By Ken Peak
A plenary panel on "Left politics: where to now?" concluded the recent Socialist Scholars Conference. Reprinted here are major excerpts from that panel by KEN PEAK, the vice president of the Victorian division of the Australian Democrats.
The future of left politics lies in the future of green politics — and this development is both inevitable and essential.
This planet is scourged by widespread poverty resulting from the inequitable distribution of income, resources and power — particularly between the West and the Third World.
Unless we take immediate action, the net result 50 years from now will be famine, pollution and decimation of the world's population. The World Watch Institute in Washington has given us until the turn of the century to clean up the planet or else they predict "ecotastrophe".
Inequality and discrimination are rampant here in Australia.
- Only 2% of all Australians own half the nation's wealth.
- There are almost a million unemployed.
- Three million people, including 900,000 children, are living in poverty.
- Only 7% of students in year 7 enter the professions. Half of 1% come from a working-class background.
- 69% of Koori people leave school by Year 10. 45 of the 99 Aboriginals who have died in custody since 1983 were originally taken from their communities and placed with white families and institutions. Only 2 of the 99 completed secondary school.
- Only 8% of apprenticeships are held by females.
The "growthmaniacs" demand increases in GDP as some sort of holy writ, but growth cannot be sustained because of the parallel increase in the use of fossil fuel energy.
The Hawke Government has taken Australia down the track of economic rationalism and has walked away from its constituency on social justice and environmental issues.
Sixteen years of conservative government have also produced $644 billion of foreign debt, swallowing our export income and ensuring that more than 40% of Australia's industry is controlled by foreign interests.
The ALP — the "people's capitalists" — are no
longer the home of radical and progressive politics.
The key question is: what sort of a society do we want? Do we want a society based on justice and equality, or do we wish to persist with inequality?
The just society
The prospect for left politics, green politics or the new politics is to focus primarily on the development of the "just society". Such a world view is based on the "SHE" society — Sane, Humane and Ecological — a society in balance with human needs; a far cry from the consumerist, exploitative, "growth at any cost" economy desired by the conservative parties. This kind of society resembles the Marxist dictum: "From each according to her ability; to each according to her needs".
Our long-term vision must embrace an Australian republic unencumbered with state governments. The green movement must agree on a common reform agenda. I want to try to summarise such a possible agenda.
The first item on that agenda is a public sector-led recovery involving Keynesian solutions to the current recession. This involves increased public investment in transport, health, education, housing, telecommunications. These initiatives will boost employment and must be funded by a more progressive and socially just taxation system.
Full employment must be the fundamental goal of the new political agenda. How to make the economy work for the benefit of the community, rather than for the enrichment of the corporate barons, is also one of the great challenges we must confront.
The second item is the development of social justice programs in employment, taxation and social security: increasing the marginal tax rate to at least 60% for incomes above $100,000, and introducing wealth and inheritance taxes, plugging tax avoidance rorts and abolishing negative gearing.
A national income support scheme should replace all existing social security payments and provide support irrespective of the social circumstances people find themselves in — in other words, a guaranteed minimum income.
Social justice will also ensure that our corporate giants pay their fair share of tax.
The third item will be the development of environmentally sustainable economic programs which reject resource security legislation in favour of taxing the woodchipping industry, and
implementing land care, forestry, energy conservation and habitat restoration programs.
These programs would also incorporate resource rent taxes and a new fossil fuels emissions tax. It would mean the end of uranium mining forever. We must get away from the prevailing mentality of "dig it up, chop it down or shoot it".
The fourth item involves re-regulating the financial sector by controlling capital movements, increasing controls over the banks and the non-banks and instituting tighter controls over foreign investment and exchange rates. And the superannuation funds, for example, must be directed to invest in Australia.
The fifth item involves implementing real industrial democracy — not just offering shares in the company but on-the-job involvement in decision making.
My last item involves Australia becoming non-aligned, anti-nuclear and of more assistance to the Third World.
These six items are probably already at the core of left and green political manifestos. They are as far as the Democrats are concerned.
The development of a detailed policy platform will prove more difficult. Our task is to further construct the program and the means by which it will be achieved. We would then need to convince the broader movement that parliament can be an instrument of social change and wealth redistribution. The new agenda must also aim to liberate the talents and uplift the horizons of the Australian people.
Where now?
Labor's betrayal has rekindled moves to form a united national Green Party. Leading green politicians Bob Brown and Jo Vallentine have endorsed this development. A new party could increase the total environment vote. Alternatively, the emergence of a new party might be seen as a split in the movement, thus weakening the green vote.
However, the plight of the 5.3 billion people on this planet means that the development of a democratic green alternative is urgent, essential and inevitable. For the sake of the survival of the planet, we cannot afford to get caught in the "structure trap". We desperately need grassroots community groups to continue to operate outside the political process because we know that parliament is not the only place where things happen to achieve change.
You can educate the community about these issues, and this is
important, but we also need parliamentary representation to get action where it counts, and that's with legislation and access to power. The green alternative must inevitably compete with the old political parties, and it must also compete with the media and the multinationals which inflict much of the environmental damage. So the movement needs organisation.
What sort of partnership should there be between the Democrats and the proposed Green Party? Should it be a merger or an alliance? We would be happy with either, but only with the strong support of the grassroots membership of both groups. A merged party within five years is the greatest challenge and perhaps the best option — even though there is a wide range of political philosophies encompassed within both movements.
The fragmented parts of the green movement, including the Democrats, must work together more closely and strategically than we have until now.
There is a logic to us trying to get together as an alternative option for people who find the major parties have failed them.
The green alternative will have no caucus system like the "Laborials" have. It will respect the grassroots nature of the movement as well as the individuality of their politicians. The movement will have people with different perspectives — and that's okay. We need to celebrate that diversity.
It doesn't matter any more whether this group is more ideologically sound than that group. The survival of the planet means that this kind of egocentrism in the new political movement can no longer be tolerated. Pigs might fly — but wouldn't it be something if the Australian Democrats, the various green parties, the Green Alliance, the New Left Party, Democratic Socialists, the Rainbow Alliance and other independent Green groups shared the one organisational structure and the one common platform and possibly shared in power within 10 years?
Whatever happens, the new movement will be about social justice, peace, democracy and the environment. It will be based on the assumption that the current political process doesn't work and that we need an alternative to the exploitative materialism which is so environmentally destructive.
If we fail to get our act together, we face the likely prospect of the iron fist of conservative rule for the next quarter of a century. But what we do know is this: the future of left politics is about green politics in the 21st century.