Reinventing Socialism
Edited by Duncan Kerr
Pluto Press Australia Ltd in association with the Fabian Society 1992
122pp. $14.95
A Century of Social Change
Labor History Essays Volume Four
The Australian Labor Party and Pluto Press Australia Ltd 1992
230 pp. $19.95
Reviewed by Peter Anderson
The objective behind the publication of these ctwo collections of prose from leaders and supporters of the ALP appears to be, firstly, an attempt to defend liberal social-democratic ideas and, secondly, to keep alive the memory of Whitlamism (and Laborism).
Reinventing Socialism claims the distinction of presenting for the first time a collection of essays from sitting Labor members of parliament. It sets out to turn back the tide of 1980s neo- conservatism that brought with it Reagan, Thatcher, Nakasone, deregulation, privatisation and "small government".
But you will be disappointed if you expect these Labor MPs had taken a political quantum leap. ALP president Barry Jones starts the collection by quoting from the Communist Manifesto what he thinks is Marx's not very radical list of demands for Germany in 1848, and goes on to relate this to the ALP's own renditions of the "socialist objective".
He then offers his own redefinition of socialism in which, to paraphrase, the state takes an active role in influencing the control and ownership of capital through monetary and fiscal measures and public ownership to promote the goals of greater equality, especially in income distribution.
Undoubtedly, in the wake of the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe the socialist movement has a lot of rethinking to do. But Jones' definition, which harks back to early 19th century idealist notions of socialism, lumbers around the essential point that maintaining the private "ownership of capital" — and the state that defends it — is itself the problem.
In other contributions the likes of Brian Howe, Nick Bolkus and Peter Baldwin restate the precepts and prejudices of the Labor left, including: the defence of Australian nationalism against "Asianisation", promotion of Labor's (questionable) social security agenda, opposition to (across the board) deregulation, the search for an "intellectually honest" approach to improving "international competitiveness", and the celebration of parliamentarianism.
Reinventing socialism is an ambitious task to say the least; to say that this volume falls short of the goal only understates the political shortcomings of the ideas presented by its authors.
Papers from the 1991 Whitlam Labor Historians Conference, which came in the 100th anniversary year of the foundation of the Australian Labor Party, have been collected in A Century of Social
Most of the papers cover historical topics such as women in Labour history, the IWW, Curtin and Chifley, the coal industry in 1945-49, the welfare state in the '50s, and the White Australia Policy. In his keynote address, Whitlam himself gives a broadside to all those histories, especially oral, that he thinks misrepresent the achievements and circumstances of his own government.
Author of the centenary history of the NSW Labor Party, Graham Freudenberg, says he disputes Vere Gordon Childe's veracious conclusion to the classic How Labor Governs that the Labor Party quickly degenerated into a vast machine for capturing political power, but did not know how to use that power except for the profit of individuals.
Curiously, he argues that, in fact, "dinkum socialism" never had a chance because of the prosperity of existing society, the role of the trade unions, the relations between the ALP and the Catholic Church, the commitment to White Australia and the acceptance of parliamentarianism. But his argument seems only to reinforce Childe's conclusion.
It is revealing that not one contribution to the volume is written by a women, as Bob James points out.
While the contributions are of a uniformly high quality, the volume does little to advance a satisfactory understanding of the role of social democracy in general and the ALP in particular in the Australian political process, and therefore acts only to reinforce many of the myths of Whitlamism, Chifleyism and Laborism in general.