ALP and left
History does repeat itself. In the 20s and 30s, the Left in Australia branded the ALP as social fascists. In the 90s, the DSP (and most likely others on the Left) are abusing the ALP as a "Left cover".
In 1933, Hitler seized power in Germany, largely as a result of the ruination and despair of the middle classes, but also because the Communist Party adopted a sectarian attitude to the German Social Democracy.
Fascism is an ever present danger in Australia, as in all other countries. Only unity can prevent it, unity of all sections of the working class. Whether some like it or not, the main bulk of workers see the ALP as "their party", or "for the workers". Many are still hoodwinked by Keating, Beazley, Willis et al. But a significant section of ALP members and supporters are expressing disquiet, particularly on privatisation, some leaving the ALP in disgust.
I do not suggest we urge people to leave the Labor Party. If it is too weakened, it will open the road for the Tory parties. From an incorrect premise to an incorrect solution. Rather, we should be making contact with those elements that are genuinely seeking a road to a socialist future. To me, the only way is to attend ALP branches, not necessarily as a member, but a visitor. Only then can we suss out the people to endeavour to link up with.
At the same time, conscious socialists should be working towards a real workers party, a party free from reformism and careerism. But to do so, we will need members, and they cannot be plucked from the air. This is where the vital need arises to guide and win over ALP people. I wonder how many on the Left have been to the local Labor Party branch. The bitterness and sectarian attitudes are still very much in evidence. We neglect the Labor Party at our peril.
Harry Lachter
Faringa Qld
[Edited for length.]
Haiti
Very impressive news this morning. A meeting of the same old Generals has taken place, a few citizens have been beaten to death by the same old death squads, under the watchful eyes of the same old US "marines". Democracy is again on the march in Haiti with the usual flotilla of battleships and US hype and "black hawks" and speeches about democracy and human rights.
At the end of the day the only citizens with human rights will still be those favoured by the US administration i.e. the landlords, the oligarchies, the generals, the protected murderers who will never be bought to justice and the flock of US trade interests.
All the other countries in the area and in southern America have gone through the same experience at least once, but more often, with variations around elections times, in the case of cheap, important labour sources like Mexico, El Salvador, Panama, Nicaragua, Brazil, Paraguay, Chile etc etc (Happy birthday to US generals Pinochet and Cedras!)
But, since 1959, not Cuba. Cuba supports Haiti's 70% elected President Aristide. Cuba's 90% elected Fidel Castro disposed of US influence in 1959 and doesn't want it back. Nine US presidents have demanded his removal and squawk about democracy and human rights. If only they were elected by the American people and not US trade interests; if only they could prove by their care and concern for the American working class, that their system is as perfect as Cuba's, then almost certainly Fidel would listen to those ideas. Fidel is a real general, not a US appointee.
In the meantime Haitian people will live in Frapp-terror and in misery. The "democratic' world is sick indeed with never a dissenting voice in the UN Security Council.
John Clancy
Sutherland NSW
'Wrong' news
Human rights activist and head of the Indonesian Legal Aid Institute, Dr Buyung Nasution, recently visited Australia and stated that the Australian government had "overstepped the mark" and gone "way too far" in its placations and sequacious panderings to the Suharto military regime.
Given the contentious international issues surrounding Australia's evermore sweetheart relationship with this regime and the nasty "power-maggots" who run it, one would think that such a statement from such a person would, at least, have warranted a passing mention in the so-called "mainstream" media reports!
However, up here in Darwin, where the atrocities and repression of Indonesia's occupation of East Timor continue just a little more in the distance across the azure water from us than Katherine is "down the track", there was next to complete media silence.
Apart from Dr Nasution being quoted on a couple of "off-peak" ABC radio news bulletins, neither the ABC TV nor 8DN TV or the corporate radio services mentioned one word of it. Not did the local Murdoch "fish and chips wrapper" (the NT News) carry any reference to it — not even amongst the flotsam and jetsam of the middle pages where they sometimes concede a cursory "spoonful" of print to such unfavourable annoyances.
Yet, if some cushy new business deal or memorandum of understanding is struck with Indonesia or if people like Ali Alatas so much as fart in our general direction, it seems to be "every hour on the hour" news up here. It's not too hard to see what is "correct" news and what is "wrong" news.
Thank goodness for Green Left Weekly!
Peter McVean
Palmerston NT
Lyotard
Alex Segal (Write on, Sept 14) asks for the source of my claim (Write on, GLW #155) that postmodernist philosopher Lyotard had a philosophical entanglement with Holocaust Denial. Christopher Norris in his article "Old Themes for New Times", published in the Socialist Register 1993 (eds Ralph Miliband and Leo Panitch), analysed the sceptical extremes to which Lyotard and postmodernism can go by an ultra-relativism which privileges subjective interpretations of the world at the expense of objective political reality.
Norris discussed Lyotard's position (as given in the 1988 Manchester University Press edition of Lyotard's 1983 book The Referend) concerning Holocaust Denial and in particular Lyons University's Robert Faurisson as an example of this. On a personal level, Lyotard does not politically endorse the pseudo-historical, anti-semitic apologetics of the neo-Nazi Faurisson but Lyotard's postmodernist philosophy does allow for the legitimacy of a gulf between factual truth-claims (eg "Auschwitz was used to exterminate Jews") and political-ethical judgements which deny this no matter how loopy or vile these views might be.
Lyotard is no foaming-at-the-mouth Nazi but the philosophical system he spawned, by its elevation of value-systems far above the real world, has the potential for a theoretical flirtation with some pretty disagreeable political world views, despite the personal integrity of postmodernists like Lyotard.
Phil Shannon
Curtin ACT
Population
Of course, David Kault's Malthusian argument (21.7.94) is right. If population expansion continues unchecked, within a few decades life on earth will become even more nasty, brutish and short. The same argument can be applied to the expansion of consumption due to capitalist growth; it too, if unchecked, will destroy the earth.
Not surprisingly, populationists in the "advanced" countries ignore this latter proposition, which would demand some serious actions on their part. Up till now, they have rested secure in the knowledge that they have had their population explosion and can blame the Third World for the "coming crisis".
This security has now been shattered by UN figures presented at the Cairo Conference. They quote US Bureau of Census data which show that in the past decade US population has increased by 24 million to reach 260 million; by 2050 it will reach 383 million — the biggest increase in global terms.
High fertility rates also hold for other Anglo-Saxon countries (including Australia) but to a lesser degree. The US fertility rate now exceeds that of China and some east Asian countries (New Scientist, 17.9.94). And while the US 24 million added in the last decade will consume more resources than the entire African continent, the extra 120 millions by 2050 will consume as much as 2-4 billion extra third world inhabitants.
No-one disputes that over-use of resources is the biggest single problem facing humanity. It cannot be resolved by passing the buck nor by forcing repressive contraceptive measures on third-world women. Our responsibility is not to tell others what to do, but to stop the massive waste of resources and the obscenely unequal distribution of the means of subsistence, both of which are endemic to our profligate system. And, as Marina Carman points but in her perceptive article (GLW #160), given the means and the education, women everywhere can be trusted to make the choices which will save us from over-population.
Gerry Harant
Blackburn Vic
Bread and Roses
Good to see the New Zealand film Bread and Roses reviewed in your paper. Certainly both Sonja Davies, and the film have been an inspiration to many women in New Zealand and abroad.
Sadly, Sonja's only daughter, Penny, died last week after a long struggle with motor neurone disease. Her only son, Mark, was killed in a tunnelling accident in the 1970s. Life has certainly not been easy for Sonja.
Danna Glendining
Convenor NZ Green Party