Real Julia foiled by old battles

Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan recently, rhetorically at least, were heading in the opposite direction. Much ire was directed their way by sober heads in the media for having the temerity to revive talk of "old style class warfare." This came after a number of measures, and essays and speeches, that addressed the growing level of inequality in Australia.

For the government what was at issue was returning the budget relatively quickly to surplus, partly through progressive tax and superannuation measures, and, following Barack Obama, trying to politically exploit public disquiet against rising inequality. The Liberal Party, by contrast, seeks to return the budget to surplus by attacking the public and protecting the interests of the rich.

In Australia we now have a highly class conscious and politically motivated class of oligarchs. This oligarchic class has arisen because inequality in Australia has gradually become Americanised. As Andrew Leigh, the Labor member for Fraser, has pointed out, inequality among the rich has increased as the top 0.001% have tripled their share of household wealth from 1984 onward.

This class of oligarchs is politically motivated because they fully understand that their interests need careful protection and tending to in a democratic society.

Comrade Gillard's entry into politics at large was shaped by an adherence to working class politics and socialist beliefs. Both of these, in this no different to her long time critic Lindsay Tanner, she put aside upon her entry into parliament. Note the juxtaposition; rising inequality, new class of oligarchs ascendant, abandonment of socialist beliefs and class based politics.

The key defining idea of Real Julia, as opposed to comrade Gillard, was the notion that class based politics reflects "old battles." It is the abandonment of the notion that class still matters, that class and inequality constitute the core of politics in a capitalist society, that accounted for Gillard's "lurch to the Right."

She was wrong. That error was her undoing.

The rich have been waging a one sided class war for the past 30 years. It is this class war that accounts for the rise of inequality in Australia, but also globally, over the same time period. A key component of that class war is the weakening of working class organisations, both industrial and political.

In the centenary edition of the ALP policy platform it is stated that Labor found its origins in the idea that a political party was needed to "take forward the struggle of the working class against the excesses, injustices and inequalities of capitalism." Woe betide any Labor leader should they utter such words today.

It is the rise to prominence of an organised working class movement that helped to bring about government dedicated to the pursuit of social justice. We should not be the least bit surprised to learn that, in turn, neoliberal politics partly depends upon the weakening of the organised working class.

This has been achieved via a number of mechanisms, such as diluting class consciousness through consumer culture, but also, crucially, via a largely class collaborationist cadre of union and Labor leaders. Notice that Andrew Leigh's tripling of the wealth of the top 0.001% coincides with the Hawke-Keating Labor government, and its Accord with Bill Kelty's ACTU.

Appropriately the words cited above are currently buried at the back of the policy platform rather than proudly exhibited at the front. Indeed the Labor name nowadays does not even dare have the word "party" replaced now by the more diluted corporate marketing inspired "Australian Labor."