It’s been less than 12 months since the last federal Budget, yet it seems like an eternity since Clive Palmer managed to break through the Right-Left partisanship that usually accompanies post-Budget discussion. This was the apex of Palmer’s influence on politics, a world away from the report in today’s Fairfax newspapers that then PUP senator […]
12 Mar
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Within a year of its creation, Podemos became the main opposition party in Spain. Analyses of its rapid rise have centred on its unorthodox and ambitious political approach and the different forms of participatory democracy practised (however imperfectly). Less has been said about the relation between the Podemos phenomenon and the Spanish context of major […]
01 Feb
Assert, don’t defend. Fight, fight, fight. —Andrew Bolt, “[Abbott] Government behind 46 to 54. But here’s how it can recover”, 15 December 2014 [Campbell Newman] just seemed arrogant and beyond the control of voters — a fatal flaw in Australian politics. Abbott hasn’t had Newman’s freedom to smash through as he tackles another Labor debt, […]
02 Jan
This is the third part of Left Flank’s series exploring the rise of Podemos. [i] The first part looked at how the new organisations drew on the inspiration and power of the 15-M (“Indignados”) movement. The second part critically examined the Podemos leadership’s deployment of radical populist strategy. In the third part Luke Stobart examines […]
29 Dec
Abbott has to perform well as prime minister next year, not just to preserve his leadership and give the Coalition a chance of re-election but also to restore public faith in the political class and Australia’s system of parliamentary democracy. The year 2015 has to see a restoration of political stability in the national interest. […]
08 Dec
Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence. —Marx & Engels (1845), The German […]
18 Nov
When Elizabeth Humphrys and I originally wrote “Anti-politics: Elephant in the room” on Left Flank just over a year ago, we were trying to summarise the changes in our thinking over the causes and consequences of the “crisis of representation” that the blog had been focused on since its inception. The post has been widely […]
14 Nov
The first part of Left Flank’s series exploring the rise of Podemos looked at the positive incorporation in the project of the “Indignados” (15-M) movement’s participatory democracy and radical opposition towards “politics”. Here Luke Stobart looks more critically at the “radical populism” that has shaped the approach of its dominant grouping (and now formal leadership) […]
06 Nov
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Historical Materialism’s 11th annual conference — How Capitalism Survives — begins tomorrow at SOAS, Vernon Square, in London. Four writers and contributors to Left Flank are speaking. On Friday morning at 9.45am, Elizabeth Humphrys, Tad Tietze and Luke Stobart are speaking in a session on ‘Anti-politics, social movements & the practical critique of the state’ (Room V121) — along […]
05 Nov
What Podemos’s present success reveals is the breakdown, the crisis or the collapse (choose the term you prefer) of the Spanish party system. Because in reality the Transition regime is sinking like the Titanic and Podemos is merely the iceberg that caused this. So as soon as the cock crowed on 25-M, all the captains […]
18 Apr
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