Bad experience
I am writing to warn unemployed people about a bad experience I had in working for an unscrupulous company.
In reply to a Situations Vacant ad, which I thought was genuine, I passed the first interview phase for a sales and advertising position and was told to come in to the place early the next day, to be with one of their salespeople for the entire day.
The salesperson who I was with explained that we would be out on the road all day doing door-to-door selling (not mentioned in the job ad). I was not permitted to sell, myself; only to observe, ask questions and demonstrate some motivation by assisting with the "sales pitch".
I was told that my motivation and desire to succeed would, one day, lead to a management position. I was also told to build confidence by practising the "law of averages" (each no from a would-be customer eventually leads to a yes).
We returned to the firm late in the day and I was accepted into the company due to a good word put in for me from the salesperson I assisted. I had to report in the next day (to be my last) very early. One question I failed to ask was why the company functioned with four different company names.
I discovered the next day that all the salespeople must start their day in a ritual of chanting together which is claimed to boost individual motivation (in reality, a "brainwash"). An hour or so later, I went out on the road with the same salesperson I was with the day before.
After failing to sell more than five pieces, I returned to the company late in the day and, to my shock, I discovered that my commission was only 20% of the takings. For two long and hard days, my earnings were a miserable $15. I was told to try much harder to earn more.
With strong feelings of guilt about my choice of employment, I took the whole matter to Jobwatch (Vic). The following day, I was advised by them not to return to the company.
I conclude with a plea to all unemployed people not to fall for job ads that say: "Earn up to $500 a week, no experience necessary". If you see and/or fall for such rubbish, please advise your local Jobwatch authority.
John Wickham
Melbourne
The right to be bold
Phil Shannon claims ("Write on", GLW 56) that my "attempt to counterpose the sober Bolshevik behavior in the 'July Days' of 1917 to the 'ultraleft' Melbourne student demonstration e off." Why? Because the Bolsheviks' behavior — keeping the 500,000-strong armed protest action in St Petersburg on July 3-4, 1917 peaceful — "didn't stop the government from repressing the movement."
He seems to have missed the point. By intervening to give the July 1917 protest a peaceful character the Bolsheviks were able, as Trotsky noted in his History of the Russian Revolution, "to stop the masses at the moment when the demonstration began to turn into an armed test of strength." As a result, they ensured that "The victims were counted by tens and not by tens of thousands. The working class issued from the trial, not headless and not bled to death."
The lesson from July 1917 is that capitalist governments and police are always seeking to provoke oppositional movements into premature confrontations so that they can isolate, demoralise, and repress them. A key test of a genuinely militant leadership is its ability to win a mass movement to a course of action that avoids being drawn into such fruitless confrontations.
Shannon argues that when mass struggles are at a low level it is important "to cohere a minority which can keep alive ideas of militancy and prevent a drift to complete demoralisation." This was precisely what Lenin did between the unsuccessful 1905 revolution and 1917: through the patient, persistent work of building the Bolshevik party, a "drift to complete demoralisation" within the Russian working class was prevented and the lessons of the militant mass struggles of 1905 were kept alive, to be applied successfully in 1917.
As for "a place for 'boldness, boldness, yet more boldness!' in non-insurrectionary times, too", Trotsky observed of the Bolsheviks' conduct in July 1917: "The Bolsheviks well understood that strength is accumulated in struggle and not in passive evasion of it ... But the Bolsheviks well knew, just the same, that a struggle demands a calculation of forces — that one must be prudent to win the right to be bold."
Finally, I found Shannon's claim that the "political message ... was made with more concrete results" by the March 26 student demonstration in Melbourne "than a month of Palm Sundays could manage" truly astonishing.
Does he really believe that demonstrations involving over 100,000 people (as the Palm Sunday rallies of the early '80s did) achieve less impact than a rally of a few thousand students, which ended in a street brawl between the cops and a tiny minority of protesters?
The apparent virtue he sees in the March 26 action over "a month of Palm Sundays" was that it "prevented a drift to demoralisation" among a "core of militants." However, his concern for the morale of the "militants" doesn't solve the problem of how to build the most effective movement against the government's cutbacks to tertiary education.
h Hill
Militancy and mass action
It's not entirely clear what Phil Shannon is trying to say in his reply to Doug Lorimer (Write on, May 20): does he think militancy and mass action are incompatible, in which case I disagree strongly, or does he think that there is very wide range of tactics available to progressive activists, all of them appropriate in some circumstances, but none appropriate in all, in which case I agree, regardless of his, Doug's or Graeme Merry's views on the Winter Palace, etc.
I don't know exactly where Phil stands, but some activists have always wanted to reduce our tactical options to two: writing letters and lobbying on the one hand, and fighting cops on the other. The real alternative lies, as always, somewhere in between. As Tim Anderson has good reason to know, letter-writing, lobbying politicians (even Liberals), use of the courts, and even bearing witness, as well as extra-parliamentary mobilisations, can all be useful in the fight for social justice. There's no need to reject any tactic. In fact, we need them all if we're to have any chance of winning. We also need the political skill and the respect for democratic forums to choose the tactic(s) most appropriate to the circumstances.
This applies also to extra-parliamentary mobilisations: public meetings, demonstrations, pickets, blockades, etc. Even if a street action involves a relatively small group of people, a wide range of tactical options is open. Fighting cops is always one, and we all know it's not hard to get in a fight with the cops. Their behaviour is usually aggressive and provocative, and a brawl is often their favoured option.
So the question arises, do we always have to oblige them? Doesn't the sight of cops attacking peaceful protesters effectively make a point about the nature of the state, and whose side the cops are on? Why let them off the hook by giving them any pretext to unleash their brutality? How do we help our political cause by abusing them, getting into scuffles, etc? Why not let them do it with no cover at all? And shouldn't we call some in our own ranks to order, to the extent that we are able, if they display a tendency to get suckered by the cops every time we go on the streets?
Some of the most effective extra-parliamentary protests in recent times have been the forest blockades, which rely on the tactic of non-violent civil disobedience, a defensive tactic which certainly confronts the state and has repeatedly defeated it, admittedly on just one political issue.
Real militancy involves fighting to win, and that means knowing which tactic to use, and when. That's why the activists who built the mass Moratorium movements were the real militants of the early '70s. Naturally, there were some who thought they were more militant. All that proves is that in any circumstances there will always be some who miss the point.
Peter Chiltern
Militancy and mass action
It's not entirely clear what Phil Shannon is trying to say in his reply to Doug Lorimer (Write on, May 20). Does he think militancy and mass action are incompatible, in which case I disagree strongly. Or does he think that there is very wide range of tactics available to progressive activists, all of them appropriate in some circumstances, but none appropriate in all, in which case I agree regardless of his, Doug's or Graeme Merry's views on the Winter Palace, etc.
I don't know exactly where Phil stands, but some activists have always wanted to reduce our tactical options to two: writing letters and lobbying on the one hand, and fighting cops on the other. The real situation usually calls for a more complex approach. As Tim Anderson has good reason to know, letter-writing, lobbying politicians, use of the courts, perhaps even bearing witness, as well as extra-parliamentary mobilisations, can all be useful in the fight for social justice. No tactic is wrong in all circumstances, and none is a panacea. We need the full range of tactics if we're to have any chance of winning. We also need the political skill and respect for democratic forums to choose the tactic(s) most appropriate to the circumstances.
This applies also to extra-parliamentary mobilisations: public meetings, demonstrations, pickets, blockades, etc. Even if a street action involves a relatively small group of people, a wide range of tactical options is open. Fighting cops is always one, and we all know it's not hard to get in a fight with the cops. Their behaviour is usually aggressive and provocative, and a brawl is often their favoured option.
So the question arises, do we always have to oblige them? Doesn't the sight of cops attacking peaceful protesters effectively make a point about the nature of the state, and whose side the cops are on? Why let them off the hook by giving them any pretext to unleash their brutality? How do we help our political cause by abusing them, deliberately getting into scuffles, etc? Why not let them do it with no cover at all? And shouldn't we call some in our own ranks to order, to the extent that we are able, if they display a tendency to get suckered by the cops every time we go on the streets?
Some of the most effective extra-parliamentary protests in recent times have been the forest blockades, which rely on the tactic of non-violent civil disobedience, a defensive tactic which certainly confronts the state and has repeatedly been important in defeating it, admittedly on just one political issue.
Real militancy involves fighting to win, and that means knowing which tactic to use, and when. That's why the activists who built the mass Moratorium movements were the real militants of the early '70s. Naturally, there were some who thought they were more militant. All that proves is that in any circumstance there will always be some who miss the point.
Peter Chiltern
Glebe NSW
Coastal nightmare
The environmental vandals, foreshore and real estate pirates, namely the NT government and its mates, are not only keen to destroy Kakadu National Park but they can't wait to turn Darwin's coastline into a super elitist Surfer's Paradise style nightmare.
Projects like the Cullen Bay marine project and the systematic eradication of low cost housing along the coast in favour of luxury high rise apartments will change the face of Darwin forever. Only a massive public outcry has so far prevented the construction of several ten storey buildings in Rapid Creek, where the creek flows into the sea.
Darwin this year is remembering the 50th bombing anniversary. If the struggle to preserve our natural environment should fail we will have another disaster to remember, one that will stay with us for good.
Michael Rose-Schwab
Rapid Creek NT
Biophobia
Apparently sufferers from the psychosomatic affliction malignant sexophobia do have periods of remission during which they can apply their spleen in other directions.
The acute biophobia inherent in the attack on the Federal Minister for the Environment, Ros Kelly, by her Northern Territory counterpart, Mike Reed, is symptomatic of these remission periods.
Fancy Mrs Kelly having the temerity to include the Northern Territory in the proposed National Wilderness Inventory!
Mike Reed's action withdrawing the cooperation of the Northern Territory Conservation Commission in the compilation of this inventory should be applauded by all redneck ecobusters as a definitive act of defiance against Canberra domination.
C.M. Friel
Alawa NT
Cars
Tracy Sorensen's article in GLW of 13/5/92 on the comments by David Engwicht of CART, has raised some valid points in relation to the public transport versus cars debate.
Unfortunately, most management schemes on offer, simply redirect traffic, as the article states, rather than diminish the perceived need for people to use cars.
What needs to be done is to make public transport, especially fixed rail transport, far more accessible and extensive, so that people will be tempted to use such facilities, and leave the use of their cars for recreational and incidental purposes. In so far as cars are concerned, the emphasis should be, while keeping overall environmental considerations in mind, on the manufacture of vehicles made of a strong, durable substance (eg stainless steel), and less intricately "high tech," so that the cost of maintaining and repairing them doesn't get out of the reach of working class people, as at present.
Guido Rosso
Brisbane