100 years of service ... to capitalism
When the likes of Kim Beazley, Paul Keating and Bob Hawke swell with
pride at something, you know it must really stink.
On May 8, Labor leaders, past and present, gathered in Melbourne to
celebrate the 100th anniversary of the ALP's first federal caucus meeting.
It took place two days before the pomp (and pomposity) of the re-enactment
of the first sitting of federal parliament.
Speaking to his colleagues in the plush, chandelier-lit surroundings
of Victoria's Parliament House, Beazley was expansive. The ALP, he said,
had a lot to be proud of: it predated federation; it is the only party
to have been elected to both federal houses and to have been represented
in all states and territories continually since federation; and it was
the first “workers' party” in the world to form a national government (in
1904).
The federal “opposition” leader was immediately backed by editorials
in Rupert Murdoch's Australian and Fairfax's Sydney Morning Herald.
Geoffrey Blainey, the right-wing historian famous for his outspoken opposition
to Asian immigration, sung Labor's praises. Prime Minister John Howard
also sent his congratulations.
The Labor Party does have a long history of service and is today, as
100 years ago, one of the pillars on which the Australian “nation” rests.
But who does it serve?
Labor, both in government and in opposition, has been an indispensable
servant of Australia's ruling capitalist class and a crucial guarantor
of the “stability” of the status quo.
In times of crisis — both world wars, the Depression, the rising social
movements of the early 1970s and when wage “restraint” was needed in the
1980s — Australia's business rulers have turned, not to the parties traditionally
closest to them, but to the ALP. They were always confident that Labor
would faithfully carry out their orders while dampening social resistance.
Even in its moment of sharpest conflict with the elite, around Labor
Prime Minister Gough Whitlam's dismissal in November 1975, the ALP stayed
true. “Maintain your rage”, Gough proclaimed to the masses ready to do
whatever it took to put him back in government, “relax, don't fight, go
home, go back to sleep”.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Labor was given the job of “restructuring” Australia's
economy to make it more profitable for the largest corporations — a job
entrusted in Britain to Margaret Thatcher and in the US to Ronald Reagan.
Australia's rulers didn't need such hardened class warriors, it had Bob
Hawke and Paul Keating. Labor had the union movement's leaders on a leash.
Labor was the party which introduced the White Australia Policy, which
brought in conscription in World War I, which founded ASIO, which broke
union militancy after World War II, which pioneered privatisation, deregulation
and “economic rationalism”.
Even its much-vaunted social accomplishments, like Hawke's establishment
of Medicare, Whitlam's withdrawal of troops from Vietnam or Ben Chifley's
post-war attempt to nationalise the banks, were not the actions of ardent
social reformers and grand visionaries. They were pragmatic concessions
that Labor was forced to grant to maintain stability and mollify the population.
In 1913, Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin wrote, “The leaders
of the Australian Labour Party are trade union officials, everywhere the
most moderate and `capital-serving' element, and in Australia, altogether
peaceable, purely liberal.”
Beazley felt chuffed enough to quote Lenin's words to his colleagues
on May 8, crowing that his “altogether peaceable” Labor Party had seen
out Lenin's Russian Revolution. He wore Lenin's contempt like a badge of
honour.
As well he might. Beazley, and his Labor predecessors, have sold their
souls to capitalism. They are beyond shame. They are damn proud to servants
of capital.
