The bad news is that the alternative leadership of the Australian ruling class is fast becoming more corporatist by the day. Corporatism is the ideology that promotes class collaboration between employers and employees. This collaboration is all done "in the national interest" as opposed to what the marketplace demands: a struggle and negotiation between classes over the price of labour. The latest confirmation of this tendency was taken yesterday when the leader of the Labor Party demanded that its National Executive committee expel Joe Macdonald from the Party's ranks.
http://au.news.yahoo.com/071026/2/14rtl.html
I sort of know Joe. Heard him speak at rallies and other gatherings of more class conscious workers. I gave him a copy of AUSTRALIAN WOBBLY POETRY, SONG AND SCURRILOUS DOGGEREL while at the May Day events this year. (If you want one, write to me.) He's out there on the picketlines and in the workplaces of the construction industry doing his job. He's a delegate for the CFMEU and as a delegate, his job is to respond to workers' concerns about safety and the like at workplaces. Joe is a plain speaking bloke who says what he thinks, especially when the bosses are trying to cut corners on safety. Construction is a dangerous way to have to make a living. Speed up and the like may make the bosses happy by increasing profit margins; but guys like Joe don't take kindly to this form of bullying. So, Joe has the tendency to fight back and inspire his fellow workers to fight back. This is why Joe is a danger to the bosses and their allies amongst the polytricksters.
Kevin Rudd and his Labor Party are at best bourgeois socialists . They do promise to give back more of the wealth, which workers create in the first place, to the workers, usually in the form of more social services. What they can't stand and what they don't want is for the workers to become more class conscious, more aware that they have no class interests in common with their employers. Listen up now. It's axiomatic in the free marketplace of commodities that buyers and sellers have opposing interests: sellers want higher prices and buyers want lower prices. The workers of the world sell their skills and time and they hope to do so for the highest price. They do this most effectively when they join in union, in concert because that way, they're in a better bargaining position. Because they're organized and have more power, they can also demand better working conditions, safer working conditions. The rub is that bourgeois socialists just want to get elected and they don't now think that can occur, if they don't show how pro-business and anti-class conscious action they are. This is the ugly face of the Labor Party.
Mike B)
Everybody's got to believe in something. I believe I'll have another beer." - W. C. Fields http://www.iww.org/culture/official/preamble.shtml
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