The moral degeneration of the Labor Left

The Labor Left likes to pretend that it is the conscience of the Party, yet in reality it has become a self serving faction that will always put the needs of power ahead of democracy and principle. This will continue to obtain so long as the Left is dominated by factional warlords whose authority relies upon dispensing patronage.

The difference between the ALP Right and Left is not that the Right is sinful but that the Right makes no claim to chastity.

Kenneth Davidson stated that, accurately, the ALP "is a self-perpetuating oligarchy. It is doubtful whether the rank-and-file have had serious input into policy or played a decisive role in a preselection process for a safe ALP seat for a couple of decades."

The Socialist Left is also a self perpetuating oligarchy. The Labor Left used to be both a social movement and a political organisation, but now threatens to become exclusively a manifestation of machine politics in the ALP. So long as the Labor Left's structure is built around activists pledging bayat to an elite core of factional emirs then the oligarchs will make any deal and will violate any principle in the pursuit of power.

Nonetheless there is no law of nature that mandates that the ALP or the ALP Left should be dominated by a small clique. The power that the party elites have acquired can be taken away from them by a grass roots protest movement directed towards revitalising democracy. Mark Latham is wrong when he asserts that Labor is beyond reform.

The members of the ALP should ask themselves, paraphrasing Jim Cairns' battle cry against Gough Whitlam; "whose party is this, ours or theirs?"

A democracy movement employing alternative forms of political action is now necessary because the Comrade Giles announcement demonstrates that established internal procedures cannot be used to engender democratic reforms given that all the institutional mechanisms available are controlled by the oligarchs.

Such a movement is also necessary because Labor's oligarchy corrodes Australia's democracy. The philosopher king reportedly does not even bother with sitting through Cabinet meetings, preferring to rule through tiny Cabinet sub-committees. Surely the culture of cynicism and power that is widely exhibited within the ALP played a role in this further shift towards centralised executive power.

One of the leading figures of the Socialist Left in the Rudd Cabinet is the socialist minister for deregulation, Lindsay Tanner. In his maiden speech to parliament he stated that, "I am a socialist". Furthermore he went on to say, "I regard it as very much a daunting task to reinvigorate the socialist ideal in this country and across the world".

Yet in reality he went on to become one of Australia's leading spruikers for neoliberalism. It is of course neoliberalism that forms the ideological underpinning of deregulation policy, including the "microeconomic reform" that he now fulsomely lauds and implements. He has hardly attempted to "reinvigorate the socialist ideal in this country". Cheerleading for neoliberalism has proved to be both much easier and more lucrative.

Comrade Tanner likes to dress up his positions in intellectual garb. He has gone from endogenous growth theory, network theory, cognitive biases, technological determinism, now cultural determinism and who knows what else. Really this all just serves to obscure his disavowal of left wing principles. It also has the added bonus of making his followers within the ALP look upon him with awe as he does so, in a sort of secular version of Shoko Asahara.

For instance, he has attacked the old social contract between labour and capital, what Paul Kelly has called the "Australian Settlement", as constituting "producerism". In doing so he covers his active facilitation of capital's offensive against labour, which is what neoliberalism amounts to, in his usual smart arse way. However, all the smart arsery cannot hide the fact that it is deregulation that precisely constitutes "producerism". This is because deregulation is designed to free corporations from social constraints, which is why the big business lobbies support it and demand of Comrade Tanner that he enact it.