Abbott, God and the cosmopolitans
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How do you know the conservatariat’s landed? Because the whining continues even after the jet engines have been shut off, (and all the British people shot). Days after the elevation of Prebendary Abbott to head of the Libs, the right-wing media were already getting into their “poor me” mode, with Imre Salusinszky writing about the return of the “Howard haters” and Greg Sheridan noting this morning:
This is a familiar pose from the Howard years — and indeed from all right-wing ressentiment politics, stretching back to the First World War. The logic is circular: X is a true representative of what the ordinary people think, but is not much liked by the cosmopolitans. However, X does not seem to actually be popular with the people of whom he is the true representative. Why? It can only be that the cosmopolitans are telling terrible lies about him. How do we know they’re lies? Because X is the true representative of … and on we go. The “John Howard is the true spirit of Australia” dodge worked for a while, but the conservatariat ultimately went mad from drinking their own moonshine. They never saw how contingent was mass public support for Howard. When Howard stopped seeing it too, his political judgement went utterly awry. From that moment he couldn’t put a foot right. Though Howard was of the right of the party, especially on IR, he was never of the core religious-cultural conservative right. His family were Anglican (though they attended a Methodist church) — in such a cosmology, God is sort of third-in-command, below the Queen and Menzies. He’s always kept his view on abortion quiet, and while he made a lot of fuss about “political correctness” and “cultural relativism” in the ’90s, I don’t think he’s ever fully bought into the idea — certainly possessed by the Prebendary and his confessor, Cardinal Christopher Pearson, the scarlet man — that the war on terror was simply an earthly reflection of a cosmological struggle between God and his adversary. Indeed I wonder if the half-hearted way in which Howard went about the culture war of his final term — stacking the ABC board, fiddling with the history curriculum etc — was, in the last analysis, evidence of an unwillingness to really unleash a full-scale kulturkampf, not only because it was one that the Right could well lose, but also out of some vestigial understanding that we now live in a pluralist society in which social values stretch from the lesbian IVF-using vegan couple in Thornbury to the creationist cockie in Longreach, and we’re all going to have to get along somehow . Prebendary Abbott has made an immense effort in past months to try and slip back into the cultural-political mainstream, but the widespread continued distrust of him — most particularly from sections of the liberal middle-class, centred around hitherto safe seats like Higgins — has not abated. Inevitably that is tied to religion — not Abbott’s Roman Catholicism per se, but his particular version of it. There are three dominant ideas of God in Christianity at the moment. Leaving aside literal protestant fundamentalists, the division between the other two runs right through the middle of the Roman Catholic church. On the one side are those who believe that God may be a real entity, but cannot be expressed in human terms — and consequently the idea that God might have firm views on homosexuality, condoms, evolution, traditional aboriginal culture etc is a category error. On the other is the idea that God has a more knowable form with whom a dialogue of sorts is possible — if not exactly a Grandpa in the Sky, God can be thought of in terms sufficiently assimilable to humanity to make the pronoun “He” a meaningful one. The division is not around the unique divinity of Jesus Christ, but around whether the creation of a specific moral and political order is a business of humans left to do it by themselves, or one in which God’s will and law can be interpreted and acted on. Our society and politics is overwhelmingly of the first belief. It is a widespread belief that underlies the Australian polity as a humanist one. Tony Abbott is part of the second formation, and it is perfectly legitimate to pin him to the wall on it. Though there are major tactical issues about how it is done, skewering Abbott on the way in which his politics are guided by his particular version of religiosity is clearly going to be an important part of reminding people just how separated from the common ground of Australian politics he really is. The public know this of course — they saw it in the contemptuous way in which he blocked RU486 on spurious grounds, playing Borgian political games rather than openly declaring his moral opposition to making abortion easier and more straightforward. They saw it in his sleazy legalistic taking-down of Pauline Hanson — rather than fighting her ideas openly and publicly as the left did. They saw it in his casual remarks about the late Bernie Banton, in his sudden ‘recollection’ that he had met with Cardinal Monsignor his Graciousness George Pell before the last election after swearing Oxford blue in the face that he hadn’t, and most recently in his remark that Kevin Rudd was somehow to blame for the deaths of children at sea. The great bit of luck for Rudd Labor is that Abbott can’t stop himself on these things. Nineteen times out of 20 he can remember that the people don’t have this abysmal Boschian cosmology churning in their guts, and talk like they do — about a reasonable topside world where people get together and talk things through. Then whoosh like a tongue of flame from the underworld, something comes shooting out of his mouth, and reminds us that he is not of this celestial level. Three of those over the next three months — especially about women, around whom he has more issues than John Howard does of Wisden — will be enough to brand him as the Liberal Latham, and have a good third of the party sit on their hands in the next poll…or bring a split ever closer. One suspects the conservatariat knows this, and have already got their story straight. Poor me. Poor us. The cosmopolitans have tricked the honest people again. Who could blame them if, guided by their representatives, they took the most ruthless but necessary action in the years to come? |
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Crikey's Guide to Julia Gillard
44 Comments
Hmm, Guy
I think this is a false dichotomy. To imply that Christian theists have either the choice between a radical distrust in ‘God language’, or, on the other side, a confession to that language being analogical at best somehow leading to conservative (well, bigoted really, in my view) ideas about “homosexuality, condoms, evolution” etc.
Around two billion Christians pray regularly for “God’s will to be done on earth, as in heaven”. And if it wasn’t for that belief that Christians could play a small part in this happening, then there wouldn’t have been movements for women’s suffrage, abolition of the slave trade, the Civil Rights movement, and such recent campaigns as Jubilee and Make Poverty History. And you wouldn’t have the fact that faith-based agencies make up 70 per cent of charitable work among the poor in sub-Saharan Africa.
So I think to imply that the belief that “God’s will and law can be interpreted and acted on” leads to only conservative positions is a touch misleading. It can both lead to horrific human rights abuses and oppression, yes, when it is badly thought through, but it can also lead to very radical action on behalf of the poor, the persecuted and the marginalised.
However, I don’t hold out much hope in Abbott taking the latter interpetive tradition seriously.
An interesting but superficial analysis, devoid of any class perspective. You could of course apply the same analysis to Rudd, and perhaps come to the same conclusion. Maybe Abbott’s ascendancy also has something to do with the split in the ruling class over climate change and the conflict between the state as arbiter of the needs of capital in general (the executive committee idea) as opposed to particular sections of capital on major issues.
There could also be arguments about whether particular blocs of capital (eg the coal cabal) have captured some sections of the Liberal party and all of the National Party , whether Abbott is addressing a need to stabilise the conservative liberal base and is repositioning the Party for the future if or when the economy double dips. If the economy does tank again, then Abbott’s economic ideas especially could find ready acceptance among the ruling elite as a way of driving living standards down and propping up profit rates. His ascendancy might also, without, let’s be frank, a real left any more of any size in Australia, drag Labor further to the right.
Indeed, arguably what is going on is a realignment within the conservative continuum of Labor/Liberals/Nationals.
The left in most commentary I have seen imagines Abbott as the most important enemy. The real enemy is Labor. Our task should be to build (or at least try to build) a mass movement for real climate change, defence of jobs and living standards, etc etc.
Don’t forget that Kevin 07 is a Type B believer as well. Most political leaders are, or at least like to make us think they are.
It’s not yet a differentiator.
Uganda lawmakers linked with US-based evangelical preachers are set to make homosexual sex punishable by life in prison or death and one of the few voices of religious opposition to this move comes from a retired Anglican priest.
I guess this reinforces the previous commentators point about how acting upon God’s will can lead to both human rights abuses and radical action on behalf of the poor and marginalised.
My new favourite passtime will now be looking hard into Tony Abbott’s eyes during every press conference, to watch for the flicker of a flame that might indicate he is about to cross over into the parallel world of “abysmal Boschian cosmology”. Priceless!!
I’m with Hitchins - religion is no indicator of morality. Religion seems to just make life more Extreme in all directions. Boschian Flame. Hmm.
Things have come to a pretty pass in the Liberal Party if we/they are now pining for the days of sensible conservatives … like John Howard.
Prebendary, the word loose needs to be added
John Passant, you’re right. My superstructural analysis has entirely ignored movements within the ruling class. Clearly the rentier-imperialist base of the Hockeyites is now in contradiction with the Abbottist Catholic petty-bourgeoisie. We’ll have a clearer understanding of what’s going on when Minsky gets back from the Putilov works with newspaper sales figures.
Yes, i agree with you that divisions with business round the ETS - one group wanting it passed for stability, another resisting - are worth taking into consideration (and something worth syaing more about as a stand-alone article), but the idea of trying to reduce this complex multilayered political-cultural process to being a mere epipehnomenon is nuts on stilts.
It’s not only among the ‘ruling elite’ that an aggressive anti-tax etc Abbott economic polocy would find favour, but among a wide swathe of voters. Indeed, Labor has left itself exposed to that by its airy ‘nation building’ stuff.
God yes, let’s build another movement for the etc of etc. There’s nothing like having a task. You first.
david
i’m not pining for Howard, simply analysing the differences between he and Abbott
daniel
a lot of what you’re talking about is in the past, or in less advanced societies. yes i dont doubt the anti-slavery movement believed in gods will, just as i dont doubt that left christians in africa etc believe that god favours a certain type of economic arrangement etc.
But in hypermodern, individualised, etc etc societies, i think that by and large most people in that sort of leftish space would believe that general rules are godly - reciprocity, charity, turn other cheek etc - but specific rules are human affairs. the group b people really think you can dervie god’s law about abortion, euthananasia, biotech etc, whereas the group a’s think these are dilemmas we have to work through with a general sense of human worth and ethics.
but youre also probably right that there’s a WCC type christian who believes that social justice and gay marriage is god’s revealed will too. i just think there’s much less of em
No, I know your not pining for him. That would go beyond the bounds of nature and god’s plan for a virtuous life for us all.
I suppose I am just pointing out the obvious - many thought that Howard represented as far right as the Liberal Party could conceivably go and that, to the entertainment of us all, the last week has proved that assumption wrong.
The en passant harking back to the good old days when Labor, the ‘social fascists’, were the ‘real enemy’ transported me back to the halcyon days of the 1930’s when all that stood in the way of the the revolution led by the vanguard of the working class was the hated class traitor Labor Party.
What wonderful days they were. Everything seemed so simple then. If Labor had been properly disposed of back then we would all now be living in a socialist paradise and John Howard would have been throttled at birth with a hearing aid cord.
As wet dreams go they don’t get much better than that.
God help the left, because nobody else will.
yeah david k that’s right, the left are the ones who chose a leader the country hates by one informal vote and one non-attendee. oh, we’re really in trouble
Tim looking into Abbotts eyes at the moment is like gazing into a Boschian Nightmare….its frightening.
Wow! I think I actually agree with you on this Raymond.
Just when I thought Rundle had got the length right he has to take up valuable blog space arguing with people who think he got the wrong line. Tsk tsk.
Thankyou Jillian and I did feel rather sad for Malcolm on Tuesday, he deserved better. I suspect we haven’t heard the last from him.
Yes, as you can imagine I nearly died on Tuesday, but I have hope that Malcolm will return to prominence in due course.
Thanks David for reducing my argument about labor in Government being the main enemy of real action on climate change to one about stalinists in the 30s opposing a mass leftward moving movement of Labor Party members. Since he seems to think I am a stalinsist, I’d support the socialisation units and work with them.
I look forward to Guy now applying his analysis to NSW and the catholic leader there to see how useful this approach is. Or even Rudd.
Perhaps you should join us Guy in our attempts to build a mass movement for working class liberation.
Think nothing of it John. I’m always willing to go on a frolic with those who’s politics are stuck back in the 1930s. You are clearly a Trotskyist who is still battling it out with the Stalinists after all these years. The best fights are the really ancient ones aren’t they John?
It is a pleasure to see that you have the old dialectic still working away and that reveals that the only thing stopping the workers driving full speed towards socialism in the 1930s were the nefarious Stalinist who, like a malignant dam, were stopping the onrush of workers revolutionary power. Across the nation Labor Party branches were moving towards transforming themselves into workers soviets and were prevented from doing so by the satanic Stalinists.
It is exciting to think that the ‘masses’ were ready to behave in such an exciting way but, like many derring-do adventure stories, it is almost entirely untrue. But it is not necessary for these fantasies to be true as their main purpose is to keep the utopian fantasy alive in a small number of radical left sects. Theses sects delude themselves into believing that the future belongs to them but their future died many years ago.
Thanks David. I don’t in fact think any of what you assume I think. Least of all do I have derring-do fantasies. The task for the Left in re-building is enormous, especially in a period like the last 30 years or so in Australia of, as a generalisation, class and social quiescence.
But I do think you mistake the present social reality for an eternal truth. Maybe if you read my blog that might convince you otherwise but I doubt it.
I still think my basic point is valid - the Left’s fascination with Abbott obscures the fact that Rudd in power is Howard without the divisiveness (at least at the moment). On a whole range of policies (climate change, refugees, the Northern Territory intervention, keeping a lid on wage increases and strikes, work choices - now known as Fair Work Australia - gay marriage, women’s wage and superannuation inequality, to use just some examples, Rudd seems to me to continue the Howard agenda.
The Left’s a-historical and anti-materialist demonisation of Abbott (a demonisation that could perhaps slip into anti-Catholic sectarianism) lets Rudd run free.
John, are you denying that you are a Trotskyist?
If you say that “stalinists in the 30s opposing a mass leftward moving movement of Labor Party members” does that not imply you believe there was a strong movement towards socialism, and a pre-revolutionary situation, that was impeded by Stalinists in the 1930s? If not what gloss would you put on this statement?
Your tendency to back away from your statements, and the implications of those statements, is rather timid.
Despite your disavowals, your focus on Labor as the main enemy has a clear lineage back to the social fascist era of communist thinking. I did not say that you have revolutionary fantasies about the current situation but nevertheless you do have that typical radical left sectarian belief that conditions will change, perhaps suddenly, in a way that will create a vastly more fertile ground for your ideology. Unfortunately for you, but not the rest of us, that is a very dead fantasy. Whatever dire challenges we face in the future Trotskyism, and similar radical left ‘solutions’, will not be supplying the answers.
John, are you denying that you are a Trotskyist?
If you say that “stalinists in the 30s opposing a mass leftward moving movement of Labor Party members” does that not imply you believe there was a strong movement towards socialism, and a pre-revolutionary situation, that was impeded by Stalinists in the 1930s? If not what gloss would you put on this statement?
Your tendency to back away from your statements, and the implications of those statements, is rather timid.
Despite your disavowals, your focus on Labor as the main enemy has a clear lineage back to the social fasc*st era of communist thinking. I did not say that you have revolutionary fantasies about the current situation but nevertheless you do have that typical radical left sectarian belief that conditions will change, perhaps suddenly, in a way that will create a vastly more fertile ground for your ideology. Unfortunately for you, but not the rest of us, that is a very dead fantasy. Whatever dire challenges we face in the future Trotskyism, and similar radical left ‘solutions’, will not be supplying the answers.
Thanks David. I don’t think I am backing away from my statements. If the international socialist tradition is part of the trotskyist movement then in your terms I am a trot. I don’t see saying the main enemy is the bourgeois party in power is harking back to the 30s and the social fascism of the Communist Parties. The socialisation units were mass movements from below. The Labor Party in power is not.
But there is some truth I think in your understanding of my view of change. Lenin said that sometimes nothing happens for decades and then decades happen in weeks.
There is a dialectical process of change.
Looking back seems to justify this analysis - Europe after the first World War, Spain 36-39, Australia in 1917, 1931 with the socialisation units, Eastern Europe in fits and starts after the second world war and then in full bloom between 89 and 91, Portugal and its dependencies in 1974, May 68 in France, the late 60s more generally in the US and western Europe, Iran in 78/79 and again in 2009, Bolivia in 2002(?), the process of change (from feudalism to state capitalism) in China, Vietnam and the like, the processes going on in Venezuela now (with revolutionary elements looking for ways to further the prospects for revolution).
This seems to me to show that in fact there are classes whose interests are fundamentally opposed, and oppose din ways that are antagonistic. This doesn’t mean that we socialists can just sit back and wait for the revolution to mature.
It means both building ourselves and our relationship with the working class. But as I have made clear the revolutionary left in Australia is incredibly small (sects in your terms). As I have written on my blog we are corks bobbing on the waves of society.
Any mass upsurge in the near future is likely to sweep over us. But to deny,as you do, that such an upsurge could occur is I believe to see the present as the future.
But in my view all society is in a constant process of change, mostly slow and incremental, and then suddenly bursting forth.
My God, am I dreaming or are they really arguing about whose a Trot?
Yes we are, unfortunately.
Can’t you do it somewhere else? There are children sleeping here
Yes, i think it is a discussion for my blog. Convince David. On the other hand the focus on Abbott and away from Rudd that the Left is adopting is worthy of discussion I think.
David I think my blog (and my article there Abbott: the left misses the point) is a more appropriate forum for this discussion. Our arcane point scoring is off point here and detracts from the rest of the discussion.
ice pick in the head will sort them out
Thanks Jack ‘Mercader’ Dempsey.
Funny how Tony Abbott’s theology can inspire this Boschian icepick nightmare. Maybe he’s not the unity candidate.
John
i think the short answer to your string of replies is that class analysis is of some use sometimes, and sometimes has major effects on ‘higher’ levels of action, but 1) simple theories of class as based around physical labour and ownership are superseded in information-dominated societies, and 2) a whole rethinking of what ‘class’ is as an ontological category is required, and 3) any attempt to read off ideological shifts as an expression of class conflict, rather than as action at an autonomous level becomes absurd, and 4) if one is to see class expression in these occurrences, it is largely by the new class conflict between knowledge/culture/policy workers on the one hand, and physical producers on the other.
As for demonising Abbott, I agree - and I’ve written far more about Rudd and Ruddism as a coercive politics than I have about the Libs over the last three months. But we know that Abbott is an aggressive warrior on issues like abortion, etc, so it’s not simply a cultural demonisation, it’s a real line.
But all this stuff about building a new working-class movement, the difficulties etc etc…all i hear is the old voice of left masochism, and an impossible anachronistic politics
Guy, Thanks. I disagree with 1 - since class to my mind is about the relationship to the means of production. Those who sell their labour power and have little control over their relationship to the means of production are workers. That is a s true today as it was 160 years ago (when from memory nannies were an important part of the working class).
The knowledge worker/physical labourer difference (itself a construct I have some reservations about) fits within that ontological category.
I agree sort of with 3. You can’t predict what Abbott or Joyce or Rudd are always going to do on specifics since capital is itself not a uniform entity, and the relationship between the state and capital is complex, but you can argue that their decisions fit within a continuum of capitalist solutions. As to 4 where is the evidence of these intraclass conflicts.
I have read nothing but the horrors of Abbott from the public intellectual left, so my apologies for reacting with some acerbity to your contribution.
More importantly, I see the pathetic ETS defeated in the Senate (I think the Greens were right to oppose it as worse than useless) and see the Opposition using scare tactics. I despair that there is no mass movement against the reactionaries of Labor and the Liberals on climate change. Nothing.
Struggle in the past has forced our rulers to grant concessions - whether it be the vote, the end of slavery, social welfare, women in the workforce, some concessions to the gay liberation movements etc.
Why pooh pooh that perspective of struggle on perhaps the issue that threatens the very existence of humanity?
I am not suggesting this is Socialist Alternative telling the world to join us to fight climate change. That would be sectarianism of the highest order and completely self defeating.
Indeed, as I suggest on my blog, the Greens have the credibility to move the whole debate to the left through organising mass action against climate change (including civil disobedience and perhaps action by workers), agitating for that action and for greens jobs.
But the whole movement seems stuck in the ice age of change through Parliament. It’s the usual top down approach to change - just vote for us - the greens, the left etc - and we’ll change the world for you. But even on those fairly base and timid terms mass action has the chance of increasing the vote for the Greens.
I see building a mass movement to force our rulers to take real action on climate change as an absolute necessity.Tthat mass movement is not a small group like Socialist Alternative - it is a mass movement of ordinary working people for green jobs, for the environment. The reality is only people with real credibility in society can do that or at least begin that process.
John, all this jargon of “mass action”, “mass movement” and “struggle” is a throwback to another time. It was seriously out-of-date 40 years ago and now resembles the language of ancient mythology.
You despair because you see very little of any of it and fail to understand that is because these concepts have little relationship to the modern world. They were born out of an industrial era that ended long ago and it is a kind of eccentric antiquarianism to continue using them.
John
class and value in its Marxian form is about an ontological relation to the world - where physical labour dominates, and some people own accumulated bits of it and others don’t, then a primordial division deeper than any other categorisation has developed.
when the value form changes (as Marx noted it would, in the ‘fragment on machines’), then the ontological relationship changes. A society dominated by knowledge work and increasingly automated production does not run off (physical) labour value, and the value-surplus-exploitation-division is no longer primordial in terms of group formation. There’s no last instance when a class division is laid bare.
Building a movement predicated on the idea that all the veils will fall away eventually, is a recipe for wasting your life. You’ll end up like the Henry George League, still setting up their table occasionally, ghosts of the 19th century.
Seriously, as a Marxist, doesn’t the phrase ‘nothing has changed in 160 years’ ring a few alarm bells?
Bugger the ontological wars chaps. Just contemplate the cosmic irony that Abbott turned around the direction of Australian politics with just one vote: for himself.
Proving what? That the god’s must be crazy?
So, the world has turned has it? Don’t forget the 24/7 rule. If something is new now it won’t be tomorrow. Including the redefinition of Australian politics (by a man with big ears)
Abbott is a synonym for ‘big mistake’ and the only “redefinition” he will do is the depth of Liberal Party failure. Turnbull failed in his effort to turn them into a competitive force but his conception of what needed to be done was on the money. Abbott will create a strangely tedious but colourful sideshow and he will then lead the Liberals to a shattering defeat which will take many years to recover from.
His efforts so far throwing out ‘policy possibilities’ has been extraordinarily undisciplined, to a degree that vastly exceeds Mark Latham, and he will end up making the bulk of the electorate nervous but not at all excited. He will hand the mantle of the natural party of government to Labor and make the Liberal alternative seem risky and odd.
Smacks of wishful thinking, eh readers?
While I am on the subject of Abbott I doubt I am the only person who finds Abbott’s relative estimation of himself and Rudd obnoxious. According to Abbott Rudd is only fit to be a public servant with the emphasis on the word ‘servant’. By implication Abbott presents himself as the alpha male who’s natural role in the world is to order around the ‘servants’.
Need I explain how stupid and obnoxious, and plainly electorally unattractive, this notion is?
Abbott has managed to stop the ETS in the short-term, which is a redefinition of sorts - it seemed inevitable previously. I am not making a judgement on whether that is a good or a bad thing.
David, I agree with your statement that “Abbott will create a strangely tedious but colourful sideshow and he will then lead the Liberals to a shattering defeat which will take many years to recover from.” In that sense, it’s not just a matter of waiting for the Abbott experiment to be over and moving on as if it never happened, which is what some people on other sites have suggested. The Liberal Party will have gone backwards under Abbott.