For last year my online commentary focus has been The Conversation. I am relaunching this blog. Today I have a review of former Labor leader Mark Latham’s recent book Not Dead Yet at The Conversation. With seven respondents to Latham’s opening essay it is difficult to cover. Some additional points. The popular Labor party reform […]
Labour history and cultural studies
A theme in my current research is the question of what capitalists do (some early thoughts are in my recent Labour History conference paper, although it gives almost no attention to the vast economic sociology tradition of which I knew little at the time of writing). Via Terry Flew some interesting comments on cultural studies […]
Communism and history
Thinking of of writing a book on the modest topic of the past and future of socialist politics. Much Australian left commentary sees the history of socialism as irrelevant, in particular the Communist movement is either an embarrassment or else the product of malign individuals.
Primaries or collective self-governance
Primaries are back in the news in Australia following media reports of their use by the British conservatives to endorse a candidate. Primaries seem to attract sympathy from the left judging by Larvatus Pradeo. I doubt however that the current uninspiring quality of Labor MPs would be much improved by primaries, although some of the […]
Indian Left at a loss
Earlier this year I had a chapter in The Politics and Culture of Globalisation; India and Australia. The chapter addressed Indian Communism. Since then the Indian Left has suffered a severe setback in the national elections. The alliance of the two Communist parties (the CPI(Marxist) and the CPI), the All India Forward Bloc and the […]
Leszek Kolakowski and the fate of Marxism
Leszek Kolakowski the Polish philosopher died a few days ago. He began a zealous young Marxist in postwar Poland, was then a leading intellectual reform Communist in the 1950s and early 1960s who sought to revive an allegedly pure Leninist Communism shed of Stalinist corruptions and then finally renounced Marxism altogether. His major work on […]
1.5 cheers for New Labour
British Labour is certainly in dire electoral trouble and there will be many on the left pleased exercise a posthumous revenge on Tony Blair. Yet the Blair-brown administration despite its flaw was a labour government even if of a strongly right-wing stamp. It was to a degree inevitable that there would be a reaction […]
Marxism and governance
‘Late Marxism and Parliamentary Government: Indian Communism Today’ (apologies to Frederic Jameson for the title) has now been published in The Politics and Culture of Globalisation: India and Australia (shortly to be available from Berghan). It considers whether Marxism can offer any guidance for contemporary governments. Is there an alternative both to populist ‘anti-capitalism’ and […]
Hayek, Olson and the financial crisis
Been reading Ernest Mandel’s Marxist Economic Theory. There’s a lot of work and the right intentions but this type of Marxism was a degenerated research paradigm by the time he completed this work. Mandel again and again leaps from the fact of social interconnection to assume the necessary desirability of a uniform social purpose. I […]
Social democracy in decline?
Gave my lecture on democratic socialism today in Modern Political Ideologies to an audience of one student (more will listen to the recording). An interesting Guardian report on the upcoming elections to be held this weekend and the likelihood that although the Socialists will emerge as the largest party the hard right populist Freedom Party […]