Let's not snap back but spring forward.

Extract from Eureka Street

AUSTRALIA

• John Falzon
• 10 April 2020

                              

‘This is not about entitlement. It’s about need,’ explained the Prime Minister in his press conference on 2nd April, announcing that early childhood education would, for many parents, now be free. Later though, he hastened to add that all of these COVID-19 measures (the government’s ‘New Economic Policy’) were temporary and on the other side of the crisis we would need to ‘snap back’ to how things were before as if society were this amazing collective rubber band.

Many of us could not help hearing an echo, in the first statement by the Prime Minister, of the formulation which had its origins in the Acts of the Apostles (which, no doubt, he has read) but which was made famous, via Louis Blanc and others, by Karl Marx in The Critique of the Gotha Programme, written in 1875: From each according to their ability and to each according to their need.

It’s funny how this proposition is routinely pilloried in ‘normal’ time. It should not be surprising, I suppose, since it stands for everything that neoliberalism does not: the primacy of the social good over the profit motive, the public provision of social goods, making sure no one is locked out or left out, allocating the resources of a society on the basis of need rather than individual wealth.

It is, after all, the principle upon which Medicare was built. Unlike the Prime Minister’s ‘normal time’ intonation of the neoliberal principle of ‘if you put in, you get to take out’, it is predicated not on a user-pays model but precisely on the idea that you put in what you can (through the taxation system) and take out what you need.

It is a principle that might be pilloried as a matter of ideological duty by the champions of neoliberalism in ‘normal time’ but it is rolled out, albeit temporarily and with significant conditionalities, as if it were simply common sense, in a time of crisis. It’s common sense because it is not only fair, it’s the most rational framework for the allocation of resources and for the contribution from each of us to the society we live in.

If we had embraced this framework prior to the pandemic it goes without saying that we would have been better prepared. The emergency measures we would have needed would have been fewer because we would have had in place a robust social security system, a better-resourced public health system, housing justice and strong protections for workers, in short, public institutions that were well funded, well-trusted and politically embedded.

'This is why we must resist the idea of a snap back. There can be no snapping back. The old normal was too bloody horrible for too many people'.

If neoliberalism is even partially dismantled, let’s make sure though that it is not being kept safe, in ‘hibernation’, to use the Prime Minister’s favourite analogy, ready to be put back together, just as it was assembled in the first place, piece by dreadful piece.

What would the future look like if we were to succeed in keeping up the momentum towards a more collective, more social (and socialist!) organisation of the economy? It would be the kind of future in which public ownership was seen as more logical than public bail-outs (did someone say Qantas?), the kind of future where no one was left behind, no one subjected to the ongoing colonisation experienced by First Nations Peoples; no one crushed on the basis of class, or gender, or ethnicity, or disability, or age, or sexuality.

It would be the kind of future where the people who, pre-pandemic, lived in a permanent state of recession because they were locked out of paid work and forced to survive from below the poverty line, would be able to access a job with good conditions under a Full-Employment Policy; where the heavily gendered work of caring was socially, culturally, economically and politically valued; where social security meant just that, instead of social insecurity; and where working people were treated with respect and appreciation, subjected not to exploitation for the sake of profits for the few but to a sense of contribution to the social good for the benefit of all; the kind of society where power was actually shared instead of being hoarded.

This is why we must resist the idea of a snap back. There can be no snapping back. The old normal was too bloody horrible for too many people: unemployed and underemployed workers, casual and insecure workers, low-paid and poorly treated workers, unpaid workers, mostly women, people experiencing homelessness, women experiencing gendered violence and inequality, asylum seekers.

During the last election, in response to Labor’s early childhood education funding package, Dan Tehan said: 'I mean this is a fast track to a socialist, if not communist economy. It is unheard of. ... When they say it is going to be free, taxpayers are paying for this.' I’ve always wondered why the idea of socialism is so anathema. I mean, Shorten at the time was talking about early childhood education centres, not gulags. And if Labor’s plan was socialist so is the current Morrison/Tehan plan.

So let’s clear the air in the spirit of new openness and cooperation, the one where the Liberal government thanks the ACTU instead of demonising it. I would like to suggest that if you want an idea of what socialism means, go visit your local public library (when, glory be, it has reopened!).

When I was growing up, Blacktown Library was my temple of learning. I owe everything to the public library. It was where I was introduced to beautiful writing, to wild thinking, to music, to art. I borrowed books, poetry journals, prints and music from the library. I gobbled everything up hungrily, voraciously, from manuals on mineralogy to Kafka’s exquisite but excruciating tales.

The public library is a beacon of socialism. It is a powerful exemplar of the principle of: From each according to their ability and to each according to their need. A constraint on liberty? I don’t think so. Nobody forces you to join, although, as a community we expect you to contribute according to your ability. Democratic socialism is like that library, to which I personally owe so much. It is surely a no-brainer that what we do with books we can and should do with education, health, housing, social services, and jobs. Nobody is stopping you buying a book, but the library will be there to provide them to all who need them.

Already the ideological die-hards of neoliberalism are working out how the pandemic might be manipulated to lower wages and to snap back to the old economic normal. So now is when collectively we need to take over the framing and the forming of the future. Not to snap back but to spring forward. To the building of a society where, for example, multinational corporations actually do contribute according to their ability. And where no one is denied what they need.