build a base of community support in anything's clear, it’s that the new cannot or will not look after order to resist both the push for “broad left” is unclear about where themselves. privatisation of the public sector these groups fit in; and how to fit them which will certainly come when the It’s worth recognising that this in. Now it’s not, or at least it's only Liberals are in power; and the current, view extends to areas of the “social superficially, the case that this is a re- more directly industrial, attacks which wage” such as health, housing and emergence of the tendency to rank are part of labor’s recent cut-backs. education as well as the pensions and issues as "hard” and “soft" politics. No one can doubt the need to build an benefits. In education, for example, a The Broad Left Conference last alliance to fight possible privatisation; very sharp line is drawn between Easter, which is the reference point for but this can ccrtainly not be done by training/educating those who arc not the rebuilding of a left alternative, was invoking some blanket commitment to yet able to take their place in the work notable for three assertions. the public sector. It demands careful force, and education as an ongoing The first was that the success of alliances around specific issues. There process of life enrichment. It’s clear Aboriginal struggle is the touchstone are cases of these, such as the co­ that this notion of “ability” is of political achievements in Australia. operation between unions and constructed politically, as different The second was that economic consumers over the introduction of the groups are pushed in or pulled out of understanding, economic strategics, new STRATPLAN computer system education; but it is all part of the view and economic campaigns must be into DSS offices. But these grassroots of welfare as provided for special shaken down from its vantage point of points of common interest are the only cases. As in all struggles for political capital flows, balances of trade and all soil in which real alliances can grow. hegemony, the real struggle is over the the rest; and, instead, must be built up construction of what is normal and around the real experiences of people. Any common alliance between what is deviant. In fact, of course, Significantly, this wasn’t a point about public scctor unions and community “welfare” is embedded in all normal how to rally people. It was the much groups overcut-backsgenerally will be social functioning. It is nothing less more fundamental point that if one even more difficult. Many in the than the allocation and reallocation, does this, one’s understanding of what community sector are deeply distribution and redistribution of 20 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW

social resources and products under broaches the dividing line between unemployment and ol training, of state direction rather than purely public and private. Even when the sickness ... and so on. This is an individual or corporate direction. This inverted relationship between overseas attempt to break the notion of cuts right across the more specific finance and trade and domestic reallocation (or, if you like, of equity division of social institutions into production is stood back on its feet, or social justice) out of the narrow public and private. Taxation “domestic” still means the public mould of distribution from the well- reallocates between private incomes, world of production and distribution endowed rich to the unfortunate poor, just as much as pensions, benefits or with its prices and wages struggles, it or from the successful to the casualty; services do. Investment incentives, does not mean the world of private and to recast it as a method of energy concessions and so on, are not consumption and production — or, overcoming the massive distortions in metaphorically but literally corporate indeed, quality of life. the system of income distribution welfare. Of course, it’s in the interests Why is this important? We arc which relies solely on the marketing of of the right to obscure this point and to now at least able to pay lip service to labour. whittle away at each aspect recognition that a vast amount of Perhaps it’s also worth individually as a special (and production and service is private and acknowledging that this is not neutral inevitably unjustifiable) case. It is not usually female. This is sufficient with respect to the overall social in the interest of the left to assist such reason to stress the point. But my division of production between narrowing by an ill-thought-out reasons for making it arc that it is in labour and capital. It does, of course, conception of the natural alliances the private sphere that “standards of radically transform the traditional between unions and the rest of the living” are measured in people’s daily basis of this relation — the wage community. lives; and it is the private sphere that is labour relation. It is also worth But this leads on from the most the territory of the “welfare state". pointing out that this is just as effective serious reservation about the The deviance, the special case, and necessary in existing socialist commitments of the Broad Left which marks off “welfare spending" societies, all of which base the Conference. It seems that no one has (and the “social wage”) from subsidies preliminary allocation of resources on found the way to break out of the to business, the distribution of the wages. And it is also worth pointing classical stereotype of economic wages system from the redistribution out that Australia, with its greater analysis. How does the alternative left of incomes, is constructed around emphasis on universalism in welfare economic analysis do a better job of precisely the same notion of public and benefits, has been a world leader. talking about people's lived private that limits both the left’s and But the main point is that it is only experience? 1 don’t think it does. And the right's understanding of by starting with this “welfare” it doesn't because it, too, is caught in economics. (And while we know what approach to economic understanding the conservative narrowing of the very a mistake it is to let it similarly limit the that we can provide an economics notion of the economy, which understanding of politics, the left — which reaches to where people live. separates The Economy from what it unlike the right — seems at constant This isn't just a theoretical point, it’s delivers — the incomes, the standard risk of amnesia on thispoint.) also a political observation. The of living — to the Australian people. It “welfare sector” — broadly conceived, is only this division that allows the and already politically alive as the absurd claim that an economy can No one can doubt the need "community sector” — is precisely only be made healthy if standards of to build an alliance to fight where the economic strains are being living decline. It is the kind of possible privatisation, but experiences; and being expressed in reification and alienation which Marx political action. tried so hard to dispel. this can certainly not be There’s another political point, Political economy does, of done by invoking some too, which, as I promised earlier, goes course, cosntantly challenge the blanket commitment to the to the broader question of the narrow construction of orthodox contemporary crisis. I don’t mean here economics. It challenges its public sector. the “economic crisis”. There is nothing construction as a value neutral science new about the specific economic about an objective economy, arguing What this means is that left problems we face. There is certainly instead that politics constructs the economic analysis must start with a nothing new about the issues over very moaning and understanding of its clear understanding of standards of which capital and labour are object, and is not merely a separable living. Interestingly enough, this struggling. decision about goals. It insists that the discussion is not being carried out by Rather, I mean the cultural crisis domestic economies must always be left economists. It is being carried out which has produced, among other ihe reference point for judgments by the welfare sector who are working things, the “crisis of the left” and “the about the importance of international to provide a n economic understanding New Right”, to both of which the trade, and financial flows. It of the whole package of wages, tax, attempt to articulate a new broad left insists that productive capacity and benefits, unpaid work provided by a alternative is a response. This crisis is a employment, not profits, are the so-called dependent spouse, the cost of crisis of political discourse — an bottom line. Bui it only barely child raising, the price of ability to find a way to talk about AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 21

* reality which is felt to engage the fundamental issues at stake. There is an economic crisis in this sense: but for just this reason it’s not what is promoted as the economic crisis. The real crisis is the inability of traditional economic discourse to come to terms with the way that the genuinely new feature of capitalism — the new flows of finance capital — are subverting commonsensc economic meanings. The mystification of standards of living and incomes which is marching hand in hand with growing confusion and anger about these areas, is probably also a “crisis” in this sense. It's certainly influenced by the same changes in capital. But, back to the political point i promised above; which is that the awkwardness of the present attitude to the “community sector",can only be seen as an ambivalence to the political and cultural transformation which we have just lived through from the late '60s to the early ’80s. “The But a deeper part of the reason But, in the process which culminated community’’, even more than “the has to do with the nature of the in 1968, this recognition was full of the personal", was the political agent of cultural crisis mentioned above. confidence that the discourse could be that transformation. Community Recently, the ABC put to air a transformed. It was full of what Stuart tenancy, community health, discussion between British socialist Hall called a positive vision. W hat we community child care, women’s and sociologist, Stuart Hall, and face now is the other side of that coin refuges and environmental impact Italian cultural scholar, Umberto Eco, — the second stage of the process. studies ... they’re all the concrete on precisely this topic. One of the most This has also two parts. On the manifestations of the era of the social important observations to come out of one hand, there is the sense that movement. In an important sense, the this discussion was the suggestion that although the possibility of radical assumptions of the welfare state were this cultural crisis can be seen as transformation was renewed by an their vehicle, and they became its beginning in the transformations enormous multiplication of the sites in representatives; although they typified by the eventsof 1968. which radical change could occur, no transformed, expanded and This ferment was an overwhelm­ one of these sites seemed to break democratised it in the same way that ing recognition that the previous through the barrier of the truly they transformed left political cultural, and particularly political, radical;.and all around the cacophony structures. It would seem, therefore, discourse could not deal with what we of other charges wore away our nerves that they ought to be the first and most might as well call modernity. My and we began to demand some quiet, familiar resource of the new broad left; tentative characterisation of this is even if only through inertia. This was why on earth aren’t they? certain to be inadequate even allowing lived out as the experience of Certainly, part of the answer is for the foolhardiness of trying to compromise, co-option and that much of the new left regrouping is capture it in a sentence. But, then disillusion. On the other hand, there is weighted towards an older set of left again, so is everyone clse’s, which the corresponding demand of the new concerns, thinly coatcd with a film of is precisely the problem. Modernity is conservatism to cut through the Experience gathered by their passage the taming, the domestication, of the tangled weeds of social experiment through the last couple of decades. idea of change. and to let the old channels flow again This has been helped by the Change became at once the ruling unchoked. government’s construction of an passion of the epoch — a dizzying In the face of this failure of economic crisis which, it is argued, no ferris wheel from which you could confidence, we don’t seem to see just longer leaves room for the previous never regain your bearings — and a! how radical the change was in the expansive social changes. This has the same time it was stripped of radical latest version of the tired old debate allowed the left to return to refocus meaning. Change lost its ability lo about reform vs revolution, the phrase also on “theeconomy" — all that’s new mean transformation, And this was as “radical reform” seems to have is a new sophistication of the economic true of the existing political discourses become popular in some circles. This is discourse itself. as it was ofthctori’ent ofcommodities. rather sad because it is always prefixed 22 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW *

with the word “just"; and yet to reform second is a very strong push to point out that the limits to how much radically some aspect of society is just reintroduce the conceptions of we can “make the rich pay" are far too what we demand of social change. dependence traditionally associated low to overcome our economic After all, no change, even the with the family. The third is a constraints, are beside the point. revolutionary capture of the state, is fundamental transformation of the (Their assessment of what is more than this. There is no change that notions of equity. All three bounce off “realistic” is not beside the point, but will bring about the progressive one another. All three being contested that is another argument.) transformation of most of society in its in specific places. But put together However, it is often pointed out own right. But if change is radical — if they are changing the commonsense that some major changes in it reaches to the root — then it may understanding. demographic and social balances are eventually change the social economy. taking place. There is the change in the This is certainly what happened It seems that no one has balance between those of working age when, throughout the ’seventies, so found the way to break out and those (particularly the aged) of many diverse sections of society began non-working age. There is the to bend the welfare state to meet newly of the classical stereotype continuing decline in the proportion of discovered needs which were of economic analysis. the population which is required to constructed around the notion of produce the society’s consumption community. Given this, it is The first point is both the easiest needs. There is also the change in the particularly disturbing that as the left and the hardest to refute it. It’s hard proportion of children being reared in once again begins to articulate an because, at on level, it is necessarily a two-parent family — particularly alternative left strategy, it doesn’t true. The level of social production as one which includes a working male. focus much more strongly on the a whole sets limits on what can be These have produced increased community sector and the welfare distributed to satisfy social needs. requirements in terms of pensions, state. It is even more disappointing More and more social needs have been unemployment benefits and that we have not seemed interested in “discovered”. Demographic, supporting parents benefits. It is vital taking up the work on incomes, technological and social changes are to sec that these do not involve any net taxation and welfare transfers being also producing new demands. The increase in the allocation of social done by economists and geographers growing outflow in interest, debt production to meet these needs. But working in the welfare sector, which repayments and repatriated profits, on what it does do (and this is placing could provide us with a much more the other hand, is reducing the enormous strains on the notion of politically powerful view of the proportion of national product equity) is stretch to breaking point the economy. available. It would seem that there nexus which has existed between Part of the explanation may lie in msut be a limit to this process. That, at social distribution and direct the assault on the welfare system least, is the public perception. production. As long as we cling to the which has already made enormous In fact, gross domestic product view that workers 'money is being used changes in the way we think about per capita has continued to increase. to pay for, say, aged pensions, there “welfare” and has already seriously So far (as even OECD studies have will be growing pressure for self­ undercut the radical potential of the shown) it is quite able to keep pace funding through a form of social system. Peter Davidson has shown in with the growing needs being insurance such as exists in Europe and the last issue of A LR how the ALP has expressed. What has changed is the the US. This, of course, reproduces all begin to dismantle the universalis! political will. More important, the new the inequities of the labour market. underpinning of our welfare state. The needs are not in one sense, new at all. But we should also be aware that some effect is to reintroduce divisions What is new is their expression as of these changes do involve increased between taxpayers and beneficiaries social needs; and so what they require costs in social investment. The and make redistribution a matter of is some very radical restructuring of increased proportion of aged in the charily. And of course it means that how income is allocated. Child care is community places new demands on welfare activists are caught in a losing a clear example since its bottom line is health care. The historic erosion of the battle, dashing to defend one area of a realignment of access to the income youth job market has increased poverty after another and eventually distributed through paid work. pressure for these young people to be being asked to provide rankings of But perhaps a better example is provided with massive increases in need. The details of this change were child-related paymentss, because this education or training. ably outlined in Davidson's article. introduces a new notion of equity — Recognising this not only means What I want to consider briefly is what the current Social Security honestly acknowledging a problem. It the way this change in perception has Review calls horizontal equity — also means recognising a danger. We been organised. It seems to me to be a which demands that income continue are at a point where the balnce of very successful process of changing to be distributed when people are public spending could well tip; so that our understanding on three fronts. periodically outside the system of the bulk of it becomes public The first is the view that we have wage distribution. This is a much more investment in social infrastructure reached, or are about to rcach. a limit radical notion of redistribution; and while the reallocation of income is to what we can socially afford. The the arguments of those who rightly privatised — that is, becomes nothing AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 23

more than a secondary redistribution as much as by those who do. But how money which they don't deserve or for of income whose primary allocation is is this to be interpreted? In what is which they arc not eligible. Once the wage system. This is not only easily the most substantial social again, there is the iron law of justice. equitable, it is also the point at which security reform for years, the As Finance Minister Peter Walsh we turn our back on the possibility of maintenance scheme which is to be wrote in response to a recent article of truly radical change. brought in next year says that it is the mine in Australian Society, “Social The second area of challenge is income of the non-custodial parent — justice, like any other form of justice is already well under way. Because it is in effect, the father — which must be indivisible, we cannot say we are Labor, not the Festival of Light, that is redistributed, reproducing in its against fraud in one area of society, doing it, we seem remarkably entirely all the distortions of, not just but turn a blind eye to it in others ... a unexcited by the huge push to restore the wage system, but the patriarchal properly policed and administered the concept of family dependence. The wage system. Even across the bounds welfare benefit payment system (is an existence of junior unemployment of separation, the economic essential prerequisie of) a just and benefits and incredibly low education dependency of the nuclear family has equitable system of income allowances such as TEAS have always been resurrected. distribution”. been an expression of this. But the Even worse, the maintenance creation of a new intermediate level of review is currently arguing strongly for It may be humane, even support for 16 and 17 year olds on the the mother's own income, the dole or in education was a major supporting parent benefit which she is Christian, to comfort the extension of it. The constant pressures paid because parenting places her poor and needy; but equity, for tertiary fees which means-test, not temporarily outside the workforce, to of course, is about the student, but the parents will make be made conditional on her it even more pervasive. All of this has identification of her child’s father — in fundamental changes... been argued for on the grounds of some cases, such as rape or artificial equity. insemination, creating a social link Is this notion of “justice" we But the most difficult area is the which never existed. For socialists, imagined when we first talked of dramatic change to maintenance these developments should be in the equity? Equity has become a matter of currently under way. Again, what is forefront of our activities; because for policing legitimate need. It has totally happening is the playing off of one us the notion of dependence is much lost sight of any attempt to produce notion of equity against another. No closer even than “equity” to our new, just, principles of distribution of one should be unaware of the increase central concern with human freedom. incomes. Even the rich “need” retire­ of child poverty. Some of this is A nd fin ally , th ere is the ment income. Certainly, they don't because the traditional child payment, reconstruction of the notion of need charity — but who does? There what is now the family allowance, has “equity" itself. In one sense, the are so many better ways of meeting the been washed away by non-indexation. replacement of the notion of income than the inevitably clumsy universalism with a needs-based attempt to judge genuine need. And This crisis is a crisis of model is basic to this with all the this is the second notion of equity we political problems. Davidson and have been lumbered with. It's a notion political discourse — an many others have identified. But this, of “social accounting”, of working out inability to find a way to in itself, is not a notion of equity at all. not what needs demand to be satisfied talk about reality which is It may be humane, even Christian, to (“to each according to their need ’’), but comfort the poor and needy; but how to quantify needs, to rank them, felt to engage with the equity, of course, is about the and to balance them. These notions fundamental issues at fundamental changes which will aren't just the domain of the right. stake.______provide equal access for all to the They have, for example, found their goods of society. way into the left’s Social Justice Most of it, however, comes from the We have seen the beginning of a Strategies. huge social change which has seen a slide in meanings. Today, equity is It's time the left became involved vast increase in divorce and single coming to mean two things, at least in in this contest. It is a fundamental part parent families. The level of political circles. The first is an of a struggle for socialism, ami unless supporting parents benefits, like all inversion of the notion of need, it is the we re-enter the contest over the social security payments, is below the principle that if you don't genuinely popular understanding of its key poverty line and hedged about with need something you bloody well terms, its prospects are very dim. poverty traps. Maintenance payments shouldn't expect to get it. At the one end of this gut-level appeal is the have been something of a joke. ADAM FARRAR is editor of the aCOSS This is a case for just the kind of silver-tail who collects a pension they journal Impact in Sydney, and a member income restructuring I have just talked don’t need. Surely that isn’t equitable of the Communist Party. about. Equity demands that children or just? should be supported by those who At the other end we have the “dole don't have actual custody of them just bludger" who ‘Collects taxpayers’ 24 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW The Spanish Civil War Rememberi

It began fifty years ago this year, with an attempted coup against the recently-elected government of Socialists, Communists, liberals and, later, anarchists. It ended three years later in bitter defeat for the fledgling democratic Republic: a defeat which, as the left at the time correctly predicted, was the last stepping-stone to the Second World War, In between, it inspired thousands of anti­ fascists world wide to devote themselves to solidarity work, or to give up homes and families to take up arms for the Republican cause. In November, a major two-day seminar in Sydney recalled this greatest of all solidarity movements and its effects on Australia, with All for Franco 1936. talks by veterans of the struggle, films, music, the bishops of Burges and a photographic exhibition. army generals show their support.

'La Pasionaria': Dolores Ibarruri, heroine o f the civil war years, is still a leading spanish communist at the age o f 90. AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 25

t Hson and Aileen Palmer. A women’s militia unit&fmmv leaving Barcelona for the Aragon front in the early days of the war.

■give the fascist salute in Grenada, 1936. 26 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW AFTER CHERNOBYL: Peace, rights and freedom

Ken Coates are more and more concerned to tackle the frozen north, hours away from the their problems by relevant action, necessary human intervention, then informed by thought. Nonetheless, the disaster could have been many hen we gathered earlier this Russell was not wrong to conclude hundreds of times worse. This is no year to commemorate those that “a virtuous life is as necessay to strong argument for building all new W who perished in the first survival as dykes". reactors close to population centres. nuclear explosions at Hiroshima and The Chernobyl plant was built close Instead, it should persuade us that Nagasaki, we were compelled to add to major centres of population. Many Noah was not wrong to seek his the name of Chernobyl to our ecologists, following the “Chinese" answer in a virtuous life. Rational deliberations. Chernobyl was not a viewpoint, advocated that it should deliberate act of policy, but an have been constructed elsewhere, very accident. As an accident, it was much far from population centres. Let us less serious than it might have been, imagine that this had happened. From and certainly less serious than it would where, then, would the courageous have been, were it not for the supreme firemen have come? Because people courage of those Soviet firemen who lived near to the hazard, they were able prevented the spread of conflagration to deal with it. If the plant had been in from one reactor to the others at the cost of their own lives. Despite great organisational efforts, the after-effects of this disaster will endure, and remove from circulation lands and amenities which have been polluted to more lethal effect than the territories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Humankind is deeply worried by the warnings we have received from Chernobyl, no less than by the terrible warnings which were detonated in the Japanese skies in the first half of August 1945.

As Mr. Gorbachev told us during his broadcast after the Chernobyl events, we have been given a reminder of the awful finality of nuclear war. Bertrand Russell used to claim that human beings could seek protection from adversity in one of two ways; there was the East Asian method of the Chinese who fought the Hoods hy building dykes along the Yellow River: and there was the West Asian method of Noah, who "thought that the best protection was a virtuous life". Gradually, the Chinese point of view has come to prevail, and people AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 27

anticipation of danger will only help so and indeed many individuals are not by Hiroshima, the shadow of which far: beyond that point, the choices are sure, themselves, how to answer. The never leaves us. of a different kind. The choice about issues are complex. Peace is more, we The Polish authorities might be nuclear energy is not one of where best are often told, than an absence of war. genuinely distressed to figure on such a to locate its perils, but of whether they But justice is also more than list of oppressions as this. They did not should be unleashed at all. conformity with old rules, and choose their geographical local ion and Almost no-one argues in favour people’s expectations are constantly would doubtless insist that their effort of unleashing nuclear war. By now, the changing. to promote discussions on peace were empirical scientists have persuaded part of a more sustained effort to nearly everyone of the truth of the The choice about nuclear improve detente, and thus establish a hypothesis of “nuclear winter". A very more secure space for independent small exchange of nuclear weapons energy is not one of where action. Indeed, it is entirely arguable offers the risk of fundamental climatic best to locate its perils, but that Poland's continuing present crisis change, which could eliminate the of whether they should be resulted directly from the efforts of species, never mind the people who previous Polish Governments to survived the blast and fallout of the unleashed at all. secure greater freedom of action next major war. That small handful of within the Soviet sphere of influence. zealots who still pul their trust in war A classic problem of this kind Why. other than to buy a degree of have offered us a slogan, old but still emerged when, on 13 December 1985, economic independence, should heard in some places. “ Better dead an international congress of Polish ministers have borrowed so than red”, they say. In Russell's time, intellectuals met in Warsaw at the indiscriminately from Western banks? an effort was made to invert this invitation of the Polish authorities. After the world oil crisis, such banks slogan and foist it on the peace The agenda was to consider the were desperate to lend to movement. Attempts were made to problems of peace and disarmament. governments, and particularly to typecast Russell as the spokesperson A variety of Polish oppositional communist governments, which were of “ better red than dead”. He refused organisations addressed an appeal to thought to be among the safest this role. First, he pointed out that the those visiting their country: it carried potential recipients of funds. This was death involved in previous wars had the title. Peace and Freedom are a miscalculation on both sides. claimed its victims from combatant Inseparable. Solidarnosc itself emerged in those generations. But death in the next war The Polish opposition stated a Polish ports which experienced most would prevail over all posterity. It number of justifiable complaints. The directly the resultant trauma. In a might be thought noble for a man to independent trade union movement, desperate attempt to meet spiralling lay down his life in protection of his Solidarnosc, with ten million inflation in interest repayments, more children, or the way of life of his members, had been outlawed, and and more frenzied efforts were made children’s descendants: it could not be many of its leaders detained to export anything that would sell. so considered for a man to lay down Numerous independent social Polish port workers found themselves the lives of his children's children, and organisations had been disbanded at cramming every ounce of meat into their ultimate descendants. Since a the same time. Despite efficient and export-bound holds, while their wives fullstop to human evolution cancels rigorous repression, however, such would queue for hours for a tiny piece the possibility of victory for anyone, organisations continue to operate in of sausage. Poland most assuredly argued Russell, “it follows logically Poland clandestinely. So the undergoes a crisis of national that a negotiated detente cannot be statement of the oppositionists independence, and there are extremely based on the complete subjection of proclaims “You have come to a serious problems in her relationships either side to the other, but must country where there is no peace" with the Soviet Union, But those are preserve the existing balance while In the same way, there is certainly not the only problems she faces. It was transforming it from a balance of no peace in South Africa. Central not the banks which banned terror to a balance of hope. That is to America knows no peace.There is no S olidarnosc. even if they did say, co-existence must be accepted peace in Afghanistan, Kampuchea, precipitate the social crisis in which it genuinely and not superficially as a Eritrea, or any of the other zones of was born. Those of us who are trade necessary condition of human conflict and civil war. While no-one unionists, operating with greater or survival''. thinks such wars should be fought with lesser degrees of freedom outside How far, then, does co-existence nuclear weapons, there always Poland, will all deplore the imply the acceptance of injustice? Is it remains a risk that they could spill suppression of Poland’s independent possible to found survival on morally over to embroil nuclear powers, and unions, and want lo express our acceptable principles? This is the thus “escalate". Injustice, wherever it sympathy and support for their question which has aroused is found, invites resistance and political prisoners. It is not surprising considerable attention in the revived retaliation. Few among those living in that the decision lo outlaw the trade anti-nuclear movement of the 1980s. happier circumstances would union has deepened the crisis in which Of course, different sections of this withhold their sympathy from such the Polish government operates. No vast movement give different answers: rebellion, even though it is overhung doubl, am ong the ten million people 28 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW

who had organised themselves in arc insupportable, that their tyranny is nor is it always honestly conducted. Solidarnosc, there will be sufficient inexcusable and that it is necessary to There are many countries in which it is numbers of active spirits to continue take steps to boycott it. Commonly, almost obligatory to disapprove of their agitation. The more that such such persuasion not only takes a long repression in Chile, but where the agitation brings down further time, but only comes about as a result invasion of Czechoslovakia is always repression, the truer it will be to say of strenuous efforts and intensive whitewashed. There are other that there is “no peace”. Even in organisation. Paradoxically, these are countries in which the sufferings of countries where repression has been helped, throughout the interim, by Polish trade unions can be fully more effective, like Czechoslovakia, "normal" contacts. Most authorit­ reported, but where such dreadful injustice and intolerance invite arian governments in the world are not facts as the genocide in Timor are criticism and opposition. No-one complete tyrannies and are capable of almost totally unknown and should be reconciled to cynical movement in better or worse directions, unreportcd. Selectivity in the news usurpation. Does this mean, then, that If, in the absence of critical pressure, media is only part of the difficulty. there can be no co-existence? they are prone to lock people up, then, Governments weigh in to deliberate Surely not. The struggles of under such pressure, they may become effect. Thus, in the United States,after Polish workers are in no way more or less prone to let them out. the debacle of Viet Nam, President undermined by the existence of Opposition to tyranny is a continuous Carter unleashed a major "human relatively normal relations between process, a prolonged struggle. rights” offensive which had two edges. Poland and other states. If there is a detente in progress, the foreign journalists will be present in Poland, while Polish journalists arc also stationed overseas. The more freedom such journalists experience, the more information will be spread about the state of opinion inside Polish factories. The more trade and cultural exchange there is, the more channels of effcctivc communication there will be. Detente does not at all imply support for the Polish government in its relations with its own people, and still less does it imply endorsement of repression and tyranny. It is arguable that the most propitious conditions for tyranny are those of isolation. The less a country interacts with the wider outside world, the worse its leaders can behave. The more direct material benefits a government receives from internat­ In brighter days: Lech Walesa meets the press. ional contact, the more reluctant it will be to put them in jeopardy. Of course, In the same way, the struggle for First, it represented a reorientation of if tyrannies cross the bounds of peace is a continuous process, as is the American policy within the US sphere civilised behaviour they may arouse campaign for nuclear disarmament. It of influence. From now on, American moral revulsion which can produce Ihe would be extremely convenient if all officials were to distance themselves demand that they be ostracised. But these good causes ran along parallel from the bloodiest dictators in Latin here, we arc dealing with a process. tracks to an ultimate and harmonious America, and to give greater comfort How difficult it is may be understood destination. That, however, is not our to centrist political forces. Secondly, by looking at the case of South Africa experience. Some of the countries with towards the Soviet bloc, criticism of where rules an institutional racism, very good policies on nuclear breaches of civil rights were to become under which an overwhelming disarmament have somewhat bad part of a more political style of majority of people suffers the most hislories of disrespect for human negotiation, pressing home every systematic denial not only of its rights. Other countries with relatively propaganda advantage which could be human lights, but of humanity itself. good records on human rights at home derived from the political weaknesses Yet it has taken decades of agitation to have appalling records about of the adversary. However, human begin to isolate this system from the disarmament. Just as disarmament rights were a boomerang when they rest of the world polity. negotiations involve elements of were used as a weapon in the conflict Moral ostracism docs not fall chicanery, deceit and gamesmanship, between superpowers. Spheres of from the sky. People have to be so the international argument on influence may have been easier to persuaded that certain governments human rights is neither disinterested. manage in the days of the old empires. AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 29

when democratic expectations were and war, we may list a few: the Peace and human rights, jobsand minimal: but the rise of such inequality of economic development freedom, these abstract goods are expectations renders subject nations between north and south; the effects of threatened in a crisis which results turbulent and the client governments intensive competition between directly from uncontrolled unstable. The election of President developed countries; slump, and the competition within a system of Reagan gave a savage blow to the aggravated increase of enforced separate political authorities. To United States campaign for “human idleness among relatively highly overcome this separation, and obtain rights”: but this strategy of President skilled populations in “advanced” the joint action which is necessary, we Carter was already plainly collapsing countries, as well as among the quickly learn that we must separate even before the fall of his poorest; ecological imbalances our issues, focussing all possible atten­ administration. Noam Chomsky has resulting from avaricious exploitation tion on the most precise pressure given us a magisterial description of of nature; the recurrent reappearance the way in which this policy was of famine and social distress. The Polish authorities dissembled, and of its cynical evasion Humankind is not without considered might be genuinely of responsibility for consequences it strategies to face these problems. In had been designed to produce. July 1986, for instance, the Socialist distressed to figure on such The majority of members of International, gathering in Lima, a list of oppressions as this. governments are normally, most of the adopted a most far-sighted report time, as concerned for the entitled Global Challenge and pledged points. For peace, we do require maintenance of peace as are peace itself to joint action for its disarmament and. above all, nuclear movements themselves. But the implementation. It remains to be seen disarmament. It is easier to agitate methods of govenrmental action whether socialist parties in the against “the bomb" than it is to change necessarily base themselves on what is different countries are able to co­ the economic world, and remove the often miscalled “ realism”. ordinate their activities on the relevant causcs of slump, unemployment, and Governments build dykes. In flagrant large scale. What is perfectly clear is military competition. And yet all of us contrast, the idealism of peace that joint action between countries is can perceive, and clearly, that the arms movements can sometimes be all the more necessary in the absence of racc correlates with economic crisis, represented as “unrealistic”. Bertrand an accepted supranational authority. and aggravates it all the time. Russell, for instance, was a convinced Being “realists”, perhaps this is as What, then, can we do? Separate advocate of world government. This is much as we can anticipate. But the national peace movements will not be a perfectly logical proposal, and one human conscience is always able to evolve policies for the abolition which would imply the development of unrealistic, and peace movements tend of hunger and oppression, without frameworks in which a whole series of to see over the fences separating taking on the duties of fully-fledged more or less interconnected problems nations, to a wider world community. political parties. Usually they will find might be solved in an orderly fashion. However, the lack of any global it easier to persuade existing political authority with power to act on all these organisations to address such issues, Peace is more, we are often issues simultaneously serves to do than it would be to elbow aside all told, than an absence of more than simply inhibit successful established orgnaisations. For the reform. It also separates the agencies foreseeable future, peace movements war. But justice is also of change, and compels the will still need to prioritise their chosen more than conformity with subdivision of the objective of change. goals, and to maximise pressures to Of course, we all truly live in one the best of their ability. All this argues old rules, and people's world. We all truly desire peace in the for a further development of expectations are constantly world, and freedom, and the prospects international contact and exchange, as changing. of satisfying personal development for one necessary counter to the problems each individual among our peoples. of specialisation. And yet, there are However, the majority of political But to bring more than a hundred other international pressures, which leaders in the contemporary world still governments into line to secure even have already ensured that we have regards Russell's thinking on this the smallest step towards disarmament international organisations for human matter as profoundly "unrealistic" requires a major campaigning effort. It rights, international attempts at This means that there is no single is not easy to co-ordinate the efforts of economic co-operation and a new forum with the decisive power to thirty different peace movements, or international economic order, and determine the enforcement of human trade unions. Since each of these international campaigns against rights, or the level of international organisation acts on its national plane, hunger and poverty. Are we not policing (and armament) that is it evolves its overriding national arriving at the time when there needs consensually supportable. There are priorities. Democracy, to the extent to be some exchange between these innumerable other problems which that it exists, operates at that national separate initiatives? Is it premature to also lack solution in the absence of level and reinforces the partial view. suggest that we should reach out such a framework. National action is practical, step by towards one another, to knit together Among prime causes of conflict stcp."rationar'and, of course, limited. our efforts, not only to prevent the 30 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW

world from destroying itself, but also to render it fit to live in? World government may be a long haul, and a difficult one to achieve. But we do have already an organisation of United Nations, bringing together diplomats representing each separate state. The intermediate project which we need to match this dialogue of governments, is surely a United Peoples Orgnaisation. in which all the peace movements and social organisations can begin to refine the linkages which can form world public opinion, and make it effective. If the United Nations were to move towards a more integrated structure it would probably seek to establish two chambers for its deliberations: one Chernobyl: Soviet firefighters giving up their lives consisting of governmental representatives, as at present; and the have lu make do with a growing degrees of moral support from other consisting of persons chosen in a network of non-governmental outside. process of direct elections. Such organisations. Everything which The most efficient globalism in proposals are seldom ventilated at the enlarges the scope for international the modern world has been established present time: although there are many democratic action helps to knit the in completely non-democratie people who would support them, and world together. But the struggle for organisations. The giant transnational it cannot be doubted that they would peace with human rights remains most help the development of relevant active at the national level, in separate Some of the countries with pressure groups. In the meantime, we national territories, albeit with varying very good policies on nuclear disarmament have BREAKOUT somewhat bad histories of Underground disrespect for human PILGRIM HOUSE (02) 261 14J3 rights. 262 Pitt St, SYDNEY. 261 144J corporations extend their influence * OFFSET & SCREEN PRINTING around the world, with cavalier disregard for the natural environment, and systematic indifference to humane * SIGNWRITING social objectives. Frequently, they are directly involved in political pressures * TYPESETTING to neutralise democratic decisions, wherever these might threaten * DESIGN & LAYOUT profitable operations. Prominent among such corporations are the * (plus full bromide photocopy facilities) largest military producers. When unaccountable power has obtained a Breakout is an employment collcctivc established by (he Prisoners Action Group to give jobs and skills to members of oppressed minorities near-universal scope, it is at great peril whom (lie community is often reluctant to employ. Breakout has been that the democratic process restricts operating since April 1984. and is constantly upgrading its systems, quality itself to partial, blinkered, separate control and machinery. It works especially Tor unions and community national development. groups. It was initially funded for 12 montlis by the federal Community Employment Program, and has continued on a commercial basis with some KEN COATES is chair of the Bertrand assistance. Russell Peace Foundation in Derbyshire, WE can provide top quality printing in less time and at cheaper prices England, and has written widely on the than our competitors. YOU can provide support to a socially progressive labour and peace movements. co-operative. AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 31

POLITICS AND THE PLEASURE PRINCIPLE

Carmel Shute

t is not surprising that it was a w om an — and a w om an anarchist I at that — who uttered the im m ortal words, “If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution”. Male socialists have never waxed lyrical about pleasure in politics or the joy we might expect after the revolution. Altruism (saving the working class) and pleasure (having a good time) are mutually incompatible, or so weVe given to understand.

Putting pleasure back into politics has been a bit of a hobby-horse for me over the last couple of years. Like all passions, all ideologies, it has a material basis — frustration with attending fifteen years of boring meetings on the left; exhaustion from attending these same boring meetings most nights and weekends; and despair about the diminishing influence of the left and the prospects for socialism in Australia. Something must be wrong, I began to think, if we’re all so tired and exhausted but getting nowhere fast. I became increasingly dispirited as 1 watched a number of my comrades-in- arms “burnt out” from to many meetings and not enough fun. Others got ulcers or retreated into their careers or middle-class lifestyles. Some have disappeared, never to be seen again, into the human potential movement, the Orange People. And who could blame them after so many years of mostly fruitless slog? I’ve been tempted myself by the idea of a more normal life — time to read, write letters or even articles, to see more of Left Aloft: Order by Numbers my friends, my lover, my lover’s 32 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW

children ... my mother’s admonition that I should spend more time on myself rings in my ears. Undoubtedly she’s right, but how does one square the desire to see socialism in one’s lifetime with the need for a saner life on the left in the meantime? So far, I've concluded that the only solution is to build a New, Larger Socialist Party (more people, less meetings) and, at the same time, to inject more pleasure into politics so there’ll be more people to join the NLSP. One of the reasons that the left in Australia is so small is that our whole culture, our whole way of operating, is alien and unattractive. It is based on the denial of pleasure — and, by pleasure, I mean pleasure in the popular, everyday sense, not in some highfalutin’ definition from the academics. The leninist heritage of discipline, tight organisation, self-sacrifice and denial has undoubtedly played a big moralistic dogmatism. Often, we don't Though child care has now been role in determining current left show a caring and supportive attitude tacked onto the agenda of every left practice, more than seventy years on. towards our comrades. We aren’t very group and party, we rarely address the But, in other societies, such as those of understanding of comrades who can't larger question now of the oppressive Southern Europe and Latin America, make it to meetings for “personal" relations between men and women on the puritanical aspects of leninism reasons. We often lack common the left. aren't so evident in many respects, courtesies like introducing strangers to It’s not simply a question of child perhaps because of vigorous peasant each other. We don’t go out of our way care, as Marilyn Lake points out so traditions of music, song, dance and to make new activists feel at home. The urgently in the recent volume Moving festivities. gulf between the public and the private Left: The Future o f Socialism in all too frequently becomes a chasm. Australia. Child care at meetings or One of the reasons that the conferences is not an answer for kids left in Australia is so small Activism on the left doesn’t only who’vc already spend thirty or forty mean little time for friends, family, hours in institutionalised child care. is that our whole culture, and lovers, little time for sport, Nor is it an answer for parents who our whole way of recreation, making love. It also means want to spend more time with their little time to do your share of the kids. It’s a question of time, Lake says, operating, is alien and housework and child care. Of course, determined by both the capitalist unattractive. some male comrades still have their system and gender relations, and she time on the left subsidised by women’s advocates a twenty-five hour week so labour in the home,1 though feminism that men can emjoy the equal right to Unfortunately, we in Australia has made this more problematic. “My child care and housework while are saddled with a more repressive, wife's not interested in politics”, these women assert their right to paid work Anglo-Saxon heritage. In Australia, comrades mumble defensively. Well, if If men resumed their responsibil­ the Irish perhaps came closest to she’s not, we have to ask ourselves ities as fathers, women might be freed meshing pleasure with politics — male why? Is political activism on top of to participate on more equal terms in drinking sessions in pubs, wakes, everything else (including perhaps politics. More importantly, the wonderful St. Patrick’s Day festivals. financial support of professional content and focus of our politics might However, this tradition was all but revolutionary husbands) just too shift considerably. John Halfpenny, annihilated by the DLP split of the much? William Lane called women interviewed over a pile of steaming Tifties and the rapid social mobility of “the weary sex”2 in his 1892 novel The nappies? Laurie Carmichael speaking the Irish in the post-war boom. Workingman's Paradise, and political to the media while stirring a declicious Most young activists “starting women are often even more weary pasta sauce? Who knows, maybe we out" must find life on the left a bit with the triple burden of work, home could really come to grips with strange. Our meetings are frequently and politics — often with little “Accord Mark HI" over a hot tub or characterised by harsh language and a assistance from the men in their lives. stove. AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 33

The denial of pleasure in left organising the group sex?” On another If we’re going to convince more politics is reflected in our public occasion, when I spoke about pleasure Australians that socialism offers a image, we appear, too often, as and politics, half a dozen male better future, if we’re to get a new latterday puritans, as hostile, angry comrades made similar comments — socialist party off the ground, we have and oppositional — “smash ... ”, “ban which indicated that their only notion to abandon a politics where there are ... ”, “oppose ... " — always against of pleasure was sexual pleasure. the speakers and the spoken to. We something and not for much at all. Of need more active, democratic forms of course, there is lots to be angry about Our notion of pleasure should, participation. In this respect, we have — but what we stand for, what indeed, include the sexual. Eileen a lot to learn from the organising constitutes our vision of a better Phillips, who edited a book entitled strategies of the environmental, peace The Left and the Erotic in Britain, and women's movements. quoted her friend's reaction to the While existing left groups and John Halfpenny inter­ incongruous idea that there might be a parties are increasingly moribund, viewed over a pile of relationship between the left and the these movements continue to draw in erotic: “I can’t imagine anything less activists of all ages. I can’t speak from steaming nappies? Laurie erotic than sitting on hard chairs in a personal experience about the affinity Carmichael speaking to the smoky room trying to avoid the groups which were the organising media while stirring a chairperson’s eye when they’re asking basis for campaigns — such as the for volunteers for leaflets”.4 I believe successful action to save the Franklin delicious pasta sauce? we need to escape from that smoky — but, from all accounts, they were room before we can properly discuss very effective. One of the participants society, gets lost in the welter of the left and the erotic — or, to put it at my Broad Left Conference oppositional politics. A friend recently another way, we need to work out workshop was an older leftie who remarked that the left speaks the who’s doing the washing-up before we confessed that he’d been initially “language of hate". She has a point — ask if Lenin was correct to ask during sceptical about becoming involved in we should be speaking the language of his discussion with Klara Zetkin on the Franklin campaign. At first, he love for our fellow human beings, of free love, whether a normal person said, he thought it was stupid for love for our natural environment, our would drink out of “a glass with a rim people to stand around in circles country, for the oppressed people greasy from many lips”. holding hands. Later, he found that everywhere. At a recent conference, a comrade of forty-nine years’ standing remarked that the Brotherhood of St. Laurence had a better public presence than socialists. She advocated a mroe caring attitude on the left. The bourgeois media, of course, loves to focus on our confrontations, strikes, demonstrations and internal disputes, but it is only partly to blame for the public perception of us. We could, if we wanted, also use the media more effectively to say other things — to project a more positive and attractive image. Our iconography — banners, badges, flags, posters, symbols — doesn’t do us much good in the public eye either. Too often, we borrow our symbols and slogans from overseas and they appear alien, un- Australian. Last year, i twice tried to organise a discussion weekend on the theme “How to Survive Politics and Live to See Socialism in Your Lifetime: A Stress Management Weekend”. The camp never took place, however, because everyone had too many meetings to attend! What was also revealing, though, was that one male comrade asked me twice, “Who's 34 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW

“relating to each other" did not organise pleasurable things to do as and a meeting which celebrated the necessarily mean a loss of politics. "We part of a political campaign — dances, Women’s Social and Political sang, danced, chanted our way dinners, balls, film nights, raffles Coalition’s first anniversary. The SL through the confrontations in front of offering gourmet breakfasts in bed for meeting, held, as always, on a Sunday the bulldozers, with the police, and one, two or three ... According to morning — the same time as mass even in going to jail”. He concluded Cyndi Lauper, “Girls just want to have was, in fact, quite like mass. There that massage, touching and closeness fun” and she’s probably right. Before were several priests, rather than one, were essential for combatting the but the fundamentals were the same — “heavy” machinery of capitalism — Women's meetings do, to the word was given from the pulpit, police, violence and jail. there were ritual incantations at some extent, bridge the gulf various stages, and then the money 1 can, however, speak from first­ was collected (though not in velvet hand experience of the women’s between the personal and bags on the ends of sticks). movement and, to a lesser extent, the the political. In contrast, the WSPC meeting’s peace movement. Without a doubt, rituals were a lot less formalised and the women’s movement offers a lot Lauper’s song became a No. 1 hit, more friendly — discussion, films, a more pleasure than the men’s (left) Doris Lessing spoke of the different specially printed anniversary T-shirt, a movement. Women's meetings do, to behaviour of women when they’re cake decorated in purple, green and some extent, bridge the gulf between beyond male control: "... when the white, cups of tea, singing ... and no the personal and the political. Women men go away, the women instantly high priestess! are more caring, warm and friendly, create a kind ot hedonistic, permissive What was clear from the less likely to be hung up on their egos, world where they try on dresses, cook workshop discussion is that women less likely to make long, hectoring gossip and have a lovely time ... ”5 derive pleasure from a wider variety of speeches. The meetings are less Lessing’s point was admirably sources in politics than do men. Men structured, more likely to involve the supported by one workshop definitely get pleasure from a good sharing of laughter, food and drink. participant who compared the fight, a good argument, a good win The work still gets done. Women, divergent experiences of attending a and getting drunk. Women are not more so than men, are likely to Victorian A LP Socialist Left meeting immune from these pleasures but also enjoy other things — friendships (as opposed to mateship), exchanging confidences, and so on. lam reminded of Rosa Luxemburg’s plea from the SUBSCRIBE TO heart to her lover, Leo Jogiches: “Your letters contain nothing but nothing except for The Workers’ Cause ... WOMANSPEAK When I open your letters and see six sheets covered with debates about the Polish Socialist Party and not a single MAGAZINE word about ... ordinary life, 1 feel faint”.6 We could well do with some small-scale hedonism in the left in WOMANSPEAK is a feminist magazine in its twelfth Australia. Where are our festivals, our year of publication, produced by an all-women, Sydney- celebrations on a large or small scale? based collective of volunteers, and including only women’s In much of Western Europe, the left contributions. It provides information on women's parties maintain a rich and vibrant involvement in film, art, fiction, theatre, work and cultural life. They possess a long and domesticity, politics, feminist activism. WOMANSPEAK covers such issues as child-care, aboriginal and migrant women, rape, pornography, ALR IS IN THE NEWS prostitution, education, homosexuality, law reform, working and domestic conditions for women and nuclear energy. Or at least in the newsagents. If you ISSUE 48, Vol 10, No 3, contains articles on Girls at live anywhere in NSW or in metropolitan Melbourne, you should Risk, The New Right, Divorce in Ireland, Women in Local Government, Short Stories, Poetry, Film & Book Reviews, be able to get ALR at your local and all our regular features. newsagents now. If they don’t stock it, suggest to them that It’s about time they SEND $6 for 4 issues (individuals) or SIO (institutions) did. And don’t forget to tell your friends to: WOMANSPEAK, PO Box 103, Spit Junction, NSW that the left’s most read quarterly is now 2088. as close as the local shops. AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 35

dynamic tradition of music, dance, succumbs to market forces? Why events, we will also need to reclaim theatre, film ... The Spanish aren't we conccrncd enough to discuss some festivals like M elbourne’s Communist Party’s Fiesta in Madrid what’s happening to sport? If we can Moomba, which was originally a attracts over a million people each interrupt conferences for progress labour movement celebration of the year. Even more attend the Italian reports on the Grand Final, surely we eight-hour day, but which has now Communist Party’s Festa dell’Unita in should be discussing it politically? And been appropriated by the ruling class. Rome and regional centres. Music, why don't we have organised sport on If we're going to build a new song, theatre, dance and film can be an the left any more? The W orkers’ broad-based socialist party and live to extremely powerful means of Sports Federation of the ’thirties and, see socialism in our lifetime, let’s put politicisation. When it is actively later, the Eureka Youth league, some pleasure back into politics now, attracted thousands to the left by their or, as they used to say in the days of my organised sporting and social youth, “Keep a smile on your face, and While we lost hundreds of activities. We would do well to a song in your heart, while you’re thousands to the suburban emulate them — and we might get fighting the state”. wastelands, we gained fitter in the process. The Palm Sunday rallies are the millions of migrants...who only vaguely leftish events to be NOTES brought with them successful in Australia’s recent past. 1. Writing about her past in (he Communist different political tradit­ This year’s Palm Sunday rally in Party of Great Britain. Zetda Curtis says, “Some Melbourne was a joyful, life affirming of the women in the party knew their place only ions. event — lots of street theatre, to well. Otic such said she knew her role in the party was to make sure her husband, a leading wonderful banners and costumes, comrade, was best able to perform his party involving, music, song or theatre can anti-nuclear dogs, punks for peace, responsibilities. She made sure, she said, he had be a great way of creating solidarity. songs and music — all culminating in a good hot meals and clean clothing.” Z. Curtis, festival near that monument to the “'Private Lives'and Communism" in E. Phillips, Singing The Internationale with cd., The Left and the Erotic (London, 1983), 50,000 people — even if you don’t dead, the Shrine of Remembrance. p. 154. speak Spanish — transforms you into There were speeches for those who miss the ritual of mass and lots more 2. Cited in M. Lake, “A Question of Time" in D. something greater. Music played a McKnight, ed„ Moving Left (Sydney, 1986), crucial role in drawing me and besides — stalls, music, dancing, and p. 135. thousands of others into the left in the lots of soft, green places to sit and talk 3. ibid., p. 144. late 'sixties and early ’seventies. More with friends. recently, the songs of Midnight Oil The peace movement can teach 4. Phillips, p. 11. the left a thing or two about have probably won more people to the 5. J. Rigg and J. Copeland, eds,. Coming Out! anti-nuclear cause than a thousand penetrating the outer reaches of Women’s Voices, Women's Lives (Melbourne, well-intentioned speeches. Go to a suburbia and even country towns. 1985), p. 179. Despite what some of the more elitist “Stop the Drop” concert and listen to 6. E. Ettinger. ed,. Rosa Luxemburg: Comrade all the kids — they know all the words. may think, it is possible to politicise and Lover, (London. 1979), p. xv. the honest burghers of Glen Waverley Of course, youH say, Australia and the disenchanted youth of used to have more of a leftworking Broadmeadows. The success of groups CARMEL SHUTE works for the ABC class culture until it was destroyed by like People for Nuclear Disarmament Staff Association in Melbourne, and is a the suburbanisation and anti­ member of the Communist Party. rests precisely on its suburban network communism of the fifties. This is true because this allows women to — but while we lost hundreds of participate more actively. The left thousands to the suburban needs to concentrate less on wastelands, we gained millions of overthrowing the state and more on DROP US A LINE ... migrants from Southern Europe, the building the grassroots organisation Middle East, Latin America and Asia In our next issue, ALR will introduce a which, one hopes, will one day create a letters page to stimulate debate and to give who brought with them different movement strong enough to tackle the readers a chance to air their thoughts and political traditions. Not all these state. feelings about the articles they liked, the traditions are of the left, but many are, Palm Sunday rallies are positive, articles they hated, the “hidden agendas” and they offer a lot to Australian left too, because they foster the equal they may have discovered, or the issues culture. involvement of men, women and they feel are being ignored. The Italian workers’ and families’ children. If the left is really to The deadline for letters for issue No. 99 is January 31, 1987. As a general rule, organisation, FILEF, is organising a encourage the greater participation of letters should be no longer than 250 words conference in Melbourne about the women, we have to organise more and, preferably, should be typewritten. future of soccer. FILEF expects over a activities which children (and their The author^ address should be included, thousand to attend. Where is the parents) can attend — that is, less although this will not be printed. Anglo-Saxon left conference on the night meetings in- the city, more clouded future of Aussie Rules as it picnics, festivals and recreational 36 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW

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ALR Christmas Gift Subscription TIME OUl AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 37 The Cricket Season

The cricket season is upon us again. media event taking place this season. We are relaxed, on holidays, well- No, I'm not referring to the cricket, but disposed lo share a Toohey's or two to the strategies of the multinational with our working class hero Doug corporations involved in sports Walters, eager to be told of the famous sponsorship and promotion. What we Gatting 'grittiness' and to view with will see on our screens this summer is pleasure the inevitable Border further evidence of the penetration of boundaries. We are prepared, in other cricket by big business. words, to be entertained. Let me explain. In the pre-war years of corner-store capitalism — before the Age of Television — little So it's with interest that we read that advantage could be gained by a small Greg Matthews, the 'punk of the firm which embarked upon an pitch', really just wants to 'get married extensive (and expensive) advertising and buy a nice house in a good area, campaign at a sports fixture. An 'Eat hopefully with a backyard for the MacDonalds’ Hamburgers' sign kids'. We are asked to share the misery placed on a picket fence in the 1930s of Andrew Hilditch, who, though on would not have had much impact: it top of the ACB payment scale, can no would after all have been viewed only longer keep his place in the State team. by the spectators at the ground. And if We are required to applaud Geoff poor old MacDonald had only one Lawson's courage and determination small milk bar (say in Caringbah or in overcoming a stress fracture in his Coburg) it is unklikely that even the back to return to the Test arena. We hungriest of fans would have taken the are taken behind the scenes to hear of bus or tram from the ground to sample Chris Matthews' dislike of televised his wares. cricket, and of the 'agressivendss' of Things have changed with tne Merv Hughes, who has obviously been advent of television and the growth of forgiven his errant ways. transnational capital. Today's And of course there is the larger- corporate firms not only have the than-life lan Botham, or 'Ram- resources to pour millions into botham' as he has been dubbed by the advertising, but they recognise also English press. Botham's name is likely that any modern advertising strategy to appear as prominantly in the gossip requires constant brand exposure to columns as in the sports features this foster sales and build corporate image. summer. He has brought his mother Our corner-store MacDonald has with him on the trip — presumably as gone the way of the dodo, to be a ploy to defuse the constant sniping replaced by a transnational of the and media innuendos about his extra­ same name. More importantly, this curricular activities. Unfortunately for corporate 'family' store has a branch in Ian it is likely that the presence of his Caringbah and Coburg, and four or mother will simply add to the media five more in the vicinity of any major speculation. But fortunately for Ian he sports ground. does have the services of an For years the ABC, as the guardian opportunistic publicity manager. If he of Australian 'high' culture, had a does get some bad press, there is preserve in the quasi-religious ritual of always the possibility that he'll embark Selling aggression. televising 1 est matches. A reliable and upon a charity walk from Cape York receptive audience had been built up HI Dennis L illee. i to Wilson's promontory. over this time, an audience which With all this media hype it is corporate capital was unable to important that we don't miss another exploit. It tried, of course. The first 38 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW TIME OUT

evidence of change was the appearance of company names on the picket fences at all major cricket grounds. The growth of this form of advertising was the corporate response to the Australian government's decision in 1976 to ban tobacco advertising from television screens. One of the ironic side-effects of the ban was that the picket-fence promotions enabled the sponsoring tobacco firms to obtain exclusive coverage on the ABC — a non-commercial network officially off-limits to al] forms of advertising! In value-for-moncy terms the cigarette sponsors appear to be doing particularly well out of brand-name exposure. It is a relatively cheap form of advertising which heightens public recognition of the role of tobacco forms in sports promotion — something essential in ensuring continued community acceptance of tobacco products. As sports writer Bob Stewart noted in the recent book Power Play:

Whereas in 1978 some S50 million was spent on corporatcsponsorship, by 1983 it had risen to S150 million, with the tobacco and alcohol industries collectively contributing between the entire Test team (transforming the media's contrived tension. And while fifteen and twenty per cent of total sponsored funding. players, in the process, into rather the 'Bewdy Border' signs and other expensive commodities) payed messages of hero worship from Unlike the cigarette firms, which arc dividends. In a 1979 our-of-court dedicated supporters may hang for a left with no option but to advertise at settlement TCN gained exclusive while in front of the coveted corporate the grounds, many of the other rights to the Tests and one-day signs, these little symbols of genuine corporations (including alcohol fixtures. Thanks to Packer we now enthusiasm are quickly and companies) have been keen to extend have the pleasure of listening to the unceremoniously removed by the their penetration of televised sport. It profundities of Bill Lawry, and the security guards, whose job it is to see was Kerry Packer who recognised that computer-chip recollections of Ritchie that the roving cam eras gain if he were to gain control of Test Benaud. in between advertisement for maximum coverage of the sponsors’ cricket he would be able to sell this MacDonalds, Toyota, Meadow Lea brand names. audience — as a form of commodity — and Tooheys. In some cases a player What happens when sport becomes to prospective advertisers. It was also holding up a Big Mac or a can of beer totally commercialised? There are no coincidence that at the time Packer will be the same one who has cracked several obvious outcomes. For one, made his move on cricket, Australia's the ball for six in the previous over. In the players, most of whom were commercial stations were placed in the this way the key players become attracted to sport for its intrinsic somewhat difficult position of having symbols of corporate power, pleasure, become little more than to increase Australian content while transferring their prestige and entertainers 'producing' perform­ pursuing general cost reductions. It credibility to the products they have ances for their sponsors. Behaviour was estimated that an hour of chosen to endorse. which is aggressive, confrontationist Australian drama cost something in Advertising now saturates the TV and spectacular is highlighted. The the order of seven times that of an screen. The needs of advertisers rather crowd is persuaded that the only hour's cricket coverage. Cricket than the iterests and concerns of legitimate excitement in sport comes clearly won the day in the cheap viewers become the overriding through gladiatorial combat. entertainment stakes. preoccupation of the TV stations. The Successful players are judged The rest, of course, is history. While style and format of the one-day games according to their 'productivity', Packer failed in his 1977 bid for — the breaks between overs and fall of measured by arun-rate or strike rate, exclusive rights to televise cricket, his wicket, the commentary, the camera Those with style, flair and genuine not-so-subtle strategy of purchasing angles, the replays — areall part of the team spirit may soon discover that TIME OUT AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 39

these qualities fall well behind to alcohol — the very same alcohol violence. A more 'restrained' Dennis performance and reliability in the promoted by the sponsors. As cricket Lillee is on the record for similar hierarchy of desirable characteristics. becomes, or is construed to have remarks: Moreover, Ian Harriss has argued become, more 'combatative', so we are When you're out in the middle you have to that the demise of leg spin and the likely to witness the growth of violence hate the opposition player...1 didn't mind hitting virtual disappearance of batsmen with in the grandstands. A NSW a batsman. If ! could hit a batsman in the chest the ability and temperament of players Government report released in mid- or the arm or the thigh pad, or the inner thigh or like Victor Trumper has mirrored a 1985 confirmed that limited-over night something like that, (I'd) maybe make him worry a little...1 think it's all part of the game. broader change taking place within matches were the games likely to society. He argues that efficiency and promote the most violence and This new breed of cricket risk minimisation in bowling and disorder. professionals, the entrepreneurs of the batting parallels the technico- We should not be content to criticise oval, expouse the code of behaviour bureaucratic concerns of modern-day the manipulated action and 'language and provide the role models for the capitalists, rather than the aristocratic, of warfare' on the TV screens without new breed of cricket spectator. As 'gentlemanly' preoccupations found mentioning similar developments in sport has become increasingly among the eighteenth century agrarian the popular press. And we need not commercialised there is only one bourgeoisie. look far for examples. In an principle which is confirmed — by the A final outcome of the growing introduction to this season's England media, by the sports stars, by Kim commercialistation of cricket is the tour the Daily Mirror brought Jeff Hughes and his team in South Africa increased incidence of player and Thomson back from obscurity to — nothing is sacred except the spectator violence. Colin Tatz, writing preview the series. In Thommo's almighty dollar. Its pursuit is viewed in Power Play argues that words: not only as legitimate but as laudatory commercialisation and corruption in a world of individual have gone hand in hand as two of the 1 could never cop the Poms...As soon as they competitiveness and reward-for-risk main features of professionalised lobbed in here in '74 1 couldn't wait to have a ethics. I'm not at all sure I'm looking sport. In international cricket, crack at 'em. I thought 'stuff that stiff upper lip. forward to this season's spectacle. 'sledging' and intimidation have Let's see how stiff it is when it's split'. Geoff Lawrence become normal features of the game. Crowd disorder has been of growing He readily acknowledged that he had a 'taste for Pom's blood'. concern to the authorities. In January GEOFF LAWRENCE teaches sociology Thomson is trading upon our 1986 beer cans, concrete and metal at the Riverina-Murray Institute of Higher strips were am ong objects hurled by nationalism, our dislike of English Education in NSW. He is the co-editor, rival Australian and New Zealand fans pretensions, our support for the cocky with David Rowe, of a recent collection of at a one-day international at the SCG. but competent working class boy essays on the sociology of sport. Power Eighty eight people were subsequently made good. But he is also trading uf on Play, published by Hale and Iremonger. arrested. In January 1985 extra police were mobilised to curb violence during an Australia vs West Indies fixture. In February 1984 fifty-three people were arrested after brawls broke out on the Op-shop fashion Hill at the SCG. A month before eighty people had been arrested for brawling. The summer before sixty ost people like to dress nicely hour closeted in my room too ashamed were arrested in a single day after a (leaving aside for a moment to go to the school dance dressed in my policewoman was attacked while M the definition of nice) but it’s St. Vincent de Paul specials. Somehow patrolling the ground. In January 1982 pretty expensive trying to do it on the they seemed even worse than my seventy-nine fans were arrested dole, or even on the average wage, so sister’s (or brother’s) hand-me-downs, following a beer can fight. And these how do you do it? Quite simply, with especially when a tell-tale fifty cents incidents relate only to the SCG! second-hand clothes. price tag would seem to appear What sports psychologists and suddenly on the cuff of my shirt just as sociologists have come to recognise is Second-hand clothes are hand- my newest heart-throb approached. that aggression, violence and me-downs, other people’s throw-outs And certainly I felt a lot worse off than intimidation on the field of play, as or, most often, goods purchased from those who had newly-purchased well as the social construction of an opportunity shop or fete. For a lot clothes, no matter how daggy I violence via media commentary, of us, before we can even think of thought they were in other ways. It was actually increases the likelihood of dressing fashionably in second-hand bad enough that my jeans came from imitative violence among spectators. clothes, we have to get over the the Best & Less boys’ department, And, of course, that violence is more fear/shame/bad memories thrown up without the obligatory (or so I thought than likely to occur when crowds are by wearing someone else’s clothes. I, at age fifteen) l.cvi’s tag, but to think dominated by young males with access for one. spent many an adolescent that my “best dress”, most of my 40 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW TIME OUT

underwear, and al! my jumpers came Practically every suburb or town The first step is to find your local from one of the three op-shops in has at least one op-shop. Op-shop op-shop. Look up the phone book Hornsby. Shame ... ctothcs are very accessible. It may take (Under Organisations — Benevolent) So how do you go from shame to longer to find something that fits than or ask a local shopkeeper. Once you pride still wearing basically the same in. say. Grace Bros, but eventually you have made sure of its opening hours clothes? For me it was a matter of will find that half the pleasure is in the (op-shops being largely staffed by necessity: either 1 had to give up any search. What you turn up is invariably volunteers, tend to have erratic pretensions of being a well-dressed a gem. Op-shop clothes are often business hours) you’re all set to get woman, or start op-shopping to fill the better made than present-dayclothing, dressed, and generally of sturdier fabrics too, gaps in my wardrobe, I chose the fatter Op-shops are usually run by course many years ago now, and I not to mention the wider variety fo church or welfare organisations, haven't looked back since. styles to choose from. including animal welfare organisat­ Of course, with op-shop clothes, For example, I could never afford ions — for instance, the Cat it is well-nigh impossible to dress to a cashmere sweater if I didn’t know Protection Society Ladies Auxiliary about op-shops, but now I can boast look tike everyone else but then opportunity shop in the Sydney that's also one of the nicer aspects of the luxury and warmth of three orfour suburb of Enmore — but not, alas, at op-shop dressing. It gives you the cashmere garments in my cupboard. this stage by organisations on the left. chance to explore your own creativity, The same goes for warm winter coats - You might worry about the politics of to find new ways of dressing compare my $6.00 recently purchased supporting a particularly conservative appealingly, to makea new'’fashion’'. woollen coat complete with silk lining, welfare or religious society (as, indeed, It gives you much more scope. with the $ [00 wool-mix coat of similar I do) but I figure that if they’re Since it’s a very cheap way of style worn by a well-paid friend of prepared to sell very cheap clothcs, dressing you can afford to have much mine. ! find. too. that old-fashioned kitchenware, furniture and so on, it more in your wardrobe than it you woollen spencers singlets/long can't hurt to frequent their shops. depended entirely upon newly- underpants and so on are far superior There are exceptions — I have to purchased goods (especially if you go to modern ones, and though they may confess to having shopped more than for what's currently “in’* the prices have kept someone else warm for once at the Loyal Orange Society's op- many a winter's day. they still do a can be phenomenal). Many people, of shop — something 1 once promised course, are satisfied with just enough marvellous job of warming me and myself 1 would never do. School fetes, clothing to keep them warm and for a fraction of the price. jumble sales and Tribune fairs are. of respectable a basic need we all have, Regardless of the style of clothing course, a must for every shopper. and one which is admirably fulfilled by you like, you will soon find more than Details of these can usually be found in second-hand clothes. But. then again, enough that is to your liking. Being your local newspaper. you can iash out and buy a couple of practical, op-shopping may also turn garments in one day if you've got the up some garments that are no less than So now you know how lo find cash; you can have lots of objets d'art. ! have in my wardrobe these new-old clothcs go to it, and dresses shirts trousers skirts to quite a few dresses, almost unwearable wear them. You may have to suffer choose from, and so increase your because of their particularly some comments from friends or fashion potential at an exponential outlandish style, which were bought workmates about how terribly old- rate. for 20c each at a school fete some time fashioned you look (but remember ago. I know that before they leave my that whatever you've got will be back possession I will manage to wear each in mainstream fashion again of them at least once. And you can eventually — tell them you’re ahead of have Something for Every Occasion. the times, not behind), but you will get Everyday wear, party clothes, admiring glances, too. And think of gardening outfits, not to mention the the savings you will make — paying necessary' social security job interview the rent will never be so difficult again outfit for those special days: for the (only marginally, of course, what with price of a new pair of jeans, you can the price of housing rising every day). have all of these. And. with cheap For the price of one volume of Das clothes, you can better afford to /Capital, you can look like a million mix‘n'match, as well as dispose of those things you're sick of to make room for new purchases. Once you CAIT PERRY works at Shelter, a Sydney have an idea of what you feel both housing co-op, and is a member of the comfortable and attractive in. you can Communist Party. have endless fun tracking down and wearing your new-old clothes. AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 41 10th Marxist Summer School and Festival January 10th to 18th , Mere wether Building, Sydney University

OVER 70 SESSIONS, MORE THAN 100 SPEAKERS DISCUSSING

THE LEFT: Towards Socialism in Australia. New Party proposals, a broad left alliance, the role of trade unions and social movements.

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THE ECONOMY: J-curves, the Moodic Blues, the Swedish option. What does it all mean and what are the left’s alternatives?

PLUS: The women's movement, international solidarity, peace and disarmament, the environment, culture and the media, multiculturalism, the bicentennial, Marxism for beginners, and much, much more. AND LOTS OF FESTIVAL FUN

RADICAL FILM FESTIVAL: Wednesday, January 14th. A whole day of films and videos including Fran, Traps, One Soul, One People.

IDEOLOGICAL SOUNDS — A CABARET OF POLITICAL CULTURE: Sunday, January I8th at the Graphic Arts Club. (For information of members and guests.)

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Send to MSS&F, 4 Dixon Street, Sydney 2000. - The Festival of Sydney 1987 42 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW REVIEWS Worlds Apart: The Books of Nawal el Sa’adawi

An overview by MARTINA NIGHTINGALE

The numerous cases which / saw in At one level, Nawal’s writing is a my clinic made me decide to devote a passioante appeal to our basic feelings good part of my life to the task of of humanity, justice and compassion. unmasking the double face of the Nawal is not a writer in the ordinary society in which we live, a society sense. Her books are an expression of which preaches virtue and morality her political activism which also and practices something very different extends into participation in the in secret. organised women’s movement and lo (The Hidden Face o f Eve. page 16.) advocating women’s rights in every public forum available to her. She helped to establish the Arab Women’s This quote explaisn a great deal Association which is the first about why Nawal el Sa adawi’s books staunchly feminist organisation in the are so compelling, disturbin and yet Arab world. She is also playing a ultimately hopeful. Although writing significant role in setting up a women’s has always been an important part of publishing house. Her recent visit lo her life, she trained and practised asa Australia as part of the Adelaide doctor and a psychiatrist and worked Festival Writers’ Week was as much at the policy level for a considerable used to forge links with Australian period. It is only more recently, in the feminists as it was to promote herself last ten years, that she has devoted her asa writer. Predictably, she was one of time almost solely to the written word. a very small number of international Her experience as a doctor and women writers invited to the festival. psychiatrist treating women for the At least, the good press coverage physical symptoms of their oppression generated by her visit offered some motivated her to expose the real compensation and extended further causes. This political commitment is her already well established reputation infectious, even to the most apolitical as a writer, a socialist, and a forthright of her readers, because the awful facts, advocate of women's liberation. the limitations, and outright cruelty Part of her familiarity can be inflicted on women are presented with explained by the very practical fact such irrefutable logic. that she is one of the few Arab women writers whose work has been translated into English. As she herself II i n points out, there are other brilliant Arab women writers who are well known in their own region, but who arc simply not accessible to a Western - readership. This is not to dismiss her considerable literary achievements, not to underrate her important

I contribution in assisting Western readers to develop a more informed f I understanding of women’s oppression in the Arab world. Nawal has written twenty-two ' books but. unfortunately, only five arc REVIEWS AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 43

currently available in English. Nevertheless, they do give an indication of Nawal’s major concerns and her approach as a writer of both fiction and non-fiction. The Hidden Face o f Eve was the first of Nawal’s books to be translated into English. Using the straight­ forward style which is characteristic of her writing, she describes her own personal experiences of growing up in Egypt, and explains what it is like to become a woman in the Middle East. This book is remembered by many feminists for challenging our rather glib assumptions about Arab women. Regrettably, in hindsight, our tendency had been to pronounce that the oppression of women in so-called Third World countries was a result of religious supersition and underdev­ elopment. We pointed to the practice of clitorodectomy (the excision of the clitoris) and women being forced to wear veils, as evidence of extreme backwardness in the Arab world and, by inference, we viewed Western women as more liberated. In The Hidden Face o f Eve and throughout her other writings, Nawal emphatically rejects these notions. She asserts that Western imperialism, patriarchal relations and capitalism combine to maintain women's inferior status and to keep the majority of the population in extreme poverty. This oppression is justified on religious grounds, but it is not necessarily inherent in Islamic teachings. her novels and, as she explains in the health. Through her studies on women opening chapter of and sex, Nawal uncovered a level of The widespread practice of The Hidden Face had a devastating impact on ignorance and superstition too horrific clitorodectomy is used to illustrate her o f Eve, her own girlhood: point. Nawal traces the origins of this to contemplate, including the practice to earlier than the advent of widespread yet hidden incidence of I was six years old when I lay in my bed. sexual abuse and incest. Islam and beyond the confines of Arab warm and peaceful in that pleasurable In the second ha If of the book, the countries. stale halfway between wakefulness and earlier chapters women’s sexuality sleep ... They carried me lo the bathroom 011 She argues that clitorodectomy is arc placed in the wider context of the not religious, but patriarchal. By ... I did not know what they had cut from my body and 1 did not try to find out. limitations placed on women's diminishing women's sexuality it is education and work opportunities, more possible to keep women The pain here is not only physical. their lack of protection from abuse monogamous and thereby secure the The nightmarish quality is also the and their enshrined secondary status patriarchal family line. Nawal points result of being kept in ignorance about under the law. Hardly surprisingly, out that, in the West, the Freudian her body. Nawal recalls other women in Arab countries share notion of infaltilc clitoral orgasm significant events which should have common ground with women all serves a similar function in stunting been natural partsof growing up, such round the world. Yet, while the women's sexual pleasure. as her first period. She remembers similarities should be emphasised. But Nawal is in no way feeling dirty, ashamed and frightened. Nawal sees the differences as crucial. apologising for this crucl practice. In Yet Nawal came from a relatively wel- They mean that Arab women have fact, the terrifying experience of educated family who at least different priorities from those of clitorodectomy is a recurring theme in understood the basics of physical Western women, including national 44 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW REVIEWS

liberation and fighting against dire ultra right, with Nawal placing herself of The Hidden Face o f Eve is highly economic hardship. as "more or less the independent writer dramatic and. on one level. Memoirs Nor is it surprising that The in between”. This combination is from the Women's Prison can be read Hidden Face o f Eve, along with her hardly a recipe for harmonious like a novel, with an identifiable plot book Women and Sex. was extremely relations. Still, they managed to live and well-drawn charactcrs. it is when controversial. As she explains in the together remarkably well. Their dire Nawal moves into the realm of introduction: circumstances forced them not only to conventional third-person narrative accommodate each other, but also led that her writing often lacks the warmth There is no doubt that to write about to strong attachments which have and vitaly infused into her other women in Arab countries, especially if the endured well beyond their three works. Two Women in One and God author is herself a woman, is to tread on months' confinement. Dies by the Nile fall into this category. difficult and sensitive areas. It is like Memoirs from the Women's While still dealing with her central picking your way through territory ehavy Prison is much more than a diary of a cocncrn of women's oppression in the with visible and hidden mines. difficult experience. It is a study of Arab world, the charactcrs fail to do political suppression under Egypt's justice to this theme. To question the moral codes President Sadat and the consequences Two Women in One tells the story justified as part of Islam did indeed of repression at a personal level. The of a young woman caught between the prove a dangerous occupation. Her life of an extreme fundamentalist powerful forces of tradition and the book Women and Sex led to Nawal’s woman entails being deprived of enticing but scary possibilities of an dismissal from her influential post as physical movement and independent independent life. Although Nawal's Director of Health in the Egyptian thought. They are not allowed to laugh political message is clear, the central Minstry of Public Health, In 1981 she or cry or to show any signs of human character is one-dimensional, reduced was imprisoned for her political emotion. They must be covered at all to a mere vehicle for her feminist writing. times and ordinary bodily functions purpose. During her visit to Australia. are a source of unspeakable shame. At Similarly, God Dies by the Nile Nawal was cheerfully philosophical the other end of the spectrum, the can be read as a fictional account of about this experience. When asked dogmatic marxist revolutionary is also the subject matter in The Hidden Face about her stay in prison she replied repressed. Every emotion has to be o f Eve, A peasant family is relentlessly that, although it was a very difficult subsumed to the revolutionary cause, exploited and victimised at the hands time, there were also compensations thereby stunting her capacity to of a corrupt village establishment. The which made the experience communicate with others. Nawal's novel is a metaphor for the Sadat worthwhile. She met many brave and simple but significant poin is that regime, landlord oppression and the wonderful women, she said, and her religion-s fanaticism and political vulnerability of an illiterate and time was not wasted bccausc it had dogma converge to produce personal poverty-stricken population. provided the inspiration for two new and political repression. The characterisation of Zakeya books. In both The Hidden Face o f Eve and her family relics heavily on One of these. Memoirs from the and Memoirs from the Women's imagery from the natural world. Often Women's Prison has recently been Prison, Nawal emerges as her own best it is as if they experience life through a published in English, l.ike all Nawal's character. Those of us lucky enough to scries of inexplicable sensations and books, it is immensely readable, it have met her during her brief stay in emotions. Even Zakeya's moment of shows Nawal's tremendous courage Australia would testify that she is revenge appears to come from a force and resistance amid harsh and indeed a striking and dynamic outside herself. At times, the extremely squalid conditions. But. far personality, with a strong sense of the limitations of character development from purposely depicting herself dramatic and an infectious sense of make very irritating reading. Evil heroically, her crucial role in humour. Fortunately for her readers, charactcrs are signalled by long, maintaining morale and organising she is able to transfer these clinical descriptions of their nasty resistance is considerably understated. characteristics to print. But such disabilities which are. in turn, linked to Yet even a dispassionate record of personal exposure is threatening for disgusting personal habits, a depraved events indicate her positive effect on any writer, especially for a woman sexuality and moral bankruptcy. the other prisoners. writing from a feminist perspective. By These devices are also used in Her descriptions of prison show placing herself at the centre of her Women at Point Zero, yet this book is that there was very little to be positive writings. Nawal not only challenges by far Nawal's best novel to date. It is a about. There were twelve women the assumption that objectivity is powerful and inspiring account of a huddled together in the one vermin- confined to academic conventions, she woman prostitute wh o is imprisoned infested cell, with disgusting food, discards the protection offered by and about to be hanged for killing a wooden benches for beds, no proper being removed from her subject pinp. The novel begins with Nawal toilet facilities, no contact with the matter. describing the events leading to her outside world and no indication as to if From a literary perspective. meeting Firdaus in prison. At first. or when they would be released. Nawal also stretches the distinctions Firdaus refuses to meet with Nawal. They were political prisoners between fiction and non-fiction. Much When she changes her mind, we are ranging from the extreme left to the REVIEWS AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 45

transported into Firdaus’ccli. The rest sexual oppression. But Nawal has deeply and discover for themselves the of the novel consists of Firdaus explained that Firdaus and the many pleasures and insights found in telling her life story just hours before character Bahaih in Two Women in her books. Hopefully, we can also help she is to be hanged. One did not win. The theme in both create some pressure for the remaining Woman at Point Zero is based on these books is that it is impossible for seventeen books still not available to the true story of a woman Nawal met an individual women to fight alone. us to be translated into English. while conducting her study on women The two characters' failure is and neurosis. Nawal has said that the completely consistent with Nawal’s novel is, in fact, eighty percent non­ feminsit convictions enunciated so The Hidden Face o f Eve. Women in the fiction and twenty percent fiction. clearly in 7 he Hidden Face of Eve. The Arab World. Zed Press. 1980. Perhaps this firm basis in reality only avenue for women’s liberation is Woman at Point Zero. Zed Press, 1983. distinguishes this novel so markedly for women to unite together and Two Women in One. A! Saqi Books, 1985. God Dies by the Nile. Zed Books, 1985. from the others. Certainly, the simple, connect our concerns with the Memoirs from the Women's Prison. The direct and totally unsentimental voice struggles for economic and social Women's Press, 1986. of Firdaus, as she talks about her justice everywhere. deprivation, abuse and ultimate While so much more can be said MARTINA NIGHTINGALE la a member revenge, is not unlike Nawal’s own about Nawal cl Sa'adawi both asa o f the Scarlet Woman editorial collective stile in Memoirs from the Women's writer and a political activist, my in Melbourne, and a member of the Prison. purpose here has merely been to tempt Communist Party. She interviewed Nawal Undoubtedly, the situations potential Sa’adawi fans to delve more el Sa'adawi on her recent viatt to Australia. described in Woman at Point Zero contain the compelling combination of drama and tragedy, a fafct recogniscd by several producers who lost no time in adapting it for the stage. For women readers, especially, Guilty feelings Firdaus' revenge, however short-lived, on the pimp who threatened her life Eating Your Heart Out by Ramona Koval (Penguin, J986). merits our applause. Equally, we Reviewed by PA VLA MILLER. cannot help but admire her refusal to grovel to the authorities for a pardon, even though it costs her life. And On the back cover of Eating Your particular, Ramona Koval argues, although we would not condone Heart Out, the publishers tell us that channel many problems and Firdaus’ statementat the end of the the book is for “everyone who worries frustrations of their everyday life into novel that she would go on killing about their weight”. They are wrong. an obsession with food. Rather than men, we have all had moments when The book is also for those, worried or attempting to deal with the causes of this alternative holds a certain appeal. not, who want to understand the these problems, the “body industry" With so many positive aspects to making of one of the overwhelming aggressively and enthusiastically Woman at Point Zero, it is easy to concerns of people today. In her book, cashcs in. Conforming to a changing overlook the occasional festering sore, Ramona Koval takes on two and elusive ideal body shape is decaying bodies and the continuous important tasks. Firstly, she sets out to presented as an easy solution to references to dirty fingernails, demolish the seemingly natural problems ranging from unemploy­ especially sicne these belong to the character of the “ideal” bodily shape. ment to poor health or an hundreds of men who cynically exploit Secondly, she exposes the trickery and unsatisfactory sex life. In fact, dieting Firdaus, dangerous practices of many sections and other weight-contro! measures For those who have read the story of the weight control industry. may be a source of gireater health of Firdaus’ life, it is not difficult to Only fifty years ago, advertise­ problems than those which they are understand why the novel has been so ments in Australian newspapers used to solve. widely acclaimed, both internationally invited women to “transform ugly With a degree in Microbiology and in Middle East countries where hollows into graceful curves”; a few and Genetics and a delightful sense of publciation was permitted. Along with years earlier, an advertisement offered humour, Ramona lOoval docs a many of Nawal's books. Woman at to “put 10, 15, yes, 20 pounds of good convincing job of demol ishing the link Point Zero is banned in her own solid 'stay there' flesh on your bones’’. between health and thim bodies — so country, though many Egyptians have Today, teenage models, looking “like much so that many thin people might managed to obtain illegal copies. At pipe cleaners", entice mature women feel a slight twinge: of uncase. the same time, this book is Nawal's to “bite chunks out of their weight Certainly, "those thin people who most consistently misunderstood problem” and to "create a slim, sexy maintain their weight through a work. Many critics have mistakenly great body in record time”. The ideal combination of rigorous dieting, food assumed that the author is advocating changes, but the pressure on people to obsessions and self-ha'tred do not fall violence as a means of combatting conform to it remTiins. Women in into the category of he: althy” Fatness. 46 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW REVIEWS

on the other hand, may be one of the The food industry and many of its possibilities opened up by feminist risk factors associated with some products are subject to even stronger psychotherapists working with groups diseases, but does not necessarily criticisms. Even those who tend to be of women who have problems with cause them. Indeed, the book favours sceptical of the claims of advertisers food. Yet, in the long run, increased the view that fat and skinny people are will find some surprises. Did you know self-esteem and feeling good about our part of the natural range of human that Weight Watchers International is bodies is not enough. In the end, we diversity; and that the sickness and owned by Heinz (of the Heinz beans)?; must demand healthy, meaningful misery of fat people depend not only that a Weight Watchers brand of livelihoods for all people, adequate on their weight but on their sensitivity breakfast cereal contains more incom es and leisure (even for to persecution on account ot their kilojoules per 100 grams than the same women!), and cheap, widely available weight. kind of breakfast cereal produced by healthy foods. In other words, the While research on the link the same company under its own emphasis should be only partly on between weight and health remains name?; that Purina toasted muesli feeling good about ourselves, but also inconclusive, some parts of the weight contains 26 percent sugar? on making sure we all have a lot to feel control industry seem to present a In terms of quick profit, however, good about. considerable health hazard. In the perhaps the highest stakes are involved I highly recommend the book —it chapter on the medical wing of the in commercial weight-loss centres, is not often that we can chuckle our _ industry, the author presents detailed dieting clubs and similar enterprises. way through a readable, scholarly information on the various drugs and Although little systematic information demolition job on a major social surgical procedures used by the is available about these, Ramona institution. medical profession to control weight. Koval documents some of the rip-offs As yet. there seems to be no and dangerous practices involved. In satisfactory drug which can lead to the particular, she points out that, for PAVLA MILLER teaches Education at__ Melbourne University, and is a member of permanent loss of large amounts of some people, some forms of exercise the ALR collective. weight. The available surgical can lead to a serious deterioration of procedures arc often dangerous and health. Once the first visit is over, have limited success. Whatever the however, health fitness club staff seem case, medical practitioners in to offer little professional guidance to Australia do not receive adequate their clients. Several of the “miracle training in diet and nutrition. Indeed, diets” analyscd in the book do not fare the author argues that fatness in itself much better: they might give is not a disease. While middle class miraculous profits to their promoters, doctors, however, tend to see the body but are based on misleading medical shapu acquired by the women of their information, arc dangerous to health class as the ideal, and assume not only — and do not work in the long run. that other social groups share their Unlike most books about food ideals, but that poorer women, too. and dieting. Eating Your Heart Out have the time, resources and leaves the readers guilty about their inclination regularly to attend fitness innermost desire to lose weight and. ow times change! Twenty ye»n clubs and purchase health foods. unintentionally, makes skinny people ago, Australian books about teel somewhat uneasy. Unmtcntion- H socialist history or politics wen allv. since the main message of a com parative rarity. A lm ost all of the book is undoubtedly: "heel good those published came from a handful about your body, whatever size and of sources, usually closely tied to the shape it is”. Those readers who remain organised left. The most prolific convinced that they, for whatever sources of progressive literature were reason, need to lose weight, will have Current Book Distributors (run by the to read between the lines to work out Communist Party) and the the best way to do it. Australasian Book Society. The problem remains that in our society many people do have Current Books, apart from being unhealthy jobs and lifestyles, and the distributor of almost all the works often develop serious disorders such as of Marx. Engels and Lenin available in anorexia and bulimia associated with Australia, published hundreds of food. In her chapter on strategies for pamphlets, booklets, and booksabout change, the author discusses two ways Australian politics, usually written by forward. On an economic level, this is leading figures in the Communist a thorough and stringent regulation of Party. The Australasian Book Society the weight control industry. On an concentrated more on fiction with a Slimming: tl te impossible ideal individual level, she discusses the progressive bent, with a range of SHELFLIFE AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW 47

authors such as Judah Waten, Frank explicitly socialist or feminist. With one of its recent lead titles was Hardy, Mary Gilmour and John one important exception — Pluto Thoroughbred Studs of Australia and Morrison, and was responsible for Press Australia — these companies are New Zealand — but its lists include making available, through its straightforward capitalist concerns, numerous titles on feminism, labour subscription list, a range of new and their willingness to publish such history, and contemporary Australian writing long before Australian books is basically because they believe society, politics and culture from a literature became widely fashionable. they can sell enough to make a profit. radical standpoint. It was also a publisher of non-fiction, Of course, there are socialists and Anyone who knows Allen and including Noel Ebbels' pioneering feminists working for such companies Unwin’s British publishing concern b o o k . The Australian Labor but, ultimately, decisions about would probably get a big surprise to Movement 1850-1907. There were publishing programs in what are see what it is doing in Australia. Apart other small left publishers, including merely local branches of multinational from a solid, conservative academic magazines like Dissent and Outlook. enterprises have to get past the list, the UK parent company survives Major commercial publishers, though, accountants. on books on cricket, cooking and would have tittle or nothing to do with The number of these companies railways, and the novels of J.R. the left. Companies like Cheshire or which have been tempted to explore Tolkien. Who could have guessed that Angus and Robertson published the the radical market in recent years, and all those readers of Lord of the Rings odd book of interest to socialists, but the successes of those who have would end up paying for the virtually nothing which could be developed a good list of books from publication of books like Lloyd described as radical. the Australian left, is an important Edmonds' Letters from Spain, Game A short browse through the reminder of the potential size of the and Pringle's Gender at Work, or the shelves of any good bookshop these left in this country. For major works of Bob Connell? In one way, days shows how much things have publishers like Penguin and Collins to though, the wheel has come full cycle. changed. Particularly over the last print 3,000 copies of a book is to do no Allen and Unwin has been formed decade, there has been a real explosion more than break even, and most of over the years by the merger of various of left publishing in Australia. Part of their publications have much larger smaller publishers, and one of the the reason for this has been the growth print-runs. 1 think the beginning of original ones was a company called of small left presses such as Kibble Penguin’s radical publishing was with Swann Sonnenschein — the original Books (an offshoot of the journal A New Britannia in 1970 (a book publishers in English of Marx’s Arena), the Melbourne feminist which they are about to reissue in a Capital. collective Sybylla Press, Sydney's revised edition) and their persistence But the problem for the left m Alternative Publishing Co-operative, with such publishing ever since points relying on publishers who are simply and Stained Wattle Press, which have to their ability to reach an audience far in it for the money is that, in a world of been responsible for the availability of larger than those of us on the left takeovers and mergers, the publishers an increasing range of socialist and usually contemplate. whom we now rely on for feminist publications. Pluto Press is somewhat different dissemination of our writings may end In addition, there is a number of — being the Australian branch of an up, in a year or two, concentrating on new Australian publishers who cannot established radical publisher in publishing texts for business really be described as radical Britain. Of course, radical publishers management. One of the more publishers, but whose lists include are still motivated by concerns of enthusiastic sharks of recent times in numerous socialist and leminist titles. profit, even if only to pay for more British (and Australian) publishing is Probably the most notable of these is publishing, but their reason for being an American named Rupert Murdoch the Sydney company Hale and is to develop a strong list of left books. -— a figure quite capable of making Iremonger who, alongside such In the short time it has operated in this decisions about cutting radical delights as Stumpjumpers: A New country, Pluto has certainly started to publishing, even if it does make a Breed o f Australians, with its profiles do that, with local publications like profit. Similarly, Allen and Unwin UK of Bob Ansett and his kind, have Moving Left, Health and Safety at has recently been sold to a new owner. published or republished a wide range Work, Thank God for the Revolution, At this stage, it seems that this won't of books on labour history and politics and The Accord... and Beyond. It has make any difference to the way the and various feminist writings, also done an excellent job of Australian branch works — but the including two collections from the producing and promoting Australian possibility that it could show up the Women and Labour Conferences. editions of books like R ed difficulties, as well as the possibilities, Others who are publishing radical Brotherhood at War and The War inherent in the present state of work include Hyland House and Against East Timor. publishing on the left. Kangaroo Press. At least in scale, however, the What has been most important, biggest publisher of radical books in though, in widening the availability of Australia today is Allen and Unwin, KEN NORLING works in the International Bookshop in Melbourne, radical writings in this country is the the local branch of a very old and and is a member of the Communist Party, readiness of major international established British publisher. It is publishers to handle books which are certainly not just a radical publisher — 48 AUSTRALIAN LEFT REVIEW

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