Despite the obviousness of the profit-motive’s desire to suppress the reality of global warming, many people still refuse to acknowledge its “hidden hand” in it. Despite he very serious threat to all of humanity, many of capitalism’s supporters refuse to acknowledge that the profit motive (as well as capitalism) is the very source of this threat. So it should not be seen as unusual that a kind of “third way” has appeared. There has always been a “third way” going as far back as Marx’s time. Social-Democrats are the usual form it takes. However in this century it has taken the form of “Eco” capitalism.

This Eco-capitalism is a retro idea given a new paint job, a healthy shade of green. As in the past, the apologists for capitalism (commonly liberals) have been “embarrassed” by its effects on the world. This time it goes beyond simply being “embarrassed” by its effects to being terrified by them. It is in these moments of “fear” that individuals often grasp more strongly to their beliefs. We’ve seen this with the 2008 global economic collapse. many have refused to accept that capitalism caused the event. And instead of criticizing their belief, they have become market fundamentalists. In times of crisis they have only gripped more firmly to their faith. Like a Christian who has lost their way only to become “born again”.

This new “Third Way” is still just an apology for capitalism. Like previous “Third Ways” it has found its political leaders and political parties. What was once the social-democrats is now the various Green Parties that can be found around the world. Where the social-democrats have promised a reigning in and greater control of capitalism, the Greens have promised a reorientation of capitalism towards Eco-friendly ideas and beliefs.

The Greens have given us this version of a capitalism where the productive forces can be used in a socially responsible manner. They claim they can effect a capitalist mobilization with the goal of sustaining human life on Earth ecologically. Along with this as an aside, they’ll tackle homelessness and global poverty , maybe even economic inequality. This message speaks to a post-materialist crowd, better known as hippies. It gives a very holistic spiritual flavour to what is in reality an exploitative repressive ideology. In truth, the whole “Green mentality” is just another “spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down”.

An amusing aspect to this whole green-capitalism is its claim that it can attract capitalists with an altruistic incentive. This aspect was best put by Slavoj Zizek:

“Capitalists should not just be machines for generating profits, since their lives can have a deeper meaning. Their preferred mottos have become social responsibility and gratitude: they are the first to admit that society has been incredibly good to them to deploy their talents and amass great wealth, so it is their duty to give something back to society and to help ordinary people. Only this kind of caring approach makes business success worthwhile.”

- Slavoj Zizek, First as Tragedy, then as Farce

I’m sure there is no need for me to explain why reaching out to capitalists with altruism is absolutely hilarious.

Regardless of however the Greens think they will entice or even coerce the capitalists, they will achieve nothing. They will achieve nothing for one simple reason: Eco-capitalism is capitalism. Despite its well-meaning altruism the profit motive doesn’t change. The mistake here by the Greens is that they separate the ideological basis of capitalism (individualist greed) from the economic relations (the capitalist mode of production). What they then try to do is graft an altruistic, even spiritual ideology on those same economic relations.

Such a surgical transplanting of ideologies as failure is not recognized by the Greens because they have not done a materialist analysis of capitalism. Marx clearly pointed out that social-relations spring from economic-relations. A greedy, exploitative people are a product of a greedy and exploitative system. (Its also a self-perpetuating mechanism, it creates greedy people while turning around to say “see people are naturally greedy”.) To put it another way, the “greedy individualist” body will inevitably reject the “altruistic” organ.

If you want to change the social-relations of the system, you have to change the economic-relations. Refusing to do so is an ideological position as opposed to a materialist analysis. Attempting to change things without a materialist analysis in a material way will lead only to disaster.

In the material conditions we face, the capitalist class controls the means of production. Meaning they hold all power in society, financial (in the form of money), physically (in the form of police/military/judicial system) and ideologically, (propaganda through ownership of media). This power will keep them from achieving anything. It is also why reform does not work, and why only revolution brings victory.

Suppose the Green Party won a majority. There are only 2 ways the scenario would play out.

1. The party actually comes into power and genuinely tries to put through the reforms to capitalism they intend. The capitalist class fights back using the media to give the impression that everyone hates them and go the other parties to force them out. They would create all kinds of scandals and lies to basically bash them out of office and call new elections.

2. The party actually comes into power and genuinely tries to put through the reforms to capitalism they intend. The capitalist class fights back and the party leadership gives up because they can’t win. Immediately they sell out the voters and become just another group of tools.

The Greens can never fight back because they do not control the means of production and the power that flows from them. Nor do they have the intention of ever doing so.

In the concrete material reality the ecological crisis is caused by capitalism. No amount of reform can possibly effect this bringing it to an end, because it remains capitalism. Ecological destruction is a part of economic relations. The only solution is to change the economic relations in a way where the goal is not profit at all cost, but to the sustainment of human life. We achieve that by abolishing capitalism. This is not possible under Eco-capitalism because it is capitalism.

Eco-capitalism in concrete material reality, is another “Third Way” trap that offers no viable solutions to the problems and dangers we face. No amount of spiritual or ideological re-flavouring can change the fallacy of the “Third Way” position. Revolution is the only solution.

Indeed, if the Libs and Nats can do it why not a regular ALP - Greens Coalition? What fun to see the ALP coping with yet another faction and one that actually believed in ideology. And what fun to see the battles over preferences and/or which seats belonged to whom (actually that rather than preferences: but there would be principled party stalwarts and the merely self-interested who would be putting motions in favour of standing candidates in every seat) without a PR of list system.

But the particulars are probably more interesting.

The Tory wets, like a lot of decent prosperous people who had lived through the Depression, were part of the social democrat consensus in the UK after WW2. It is worth noting that single member electorates can give rise to the corruption of excessive sectional interests too. After all it is not just the Obeid ascendancy which showed what an ethnic/religious group could do but I am reliably informed about a decision made by a Coalition minister to deny or delay a visa because of the Muslim/Middle Eastern element in his electorate. And I once heard a senior Coalition figure refuse to touch public sector superannuation costs because of the public service vote in critical electorates.

So the natural tendency of human beings collectively to continue down damaging paths for a very long time before disaster produces the leadership to change course is a pretty reliable generalisation and template to impose on one’s analysis. Kennett got his majorities in both houses and was able to do what Thatcher did for Britain (BTW read Claire Berlinski’s brillian little book “Why Margaret Thatcher Matters - There Is No Alternative” if you can’t stand most long political memoirs including, not least, Maggie’s own). Curiously NZ, before it played silly b***ers, with its franchilse, put a strong majority Labor government in to do the same, much earlier too, because NZ proved the point about the importance of disaster in halting a long period of bad habits. The Muldoon (and previous governments) were appalling, unrecognisable as “conservative” or “liberal”.

I might have been inclined to think that “producer capture” of the kind we are now seeing in the US public sector (all those outrageous pensions in California being the prime exhibit) was almost impossible to reverse but Sweden did a remarkable job of cutting back its public sector proportion of GDP from about 60 per cent to about 45 per cent. I don’t know what the electoral system was that allowed that. A small ethnically cohesive country would have prima facie advantages, not least if prompted to react to free loading by immigrants that they don’t feel comfortable with (cp. Holland and its Moroccans) but still would be an exhibit worth considering for the present discussion of electoral systems.

Germany has been faced with such big problems that solidarity over some issues might help in a critical degree - not least because of the memories still invoked of the great 1920s inflation and because it was obvious that sacrifice was needed to reintegrate East Germany. According to what I remember of Mancur Olson’s observations, Germany benefited too from a fresh start without the historically backward looking UK style unions (and old-fashioned and perhaps class ridden management) after WW2.

As for Australia, we are surely too prosperous, for most of us by the sheer luck of being Australian, to be likely to behave well if given the chance to elect minorities. And, depending on one’s personal preferences, it wouldn’t matter much, would be an unacceptable drag on our future growth, or would be ideal for allowing one to “save the Tarkine” if one were truly focused Green or prevent taxpayer funds being used for abortion or IVF etc.

Rundle says that all the Greens have to do is develop a better, and far more comprehensive, set of policies. Good luck with that. Look how difficult that process is for the conservatives, and they have been in government before.

The fact that the Coalition can push the rhetorical buttons, but have no underlying policy narrative, undermines Rundle’s assumption (widely shared, but still unsustainable) about “When … Tony Abbott is prime minister”. Nobody who has spent as long on the Left as Rundle has any excuse for failing to pick a towering political behemoth that is on the verge of collapse rather than victory.

Milne’s insistence that she can work with an Abbott government because she worked with the much more moderate Rundle government in Tasmania is stupid. It was Milne, a heterosexual woman, who grafted on the rights-based issue of decriminalising homosexuality rather than Brown, who would have advanced his own rights and interests through such an agenda. If you’re going to move away from a rights-based approach them Milne is not the person to do it, and neither is Hanson-Young.

Milne’s first big idea as leader was to strike out into regional anfd rural communities to position the Greens as the champions of anti-CSG and other mining activities, to take on the conservatives rather than fight Labor vote for vote in the well-worn streets of the inner cities. It hasn’t worked. Windsor-Oakeshott-style independents are leading those battles. The Greens are either not involved, or where they are the impression has been created that they are carpetbaggers and interlopers, i.e. their campaigns have worked against them rather than for them.

A century ago, socialists refused to help ameliorate the condition of the poor under capitalism in order to let things get worse and create the conditions for socialist revolution. Today, Milne is hoping an Abbott government will make things worse before she and the Greens can swoop in and make things better. Rundle might complain about the abuse of Marx’s aphorism about history, tragedy and farce, but it’s undeniably applicable here.

Gillard will win in 2013, not by much and without any outpouring of goodwill, because she has the least unconvincing set of policies that address the work-life issues to which Rundle refers. It’s indirect and the longterm structural issues to which he refers may catch up with Labor at some point, but even so Gillard is the only one attempting, however imperfectly, to engage in the conversation. Milne has disgraced herself by attempting to ape Abbott, and Abbott is disgracing himself by refusing any conversation that he doesn’t initiate.

The Greens have gotten (as it were) nothing that they didn’t have already, and by divorcing themselves from tangible achievements such as marine parks and carbon abatement they have become less than they were. They will still increase their Senate team by two to four, but will remain as Democrats in polar fleece rather than the replacements for Labor.

What has a virtual duopoly done to our grocer’s market - to customers and producers?

Then there was that rigid interview style used? The veins opened by Howes but not explored by Jones?
* The way Howes uses his “I am not part of the government/caucus Get Out of Gaol Free” card : the times he uses the “we” word as if he is?
* The way the Greens have voted with “Abbott” - as if Labor has “never”?
* The sort of qualifications he used to rate Burnie as a “good town” - as if towns that didn’t embrace those values of his were “not good”?

Probably left unexplored because to have done so he might have been left without time to press the “Rudd leadership issue”, while absolving the media of being in control of that “popular topic”, controlling it’s “life” - the media with ability to edit and frame news, that the public ends up with as per their “revues of the gnus”? Compared to, say, what doesn’t make that “cut”?

In some ways, they haven’t done too badly for a government that was in a hopeless position as soon as it won government, and started to behave as if it could do anything exept respond appropriately to they that must be obeyed.

In some ways, they haven’t done too badly for a government that was in a hopeless position as soon as it won government and started to behave as thought they thought they could do anything exept to respond appropriately to they that must be obeyed.

I am not arguing for stability by the way. And I am rather surprised that you cite the problems with Harradine et al. in the Senate given that it is PR which produces that result. Indeed they are part of my anti-PR case.

One thing our system does allow, as does the inferior version in the UK, is radical change when needed. After 40 plus years of increasingly bad government in Victoria, Kennett and Stockdale had a majority to get things done and did. (To the point where Keating persuaded one of the architects of the transformation to go and work for Bob Carr on the undertaking that he would be able to pursue the Kennett-Stockdale policies in NSW. Of course Carr, the uber Green and, surprisingly, captive of the factions, let him down. I say this because I regard what Kennett and Stockdale achieved for Victoria, with all its imperfections,as a good advertisement for what democratic government can achieve.)

Having used the word “democratic” I should say that I am not sure that I go along with your use of it. Democracy has come and could come in so many forms that it is hardly a useful word. If I were a young Chinese professional person I can easily see myself joining the Communist Party and quietly and prudently advocating more “democracy” within the party, leaving our western ideas for much later generations.

Your comment is awaiting moderation.
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I have just read BK’s piece in today’s CDM about the (alleged) lack of narrative in all the ruling Anglosphere leaders/parties (Gillard, Cameron, Obama, and Canada too).

…more (come back tomorrow, maybe, to read the rest?)…

His analysis and reasoning are ok up to a point. But I think he misses the main thing (though perhaps it is implied) and that is what I stressed in my 2010 articles on Hare-Clark: it is simply impossible for just two parties to provide a “narrative” that encompasses the whole or even a majority of the electorate. Our societies are too complex. Though we might (just) agree on certain basics and goals (motherhood ones like health & education) it is impossible to agree on the means to achieve them. A big fraction of the electorate is simply deluded about their own long term interests (West Australians, Queenslanders, Western Sydney bogans) to know what policies might work.

Thus it is impossible for leaders in a two-party system to ever be upfront with a clear narrative because it would offend more than 50% of the electorate, maybe even >50% of their own voters. Each party needs to split into sub-groups that can agree internally on a coherent and honest “narrative”. Incidentally most, even the rabid Rightards, seem agreed that the Greens are the only party with such a coherent and honest narrative. And at least 1.4 million Australians agree with them in a way in which the millions more voters for the major parties do not about their “own” party.

Groan, the conservatives (Luddites) deepest desire for “stability”. Guess what, if you hadn’t noticed, the world is changing at an incredible rate. Stability is simply a commitment to stay locked into the past — and into failure and mediocrity.

Again, you are making dumb comparisons. In fact some of the worst examples come from exactly our system in which a single member (mostly in the Senate) can control outcomes. Like that toxic far-right Christian fundamentalist nutter Harradine from Tasmania; or imagine if it was Katter. Or look at the Hunters Party in NSW!

The fact is that if there was a roughly PR system then the Greens would have 17 federal members and the system would be stable and not subject to the whims of madmen or tiny minority interests (which we can agree is bad and v. undemocratic). You can disagree with their politics but you cannot claim it is undemocratic when 1.4 million give them their primary vote. The claims (by the truly extremist IPA for example!) that the Greens are “extremist” “loony” blah, blah, simply does not stand up to rational scrutiny. And shrieking it (via News Ltd or every rightard ThinkTank or blowhards like Barnaby Joyce) does not make it so.

Take the Tarkine. We all know, and even have a certain grudging sympathy with, the real politik as to why Labor supported the miners: an entirely short-termist survivalist tactic. And that’s the thing. Such short-term decisions dominate in every single sphere of political decision making in Australia. Yet, at the end of the day the miners will be lucky to create 200 permanent jobs (their figures, forget the thousands during development — even shorter term!); but actually it only takes a small change in the international commodity price and/or exchange rate for the whole thing to fall over. (Remember the thousands the Qld coal miners sacked in an instant after the GFC?)

Either way, the mining is a short-term thing (no one is claiming otherwise) and at the end of the day they may well have destroyed the long-term thing worth preserving.

But if one tries to think beyond mining and resource extraction, one is labelled a loony extremist.

I don’t see Australia benefiting from the enabling of those who would form the Christian Democratic Part, the Urban and Regional Aboriginal Party, the Outback Aboriginal Party, the Arabic Muslim Party, the non-Arabic Muslim Party, the Ultra-Orthodox Jewish Party, the Party of Modern Judaism, the Shooters Party, etc.

It is true that even the Coalition has been falling prey to the insitutional rot of careerism which has gone so far down the road in the ALP but the fact that a serious challenge to the perfectly acceptable insiders’ pick, Kelly O’Dwyer, by a successful self-made businesman who sought preselection for what had been Costello’s seat, shows that the main parties can still hope to find space for the kind of able people who want to turn their attention to doing something of public benefit and might well be good at it. I’m definitely of the word-from-inside school as you may surmise. Not that Ted Mack may not have done some good things, or Andrew Murray, but government shouldn’t be swayed too much by the single issue campaigners and minorities.

Comparisons to Italy are ridiculous, not least because of false perceptions of Italy’s system; like Japan (5 PMs since Obama’s election in 2008) they may change PMs with regularity but actually since the end of WWII both countries have had almost continuous conservative party control that only recently is declining. You are also cherry-picking. Why not compare to Germany or Netherlands? And of course though Italy may have huge public debt (but very low private debt, the mirror of Oz) it is still the 7th or 8th largest economy.

Read my full argument in Crikey:
The crisis in governance in two-party systems, Friday, 3 September 2010

I suppose you will parrot News Ltd and all the conservative cheer squad and shriek that this minority government is the “most unstable and dysfunctional” we have ever had (probably add: since Whitlam). If you sincerely believe that then I am not going to try to dissuade you as you are obviously a lost cause.

Finally I would say there is an overwhelming moral and ethical (not to say functional) reason that the system needs to change: when a party wins 1.26 million/11.4% of the national vote but only gets a single MP elected (0.67%) it is beyond argument that there is something seriously, fatally wrong. Now, if the country was generally well run and we were building the infrastructure and other things (education, health, defense) we need for the future, you could afford to shrug your complacent shoulders. (Anyone who actually believes that is also beyond argument.) But we are not.
It is like Crikey’s moderation system: broken.

Took at least some words from my mouth Mr James. The Libs long since abandoned any ideology that wasn’t hard right economics, big business to the fore and stuff the rest. It’s dog eat dog, and I won’t give that the honour of calling it an ideology.

But apart from that they have very little other than populism. TA claims that voters want ‘big ideas’. Apparently servicing Australia with a state of art broadband network is something worth destroying, while we build 100 new dams. That isn’t a big idea, it’s a thought bubble of yesterday’s ideas.

There is space for a genuinely principled party to be created between the Greens and the Labor Party, especially if Labor are smashed in the next election. Hawke/Keating may well be the last of the real Labor parties, but also brought about their demise by their association with big business. The latest iteration has Labor afraid of big business rather than working with them (and unions)

The comments about university educated pollies is not lost on me. After 32 years in the workforce, 15 of them at a university, there is a very strong case that universities long since stopped churning out ‘thinkers’ and now only produce education.

If you can’t see the difference between education and thinking, then you are part of the problem.

As to his advocacy of a Hare-Clark system or some approximation facilitating a multi-party system!!!!

It might once have been the case that PR was a nice idea that could work but now there is not excuse. We have some awful examples around the world. I think that includes Italy which certainly has many parties. But Israel is the prime example. Even Jewish intelligence can’t make sense of domestic politics there largely thanks to PR. As Henry Kissinger said “All Israeli politics is domestic” - which explains some of the outbreaks of idiocy or simple inadvertent error in defence and foreign affairs, and is largely a product of the electoral system.

Not being a lifelong devotee of the ALP I don’t have your problems with G R’s piece but pick up your point about the ALP not changing, only the society it operates in.

Indeed. The ALP is still an organisation of the union oligarchs who created it. “The Necessity of Oligarchy” is a title or catchphrase that comes back to me and it dates to about 1910 from memory. Then, as mentioned by another poster, there is “How Labor Governs” dating to the early 20s.

Such an organisation, which may have had a lot of people it could and did genuinely want to help and who would therefore vote for them, has clearly run out of a mission beyond keeping the oligarchs oligarchic and able to enjoy the fruits of capitalist prosperity, by whatever means works.

Socialism was a distraction which the ALP has rightly put behind it as one would expect of pragmatic oligarchs and would be oligarchs and careerists. (It could even be said that all parties are now too willing to overlook market failure or at least to spend too little time on finding truly intelligent remedies for it).

Australia still teeters on the brink of one particular abyss however. That is the “producer capture” by the public sector. Too many privileges and advantages built in to over secure public sector employment backed by strong unions is something we have, perhaps because of our fortunately prosperous capitalist economy, largely managed to counter and keep from dominance. (Kennett’s reforms in Victoria helped too). But look at how quickly the disease took over in the US over the last two or three decades. If you are not familiar with the public sector problems in California and Illinois just to name blatant cases which come to mind you might usefully acquaint yourself with them. And it is not as though California has been lacking in prosperous businesses. Much of the problem there is that the public sector unions dominate the Democratic Party, fund raising for elections is very important and, even more significant, they don’t have compulsory voting so the public sector unions are immensely important for getting out the vote.

Happily for those of us who don’t like the ALP’s oligarchic model we have a prosperous economy, compulsory voting, and the public sector vote is well and truly split now that the Greens appeal to the bien pensants group thinkers.

I am not disposed to take the optimistic, and often right, view that human ingenuity, let loose in full flood by the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, will solve all problems. But I can’t see why a considerably greater population won’t be able to live good,healthy, long lives, at least in Australia (and maybe in those exclusive enclaves opened up in warmed up Kamchatka or norther Finland…). I am reminded to worry about our own aquifers whenever I read such figures as you give but, at least within the almost controllable of Australian policy and development I would have thought our path was pretty clear and not something portending likely disaster (unless something disastrous like nuclear war in Asia has its inevitable impact on us). I even support a growing population through (selective) immigration and natural increase because that puts off so many of the problems which we can see already having an impact on other First World countries. We will have to learn from others which always takes a lot of time, especially the correct lessons!

In the meantime we can go on enjoying - or many of us anyway - the benefits of living in a growing youngish economy rather than a fossilising one. Given that Keynes was far too optimistic about the way people much dimmer than he would learn to live and enjoy their lives we shouldn’t sneer at the average Howard battler’s way of living and enjoying his/her life, Sylvania Waters, “hunting” and all…..

I disagree with your apparent yearning for ideological integrity in parliamentary politics.
Ideology is for protesters - Labor for the labour, Liberals for a liberal market, Greens for the environment.
Parliament is for pragmatism - healthy markets for jobs, worker rights for productivity, productivity for growth, growth for security, security for protection of the environment, protected environment for future security, markets and jobs, and around again.

No single ideology can deliver everything our futures need.
What we need in parliament are sensible negotiators, not stubborn ideologues.