An open letter to those Left

"We are all Thatcherites now!" was the angered protest from a Labour backbencher of the British Parliament recently. The MP stated his preference for root canal therapy without an anaesthetic, rather than accept this description of his party.

So too in Australia the cracks in the dam wall begin to spring leaks, at the same time as those who view the world in terms of class struggle are dubbed the lunatic fringe.

What has happened to the progressive Left in Australia? And can the ALP continue to consider itself the natural home of the social democratic mantle?

Within its ranks, Third Way rhetoric abounds, as does paranoia about disunity stifle. Ideology and principles are negotiable, while policy owes more to gravitas and common denominators than to conviction.

The Left in Australia, is the feeblest it has been for decades. And yet this is a time of lowering living standards, worsening working conditions, and a time in politics when the Federal helm commands the least amount of respect of any memorable government formed this century.

This current era of Australian politics might best be described as a policy void and a political vacuum devoid of moral leadership. As political heartlands fade, sterile, bankrupt dogma predominates, whilst the Left in Australia gives way to political irrelevance.

One would have assumed that this was fertile breeding ground, but instead the Left seems to be haemorrhaging.

To a large extent, the Left is responsible for its own demise and doctrinal lapse. Incapable of developing new politics and new responses to a changing and fragmented society, it has clung to a myopic vision of industrial society and failed to make Left philosophy relevant through reinventing and updating what it stands for.

In a quest to court the shifting and fickle middle voter, Labor has traded their very essence and emulated the Right. So much so, that they have arrived at a juncture where they are unwilling, or unable, to find their way home.

Rather than hold to its traditions, Labor has joined the nearsighted race to blame asylum seekers and refugees for the ills of society, offering neither resistance nor alternative to the unprincipled far Right, who are not encumbered by a vestigial commitment to social equality.

John Legge argues that the failure of the Left to repudiate the Thatcherite policies of the 1980s, has resulted in a New Right / New Left paradigm - with a resulting shift in emphasis from justice to rights.

Justice is presumably for all, whereas rights depend largely upon your capacity to defend them. The Left seems paralysed in this debate since they have always worked upon the premise that equality in any real sense is impossible without redistribution.

But the Left view of social justice is fast becoming a casualty, in a society were the rich man seems to have an unrestrained right to excessively indulge, whilst others languish behind razor wire or exist on meagre pickings.

Thatcherism removed welfare cornerstones - on a mantle of every man for himself. Her legacy is a more brutal, uncertain form of society where the welfare and dignity of Australians (and those that would seek safe harbour on our shores), far from being assured, are actively denied to some sections of the community.

We are more vulnerable now, than ever before to the excesses of capitalism: governments legislate away gains fought for in the past and dismiss fairness principles as anticompetitive socialist baggage. Disturbingly, disenfranchisement is matched with a feeling of helplessness, marked by a lack of confidence in social change.

We have perhaps entered what Adam Jamrozik calls the ‘post welfare state’. Multiculturalism has been eclipsed, market dogma and the pursuit of wealth dominate, treasury discredits poverty statistics, and advocates for the poor squabble over a shrinking pie.

Conservatives appeal to our base nature, to the aspiring and upwardly mobile class of Australia who have proven only too ready to enlist in popular prejudice, real or presumed. It is their preference for racial blindness and meanness directed at immigrants, processed or otherwise, that won Howard his 2001 election victory.

Meanwhile in the halls of Opposition there are stirrings. Icons of the ALP, like Barry Jones, have made submissions to the Hawke/ Wran Review. They are critical of the contemporary party and argue the need for a return to ideological honesty, in order to reverse the trends of the last six years - where Labor in Opposition has failed to lay a glove on the Howard Government.

But whatever your brand of soap powder, the reality is unchanged. With the collapse of HIH, One-Tel and Ansett, we can attest to the fact that the implicit contract between bosses and their staff is a sham. We are all universally vulnerable to the crash of capital.

We are in challenging times. Yet our national political landscape is dreary and self-serving. Speeches are lifeless, orthodox, and risk averse. Euphemisms cover up any unpleasantries. Employers no longer sack workers they ‘downsize’ them. People are referred to as 'cargo' or 'illegals'. We no longer speak of war dead, but rather 'collateral damage'. Regurgitated news takes the form of obfuscation and Orwellian manipulation, as it passes through the hands of so many spin-doctors, completely spars us the energy and effort of thinking. But as Harold Hark says, there is a universal antidote. People need to install leaders who will stop following them.

Its time the Left reclaimed the territory of the ordinary battler from the potbellied thieves and found a way to win back its core and new constituencies, without being damned for it.

To find a space where decency and generosity of spirit are espoused without apology.

To denounce Australia’s status of sycophantic deputy of US foreign policy.

To recapture our Antipodean irreverence for things haughty, healing the grief we all feel for our lamented loss of mateship values.

Some say that the era of the spin is over. Worn thin. The brainpower that keeps this society engine running, the professional classes that make up 20 per cent of the population, the amorphous middle Australia, the marginalised underclass and the authentic working class, the sum of us, are tired of highly staged and choreographed spin causing us to abandon each other like unwelcome guests.

Leadership is the art of finding a way forward without leaving anyone behind. We deserve better.