There is a popular Chinese proverb that goes: “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now.”
It would have been great if neoliberalism had been defeated 20 years ago. It wasn’t. Sections of the left found neoliberalism to be so nebulous, so difficult to pin down, that many even fell for its warped logic and were co-opted by it instead of fighting it.
The residual Blairism, here and abroad, which tries to resist the popular democratic socialist impulse, is textbook defeatism. It is a reflex that, in the name of democracy, dilutes democracy by stealth and encompasses a piece-by-piece dismembering of the public sphere.
The job of the progressive left is to make history, not just learn
from it; to defeat inequality, not just measure it; to change society,
not just analyse it.It would have been great if neoliberalism had been defeated 20 years ago. It wasn’t. Sections of the left found neoliberalism to be so nebulous, so difficult to pin down, that many even fell for its warped logic and were co-opted by it instead of fighting it.
The residual Blairism, here and abroad, which tries to resist the popular democratic socialist impulse, is textbook defeatism. It is a reflex that, in the name of democracy, dilutes democracy by stealth and encompasses a piece-by-piece dismembering of the public sphere.
If Australians want the kind of society in which no one is left out or pushed out, where no one is denied the right to a place to live, a place to work (and income security for those who cannot), a place to learn, a place to heal; if we want the kind of society where respect and dignity are democratised, one in which the economy is controlled by the people so that it might serve their needs instead of serving the wants of the satiated few; if we want these things we will need collectively to fight for them.
"The progressive left needs to speak to the people who are deeply harmed by neoliberalism but continue to trust its empty promises"
To fight for these things, the left will need to be organised. It will need to do the simple things it already knows – the work of building our movement and making the movement speak to the people who are deeply harmed by neoliberalism but continue to trust its empty promises.
Fractures, faultlines and even disasters, like the 18 May election, are not the end of the movement, rather they are the very places that can be learned from to achieve the definitive rupture with the past.
The most fundamental danger the progressive left faces is the danger of believing that it is no more. One of the essential aims of the neoliberal project is to integrate the working class into the category of capital itself. This erasure ranges from a kind of post-materialist paralysis (with claims such as “Collective resistance is dead! There’s nothing we can do except on the micro level”) to the shameless embrace of attempts to disorganise resistance to neoliberalism (“We are all entrepreneurs now! Life is about risk! Nothing could be more beautiful!”).
Recent federal police raids on the ABC and on a journalist’s home are disturbing signs of democracy being constrained in the interests of the neoliberal state rather than broadened. When I was working in the community sector, attempts were made by the government to close down the advocacy of environmental organisations. That later expanded to attempts to undermine the advocacy functions of civil society organisations more broadly. All the while, one sector of civil society, namely unions, were being singled out for some completely unsubtle repression and harassment. And still are.
One cannot help but be reminded of the well-known poem attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller, “First they came ... ” It is the same principle that should be applied when considering the wholesale abandonment of human rights of people seeking asylum on the one hand and members of First Nations communities on the other. An erosion of the rights of some is the gateway to an erosion of the rights of others.
Compulsory income management, a disempowering paternalistic means of control and humiliation, for example, was first imposed on the basis of race in the context of the Northern Territory intervention. It did not take long for it to be rolled out in various iterations by both sides of politics on the basis of gender, class and even postcode.
There is a pervasive idea that people should simply look inwards and not worry about what is happening around us to others. I do not believe that the fear that it might happen to me should be the foundation for solidarity. Sometimes, however, it acts as a useful catalyst for us to think a bit more critically about what is going on.
Rather than this fear, I suggest that the very human sense of empathy is a greater motivator for us to join forces to protect each other and to fight for a better world. That sense of outrage, for example, watching horrific footage on the ABC of First Nations children being tortured and abused in our prison systems; that feeling of: “They are children. I remember when my children were that age. Children. Just children.”
Everyone’s story is an utterly unique intersection between the structural and the historical, the personal and the social. Those who want to exercise concentrated power at their discretion want nothing more than for people to feel like their individuality will be lost in the soulless collective if they join with others in grassroots organisations such as unions and other progressive social movements. But the truth is that people’s souls, their sense of who they are, their desire to be heard, to be seen, to be respected, their yearning to be free and live lives free from deprivation and want, all of this is precisely what is at stake if people remain alone instead of united in the struggle.
• Dr John Falzon (@JohnFalzon) is senior fellow in inequality and social justice at Per Capita. He is a sociologist, poet and social justice advocate and was national CEO of the St Vincent de Paul Society in Australia from 2006 to 2018
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