>But a lot of the rest of it reads like the
>sort of stuff Thomas Sowell writes.
Which is, sadly but predictably, just how the papers dealt with the speech (where they mentioned it at all). I don't reckon that's fair, though.
>1. According to Pearson, the central problem of the
>Aborigines is the corrosive effect of spending too
>much time receiving "passive" welfare payments.
Well, if we're talking *central* problems - I reckon Pearson would have intended this bit for that spot: "The concept of race has been coopted by the mechanisms of class to devastating effect against the interests of black Australians. It means that even among the lower classes the blacks have few friends because the whites focus their Hansonesque blame and resentment upon the blacks, who are either to be condemned for their hopelessness or envied for what little hope they might have."
Pearson is clear on the profound benefits of the welfare state for those who fought for it and financed it. He explains and bewails our quietitude as it coughs up its lifeblood. "It is just that [Indigenous Australians] have experienced a marginal aspect of that welfare state: income provisioning for people dispossessed from the real economy." For most of them, the infrastructural manifestations of the welfare state have not been accessible - and without the health and education necessary for development (and Pearson makes a big thing of the welfare state's enabling democratic-developmentalist dimension), you just don't get out of the hole a thoroughly dispossessed people is in. And, sez Pearson, the education that is available to his mob is vocational (not to mention, often based on assumptions about [male] Aboriginees' 'natural' gift for sports) and does not encourage comprehension, never mind critical thinking and the corresponding sense of agency.
Nope, individual welfare payments, but one aspect of the welfare state experience for the rest of us, are all there is for Pearson's mob. Few opportunities subsist in a dole payment, yet much political capital in the condemnation of the consequently 'unproductive' recipients. That political capital mounts as the lot of the white lumpen proletariat worsens (hence his reference to the Hansonites).
Sez Pearson: "The great mistake of the Social Democrats of all countries is that they put all their efforts into economic redistribution and failed to build a movement that could take up the battle about the laws of thought. The Social Democrat leadership thought they were going to solve the problems with some major reforms and settlements between industrialists and representatives of the majority. Now when the economy is changing, and the Welfare State is being dismantled, the majority of the population are unable to take part in the analytical debate about their future." In short, social democracy acted as if the fine balance of power of the time would always prevail. Redistribution was all, and Australia's noble anti-intellectual tradition was fine. As soon as the class was no longer homogenous and the function of the state changed, well, neither political champions nor their constituents had been prepared by their time in the half-light.
>I don't see why the persistent receipt of transfer payments
>should necessarily lead to such a plethora of social
>problems, and I don't think that the views of the
>"theorists" and "armchair lefties" deserve to be
>dismissed out of hand quite so much.
As I say above, Daniel, I don't think Pearson's saying that. He's saying that *if transfer payments, as individual dole payments, is all there is, then you're gonna have problems*. Remember, he's a staunch defender of the welfare state. He just defines it as something more than a dole-based safety net. I think that's right, meself.
>2. I'd like to see a lot more facts and figures
>backing up the assertion that "The bulk of the gross
>domestic product is now generated by a symbol and
>information-handling middle class and some highly
>qualified workers. These qualified people have a
>bargaining position in the labour market because of
>their individual competence, whereas traditional
>workers are interchangeable and depend on organisation
>and solidarity in their negotiations with the
>employers. "
There'll always be arguments about what does and does not constitute 'information-handling' work. So must there be about the dollar-value we place upon the tag. Tendentious territory, I reckon - much of it serving to foster a sense of exceptionalism about our present that I'm not at all sure will hold water in the long run. But surely there's no doubt that the blue-collar wage worker depends more than ever on [less than ever] solidarity for his/her security and comfort?
>For a start, I don't think it's factually true of the
>Australian economy. Second, it misses the material
>base of this section of the economy; very few people
>are able to be paid for just manipulating symbols and
>information, the point is that these symbols and
>information denote ownership and control of material
>production. And finally, he shouldn't be swallowing
>the idea that the "highly qualified" have such a great
>bargaining position. They're completely replaceable,
>their large rewards actually come from their current
>position as guardians of an overflowing granary, and
>their threat to take their valuable skills away is
>almost always hollow.
Don't see this as absolutely central to Pearson's argument, and tend to agree with you, Daniel. But a retrenched executive or academic has a lot of boojie 'cultural capital' and, in today's Oz at least, is still much more likely to know her way around a computer than the 'unskilled worker' class. She might be replaceable (I know I am), but has some real hope of replacing someone else, and is in a better position to ride the down-time, too. That all dissolves when the granary's empty, of course ...
>3. An "inalienable right to a fair place in the real
>economy" sounds like an expensive thing to provide for
>a completely dislocated community, and I think that
>Pearson is guilty of suggesting that this could be
>provided just by legislating it so.
I reckon this is precisely the radical part of the speech (if you don't count the thinly disguised Marxist analysis)! The socialist would surely hold that none should be barred from socially productive labour and reward. If the price of extending this right to someone is deemed too much, then the deemer in question needs enlightenment as to the meaning of 'inalienable'. This is a sledgehammer condemnation of our whole social system! And Pearson lets it hang, too - I don't remember him saying a bit of legislation would or could fix the problem at all.
>He seems to elide
>the fact that, to give the Aborigines a "fair place in
>the real economy" would involve transferring large
>lump sums to them, to give them a fair share of the
>means of production of the economy. The basic problem
>of the Aborigines is that they lack wealth, not
>income; they can't begin to do anything because they
>don't have the table ante.
Exactly. They lack wealth. Part of which is to do with appropriate educational and medical infrastructure. And part of which is to do with land. Once you have land (and Pearson is a land rights activist), the sovereignty to get some lawnorda happening (a system of locally appropriate rewards and punishments), and some seed-funding (ie the sort of collective transfer payment that would be appropriate to a group, rather than the individual dole payments formally appropriate to the individual citizens they have been since they copped formal liberal citizenship in 1967)
>I quite like a lot of the things in this speech, and
>would second Rob's exhortation to read it. But it
>makes me feel uneasy; if he keeps saying this sort of
>thing, Noel Pearson is likely to find a lot of money
>thrown at him by a certain kind of think tank, so long
>as he keeps on churning out well-written monographs
>full of lurid images of alcohol and petrol abuse by
>black people, with last chapters that blame it all on
>"passive welfare".
Oz's indigenous folk are even more disproportionately unemployed, gaoled and dead than Afro-Americans, mate. There's are two levels of social malaise in the mix, for mine. The obvious one is the one most here would instantly recognise: a prevalent relation within greater Australia we might as well call racism. The other is doing its damage from within, and Pearson is introducing us to the conditions which would need to pertain for the latter to be addressed. He doesn't want pwoggies to stand in the way of practical fixes by depending too exclusively on indignant accusations like 'it's all a bunch of racist stereotyping', or pointless boojie guilt trips like 'this is what we've made of 'em', or selective and individualistic responses like 'give the accused guaranteed representation in court'. There's a kernel of truth in that lot, of course. But no social (political economic) fixes for a social (political economic) problem. A democratic-developmentalist welfare state for all, and land, a drop of genuine local judicial and policing prerogative, and some initial *strategic* transfer payments for Aboriginal Australia in particular. That's where I see this speech takes us, anyway.
Thomas Sowell would choke on such outrageous denials of individual freedom and responsibility, I'm sure ...
And thanks for reading it, mate!
Cheers, Rob.