Humphrey McQueen on Crisis! What crisis?
Shortly after the Austrian aeronautical engineer Ludwig Wittgenstein arrived
in Cambridge in 1911, he drove Bertrand Russell to distraction by refusing to admit that there was not a rhinoceros in the room. These days, I find myself sharing Russell’s frustration because so many socialist grouplets are unable to focus on the probability that, not only is a rhinoceros loose in the global economy but also herds of elephant and wildebeest.
Wittgenstein contended that only asserted propositions existed. None of the grouplets suffer from so extreme a form of Philosophical Idealism.
Rather, they remain consumed by the good causes they took up in the decades of capitalist triumphalism. The loss of class consciousness was apparent when the national gasworks reopened with protests about the environment, the Northern Territory intervention and barbarism in Gaza. Unlike the French working class, no Left group demonstrated about the loss of jobs.
A similar bias was obvious in the flood of emails over Mick Dodson’s call for a debate about Australia Day. The volume of those reactions contrasts with the paucity and poverty of responses from the socialist grouplets to the crisis in the accumulation of capital. Twenty and more years of being in the dust bin of history have rendered many among their leaderships slow to accept that our enemy is again going down the garbage chute. ‘Rhinoceros! What Rhinoceros!’
The rest of this item surveys the degrees to which competing grouplets have been paying attention to the crisis. A companion item will go past quantifying the coverage to considering its qualities. A third piece will propose a template for how the crisis should re-order our priorities.
In October, GreenLeft Weekly had three cover stories on the crisis, including one issue with ‘Crisis Explained’. Otherwise, the paper struggles to fill two out of its twenty-four pages with the subject.
The poster for the Socialist Alternative’s Marxism 2009 conference over Easter does not mention the crisis. Three or four of the talks at that conference deal with it. Its Sydney Branch, however, is devoting a day to the significance of the Bolshevik Revolution and nothing to the crisis. The Melbourne Branch advertises one out of its four meetings on the crisis.
In Melbourne, the Socialist Party has made the crisis the sole subject of its annual Marxism conference in March. (Is it too instrumentalist to suggest that this focus is because of the SP’s hourly involvements with Yarra residents and by organising young workers through Unite?)
In December, Vanguard from the CPA (M-L) allocated five of its twelve pages to the crisis, and almost four out of twelve in February.
Guardian from the Communist Party in January had three articles related to consequences of the crisis.
The purpose of this sampling has been to encourage members and sympathisers of each grouplet to undertake their own interrogations of their favoured body. Your politics are askew if your response to the above has been to revel in criticisms of rivals and luxuriate in commendation of yourself.
Size is significant for judging how serious each grouplet considers the crisis to be. Content is decisive: are the grouplets making a start towards a Marxist explanation in the next item?
Job guarantee requied
Three questions and a statement:
Did Ludwig work with the Wright brothers?
Was it a T-model Ford that Ludwig drove?
Where is this town Distraction?
When a rhinoceros is in a room there is not much room for anything else.
Despite Humphrey’s asserttions, Socialist Alternative has beem taking the crisis seriously. We have had regular meetings, 2nd items in meetings for well over a year, frequent articles in our magazine (not to mention the front cover), discussion at our conference. We also run educationals for our members and one of our best selling books is “Explaining the Crisis” by Chris Harman, a long time economics commentator from the British Socialist Worker, we’ve just published a book on the crisis (Sandra Bloodworth: A crime beyond denunciation. A Marxist analysis of Capitalist Crisis)and some members are just about to launch an online journal that contains articles on crisis and capitalism, amongst others.
Our members have also been active in their unions fighting for better wages and conditions, fighting off the attempts of the bosses (including State Labor governemnts)to make workers pay for the crisis.
One thing we think is important is that it is the system as a whole that is in crisis. So we argue that all the struggles around the world – Greece, Italy, France, the Middle East – are important in the overall struggle against the system. That’s why we’re trying to arm our members with the theory (as I’ve outlined above in all our meetings and publications) and back it up with the action – on the streets over Gaza, NT Intervention, YRAW, teachers.
That’s why we don’t just focus on one thing at our Conference over Easter. Come along and see for yourself. In solidarity Liz Ross
With all due respect to Humphrey, I think he’s lost among the wildebeest on this one.
I can’t talk for SAlt or the other groups, but a quick search on the GLW website finds:
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/783/40317
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/783/40340
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/771/39758
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/775/39993
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/749/38711
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/780/40200
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2008/777/40069
http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/781/40249
On the Socialist Alliance site:
http://www.socialist-alliance.org/page.php?page=793
http://www.socialist-alliance.org/page.php?page=758
http://www.socialist-alliance.org/page.php?page=821
http://www.socialist-alliance.org/page.php?page=795
It also appears that Resistance books has published a pamphlet on the crisis, and the DSP/ Resistance are organising a stream of workshops at their Easter conference on the economic crisis: http://www.worldatacrossroads.org/
In addition, there’s a swathe of information organised on the LINKS website:http://links.org.au/taxonomy/term/137
All in all, I’m not sure what Humphrey’s on about. The global economic crisis hasn’t yet hit Australia with its full force, when one might expect a broader response, including from the unions.
Other than that, the DSP and Socialist Alliance are involved in the real campaigns that exist. This includes significantly more than Gaza and aboriginal rights. It also includes playing an important role in the campaign against the energy privatisation in NSW, and other public sector and union struggles. That is, the areas where – when the crisis hits – any meaningful response will come from (as opposed to several hundred socialists protesting the stock exchange).
Furthermore, there is a vital structural connection between the climate change crisis and the crisis in capitalism, and anyone who doesn’t think that working people worry about the environment needs his head checked.
The only proposal I can even vaguely interpret from the article above is that the left should be engaging in vast amounts of propagandism, to the detriment of other activity, a proposal I disagree with, but Humphrey could at least state it openly.
Liz is right, Socialist Alternative (if the posters in Newtown are anything to go by), has been holding plenty of meetings on the crisis.
The Socialist Alliance website also has several statements on the crisis (dating back some time), GLW is full of articles on it, Resistance Books just published a new pamphlet on the crisis, and the DSP/ Resistance are organising a major conference in Sydney at Easter which will have an entire stream on the economics meltdown, the mechanisms behind it, and the solutions.
And I’m sure the other groups are, and have been, talking about it for some time.
So I’m not sure what Humphrey’s getting at, unless he’s suggesting we all go picket the stock exchange and only write about the economic crisis.
There are plenty of existing campaigns where the left can be – and is – actively involved while also introducing a criticism of capitalism (Gaza, climate change, energy and prison privatisation, the teachers, ABCC, etc, etc).
These are the things to which most workers relate, and it’s where Marxists should be (and are), rather than simply banging on the one drum.
I’m not convinced that Socialist Grouplets are even the tiniest bit relevant to a critique of the GFC. In fact, their relative focus on topics such as the Bolshevik Revolution is probably more useful than their ultra-left positions on more important issues.
Cheers
Alex