[Marxism] In reponse to a distortion of my views by a list member

[PPZ]

I think there is a very useful discussion that we can have about the
working class as a class in itself and a class for itself. I think from
Australia we have a very different impression. While most of the working
class was depoliticised through much of the second half of the 20th
century in Australia (from the beginning of the post-WWII boom) towards
the end of the last century, under the impact of neo-liberal
restructuring, it began to be repoliticised. At first it was the rapid
rise of the racist Pauline Hanson's One Nation movement that sparked a
rise in political discussions in large sections of the working class
which had long dismissed politics as "not for me, thanks". There were
discussions erupting (for and against her politics) everywhere, on
public transport, in workplaces and even at the fabled Aussie backyard
BBQs. Then came the Howard Liberal government-backed miscalculated
attack on the Maritime Union of Australia (MUA) in 1998. A broad and
powerful working class response erupted. The class becoming more
conscious of itself as a class was tangible - everywhere! My youngest
daughter was  two years old then and at her childcare centre the working
parents were discussing taking food parcels down to the picket line. One
parent, a teacher, organised her  students to paint a banner from the
picketing workers. In a playground, I came across a couple of kids on a
see-saw. They were chanting "MUA here to stay!" - a popular slogan from
the picketline. One of the kids was wearing a union solidarity cap.

I know this are just a few personal anecdotes and perhaps they are
trivial compared to the many other stories, including the large
contingents of building and manufacturing workers who marched to show
their solidarity with workers in the Melbourne docks and ended up
welding together iron barricades, etc, etc. Maybe we should send you
some of the video footage (perhaps other Australian comrades know of
some available on the internet)... But the point I am making is that
working class consciousness, on a broad scale was tangible.

Struggles like that have a lasting impact on workers' consciousness.
And they built upon other experiences, including the experiences of the
couple of militant unionists who dare to break the discipline of the
government-union accord when Labor was last in federal government. In
the wake of the MUA dispute manufacturing and building workers in
Victoria began undoing the enterprise bargaining laws forced on workers
by the Keating Labor government by waging successful "pattern
bargaining" campaigns. These same unions mobilised thousands of workers
in the anti-corporate globalisation in the early 2000s and have worked
consistently with the radical left outside the Labor party since then in
a string of progressive initiatives. 

Nobody asserts that the working class in Australia today is conscious of
its own interests in the historic and most complete sense (we'd have a
pre-revolutionary situation if that was the case), but I think there is
class consciousness and an actually existing working class movement.

The re-awakening of popular working class consciousness in the late
1990s totally shapes the majority political perspective in the DSP. But
I'll come back to this discussion on the other side of our congress,
which begins tomorrow.

Peter Boyle