Ideology and Self-interest: A Little Refresher

Book Reviews

The Great Divide:  Immigration Politics in Australia,
by Katharine Betts,
Duffy & Snellgrove, Sydney, 1999, 426 pages, $19.95.

&

Labor without Class:  The Gentrification of the ALP,
by Michael Thompson,
Pluto Press, Sydney, 1999, 118 pages, $19.95.

&

This Tired Brown Land,
Mark O’Connor,
Duffy & Snellgrove, Sydney, 1998, 335 pages, $19.95.

Here's a curious combination:  Katharine Betts' book The Great Divide about the cultural gap on immigration policy between Australia's new elite and the rest of society;  Michael Thompson's about the gentrification of the ALP, Labor without Class;  and Mark O'Connor's This Tired Brown Land about an alleged suppression of the population debate by the politically correct.  These provide fertile ground for a little refresher on two great pillars of politics:  ideology and self-interest.

Betts suggests that, in the absence of any actual rational argument in favour of high immigration there has to be another explanation for its acceptance among the group she calls the new intellectual elite.  The explanation is that the policy became an ideological badge of membership of the elite, a concept she labelled "ideological correctness".  The appeal was not to the rational consequences of the policy but to the cosmopolitan, anti-parochial values much sought by the educated middle class.  As sensible as the idea that we should be open to the world is, it does not, on this occasion, excuse the blind allegiance to the policy.  The ideological position of the elite when combined with the self-interest of the ethnic lobby -- and the latter's apparent ability to corral votes, which made them very attractive to politicians -- was a sure winner.  The combination held out against the clear majority of the electorate for quite a while.  This is a very good insight into the twin pillars at work.  In this case, two clear minorities out-voted the majority and ignored the public interest.

Betts also describes the takeover of the ALP by a middle class which eschews an interest in the economic needs of the old working class and pursues a New Left agenda of the new social movements:  women, ethnics, blacks, gays and greens.  The only trouble is the New Left chose the vehicle of the Old Left, the ALP.  Essentially, this is Thompson's lament.  He wants Labor returned to the blue-collar classes, to the issues of wages and the concerns of women at home.  In this case, the one organisation is stuck with two very different ideologies, two very different sets of interests.

Thompson's difficulty is that, while the history of the ALP may be all blokes, ballots and booze, there is no reason it should not now be sheilas, consensus and chardonnay.  The ALP is what its members (well, the more articulate of them) say it is.  It is also a vehicle to attain government;  so it needs to deliver to group interests on either real or ideological grounds wide enough to get elected.  It also cannot reveal to one constituency the losses implied in the victory for the other.  It's all supposed to be win-win politics.  It needs to be pointed out, for example, that an attempt to have 52 per cent of Labor seats set aside for women -- all of whom will be middle-class workers -- will absolutely ensure the further demise of the interests of women at home.  Thompson is right in this respect:  it is only a certain kind of woman who took over Labor.

The logical conclusion to Thompson's analysis is that Labor should split in two as has occurred in New Zealand, except that here it would be the Democrats and Labor instead of Alliance and Labour.  A proportional voting system for the House of Representatives would almost certainly see this come to pass.

As it is, the single-electorate system makes for strange bedfellows:  like big ugly, bruising trade unionists, often male, and simpering human rights lawyers of any gender or persuasion, sitting side by side in caucus.  The ideology and self-interest of each are a million kilometres apart, which perhaps explains why Kim Beazley hasn't struck a blow for sound policy in four years as Leader of the Opposition.  His difficulty is that the rationale for solidarity -- a singular self-interest driving a singular ideology -- just doesn't exist.  For Labor, new ideologies and interests are forcing out old ones, but not completely.  Beazley has too many masters, but he's not alone in that dilemma.

Labor set out to capture the new social movements 25 years ago.  No surprise then that they, in turn, captured it!  In the absence of the earlier ideology of socialism, the demise of working-class solidarity, and the fall in numbers of those who identify as working class, what else was Labor to do?  The fact that it has succumbed to the interests of a new class intent on saving the world for themselves is neither here nor there for non-Laborites.  That Labor remains a vehicle for group interests can hardly be a cause for complaint by those who want it to pursue other interests.  The important part is:  what are they saying and how are they trying to justify it?  Criticism is only valid if either the policy outcomes are manifestly wrong or the means of garnering support for certain interests -- for example, stacking branches -- is wrong.  In regard to the latter, there are no better masters than our trade union leaders and their university-educated protégés.

O'Connor's complaint is as perverse as Thompson's is misplaced.  It is that Australia's booming population is destroying the environment and that discussion of this has been stifled by the politically correct.  While he is on Betts' side when criticising "fashionable commentators on immigration drift[ing] with the tides of ideology", as an environmentalist, he is surely also in the new class.  There is a difference between claiming that a debate has been "suppressed", and losing a debate.  O'Connor appears to claim the status of the politically incorrect, yet he does not face headlines that scream "econocide" at him in the same what that they scream "genocide" against the politically incorrect in Aboriginal matters, or "racism" on immigration matters.  While I have some sympathy for O'Connor's environmental analysis, I have none for the claim that his message is unheard.  He just needs to do a lot more convincing.

There seems to be some gamesmanship going on here.  If you can't win the argument or attach yourself to the fashionable elite, then you claim that you are a victim.  That is the pot calling the kettle black when it comes from a member of the elite.  Nor can one complain if one's favourite vehicle for one's favourite values is overtaken by events.  The only thing to be done is to go to the heart of the matter and ask the key questions:  whose interests are being served by the policy When someone claims the high moral ground and implies that you are bad if you do not agree -- not just that you are wrong or have different and equally valid values -- then you have to be prepared to say "humbug!".

That is my job, helping to sort the humbug from the truth no matter how fancy the wrapping.