Is there anyone resident in Raleigh, NC on this list?
Ismail
Aluta Continua!
________________________________ From: Gary MacLennan <gary.maclennan1 at gmail.com> To: Ismail Lagardien <ilagardien at yahoo.com> Sent: Tue, 1 December, 2009 19:32:50 Subject: Re: [Marxism] spasm in electoral politics in Oz
====================================================================== Rule #1: YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. ======================================================================
>
>
>
> Stuart wrote:
>
> Of course, there is even more to it that this, and that is the actual, real
> and worsening climate emergency is increasingly hard to ignore. The result
> could well be increasing polarisation at the extremes of spectrum — a
> strengthening of the Greens on the left and a strengthening of the hard
> right populalist, denialist wing on the right.
>
> Both wings being opposed the Labor's ridiculous and dangerous bill that
> Turnbull backed.
>
> My reply:
>
I agree with you about the bill that Labor proposed. However I think it is important to grasp that the bill was never intended to be anything other than a device to split the Liberals. Almost certainly Prime Minister Rudd instructed his minister Penny Wong to reach a deal, any deal with the Liberal Party. She rolled over and made the kind of massive concessions to the rich which the Liberal leader Malcolm Turnbull thought would enable him to present himself as a victor in the negotiations with Labor. But Rudd both wanted the concessions himself and also probably knew that the Liberal Party would accept no concessions at all and that the result would be a split in the Liberal Party. that was the result he aimed for and the result he achieved. It was clever inter party maneuvering - electoral politics at its most deadly and most irrelevant. For of course as you point out the result has been that we have not nothing which deals with the ecological crisis.
You are right too about the media and its propaganda aimed to persuade the "battlers" that pro-environment politics is bad for them. But I remain optimistic here. Even the most backward and most stupid layers of society (and that includes the Australian ruling class) has to breathe and drink water. It is in those needs that the basis for the future growth of a mass ecological movement rests. The danger of course is that by the time that a mass pro-ecology consciousness develops it may be too late.
But there is a widespread anxiety about the environment and global warming and I stand by my statement that the Liberals will pay dearly for their climate scepticism. That does not of course mean that the attempt to find a base for anti-environmentalism among backward layers will not continue. We have had a taste of that in the past in Tasmania as in "green politics costs jobs". But it is a profoundly non-hegemonic move for a ruling class to base onself on the backward. Generally it requires the killing off of democracy -even in its weakened electoral form. This is what I take you to mean by your reference to 'dangeous'.
Your statistics about the surge in Green support is an indication of what will happen here. But personally the Greens fill me with despair. Their sectarianism and their absolute determination to avoid any socialist ideas ultimately prevent them from identifying the culprit - capitalist production. The Brown leadership cabal is to blame and there will be no real progress until a new leadership emerges. Such a leadership will have to make a principled and programmatic turn to the left and embrace contemporary versions of socialism.
comradely regards
Gary ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism at lists.econ.utah.edu Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/ilagardien%40yahoo.com