I'd like to join the chorus of people saying similar things to Tony (and
also to pay tribute to Denise Goodfellow's courage in standing up for
things in what must be one of the most unpleasant redneck political
cultures outside the Deep South).
This area is one which I have been interested in for some time, and I have
written various things on it, a couple of which are on my web-pages.
What I would say is this, I don't think that not being allowed to speak
out, and being persecuted (or ignored) for not toeing the line, is a new
phenonemon. Au contraire I think it is the normal case, as all societies
feel the need for social solidarity and to have all the members of the
provivleged classes firmly behind the offical ideology. The only difference
is that this is theone epoch in hisotrey for which this is unequivocally a
bad thing, as our political and economic culture is globally unsustainable
and has effectively aboslished all other possible alterntaive econom,ic and
social systems.
Why we feel that there should be the possibility of speakign out is that in
the Keynesian period of capitalism (1945-80) there was an offical rhetoric
of openness and democracy, and the full-employment policies that were
pursued meant that even ragbags could still find soem sort of work. And
indeed durign this time a lot of very valuable work was done, people made
stands, and so forth, and the basis of the contemporary environemtnal
movement was laid. In fact I don't believe that this period was very
different, it is simply that people were less afraid to sepak out. What
seems to have happened in the beginnings of economic rational;ism is that a
certain type of discourse became encoded into governmental rhetoric, the
famous political correctness. Now certain aspects of this were good,
inclusive language and so forth, but the other effect was to make both
isdes of politcis subscribe to the same rhetoric, without actually havign
to do very much. Now we have a situation where you can either support the
Liberal party line, which is 'Economic Growth so our mates in business can
get even richer', or the Labor party line, which is 'Economic Growth for
social justice (sorry it's so long coming).....(and so our mates in
business can get even richer)', and politcal correctness means that no-one
can question anything that falls outside these two simialr ideologies (Bob
Brown or Phil Cleary are as much victims of this as La Hanson, and probably
more so, since much of what the Empress of Ipswich says is privately music
to the hears of Howard and co.)
Indeed it astonishes me that in the world which is demoinstarbly not
benefitting from globalisation, that such a consensus on its benefits has
been reached. For a good exampel of this you might like to look at the
Guardian Weekly (a digest of the supposedly left-leaning British
newspaper). This, week after week chronicles the enromiites that
globalisation is perpetrating, but continues to apply left-liberal
analaysis, calling for 'development with a heart', an oxymoron of amazing
proportions.
Anyway, enough of this, I agree there's no sense in despairing,a dn indeed
I have written a recent web-page on an idea of mine concerning
participatory democracy (who was it who said: 'Democracy, that would be an
excellent idea to try...'?). Its address is
http://www.spirit.net.au/~jleonard/pd-main.htm
I hope to write this up at greater length soon (and get an e-mail program
with a spell-check).
John Leonard
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
John Leonard (Dr),
PO Box 243,
Woden, ACT 2606,
Australia
http://www.spirit.net.au/~jleonard
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
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