>just look at the referendum result in australia. most people voted 'no' to
>the republic question. only 9% of people in australia are monarchists.
>rob noted that the people at the end of the scale voted 'no', but even he
>couldn't bring himself to say that overwhelmingly it was the working class
>who voted 'no'. and we didn't vote 'no', those of us who did, because we
>wanted a monarchy, but (as well as many other reasons), the kinds of
>representational structures and organisations of working class aspirations
>are not in place in australia that would have asserted itself as an
>_identity_ within the framework of the referendum. to put it another way,
>the working class existed only as a resounding 'fuck you'.
If you mean there's nothing in the institutional setting, no channel for expression or will-formation, no sense we're relevant to anything, no respect for us whatsoever implicit in the glossy lying pap beamed at us by PR professionals, nothing we're discussing featuring in any of the orchestrated coverage, no connections being made between our material lot and the contentious word changes - that the whole thing seemed like a tiff about nothing, between our distant betters, with our money but not about us - well, yeah, I agree with you. Had their been a 'fuck you' box, I reckon it would've got up.
>a strongly-felt (as the pundits keep calling it) chasm between 'leaders'
>and 'led'.
Which crisis, I reckon, either produces polarised collective politics, or reduces us to a sullen aggregate of self-privatised individuals and grouplets. The far right's demonstrably better at the former, and the rest of us are demonstrably inclined to the latter.
>and there's no 'identity' because the prior forms of working class identity
>have proved themselves to be little more than mechanisms of integration and
>subordination.
Well, I passionately agree with this - but I don't reckon most saw this in such a finely tuned beam - we simply hate all authority more every day. The 'no' brigade traded on this throughout, and it resonated. 'Course, their particular deployment was both deceitful ('direct election' alone would just get us more of the corporate party thing) and incoherent ('don't fix what ain't broke' is an ill fit with 'don't trust your institutions').
>which explains why traditional Labor Party electorates
>voted overwhelmingly 'no' -- as did National Party (rural) electorates
Not to my satisfaction, Ange. A bit of insecurity overload (generally a conservative force); a bit of 'fuck all this symbolism-for-the-cafe-au-lait-set shit' (an impotent bleat from a proudly practical and unpretentious political culture which has to choose from two words to express itself); and a dash of 'we the people should be trusted to choose our president' (although we're happy not choosing our primeminister). That's my instinct, anyway.
>you can't explain that without pondering the history of the collapse of
>>traditional forms of representation, organisation and identity, and
>indeed >without thinking a little of the ways in which working class
>identity is being
>re-shaped.
The welfare state seemed like a practical expression of the people, I reckon. This state doesn't. Our institutions don't express us, and we're either too insecure or too alienated from each other to even think of doing the expressing directly ourselves. Get into some of that Telstra stock, buy dead-locks, and enjoy some private suit-loathing when the news comes on - that's us.
Negatively tarrying, Rob.