Credit where credit is due

I went to a couple of sessions of the DSP-Socialist Alliance conference a couple of weeks ago, including a session in which Simon Butler made a sustained, eloquent argument on why socialists should not support an implicitly chauvinist push for what is sometimes called a population policy, and why socialists should in general defend the right of migration to Australia for the poor of the world.

The world is in deep strife

And the Labor left is at its biggest turning point ever

Bob Gould

Starting at the top with national issues

The current economic crisis is rapidly shaping up to be the greatest economic explosion in the history of the capitalist system. All serious commentators including most governments agree on that.

Gran Torino: a review

A film produced and directed by Clint Eastwood, distributed by Warner Bros. In cinemas now

Gran Torino is produced and directed by Clint Eastwood and he is also the star of the film, but this may be the last Clint Eastwood film.

Frost/Nixon: a review

Jenny Haines

A Ron Howard Film for Universal Studios starring Frank Langella as Richard Nixon and Michael Sheen as David Frost. Now showing, all cinemas

In this film Ron Howard brings to the screen a Broadway play about a series of interviews David Frost did with Richard Nixon after his resignation from the US presidency.

Blacktown: a review

Shane Weaver, Bantam Press, 2003

Reviewed by Jenny Haines

When trendy liberals and avowed socialists talk about the working class, it is often without having any personal experience of working class life. Shane Weaver’s book about growing up in Blacktown in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s is a personal and painful recounting of his working class childhood, in a family that lived with the terror of a drunken stepfather and random domestic violence. The cover of the book recounts just some of the terror the family lived with: “the screen door bangs shut. The silence that follows is like the collective intake of breath between the split second a guillotine falls and when it thuds home…unable to get a clear shot, he rips the bed away from the wall. I scream as the first lick of the electric cord stings my back…”

Support Pacific workers’ access to Australia

What is in fact a very old dispute has currently been simmering again in the labour movement, about migration in general, and in particular about unskilled migrant access to Australia. This always-present controversy has now sharpened around a new scheme requested by the governments of small Pacific states, and introduced by the Australian Labor Government for organised and controlled access of seasonal workers from the Pacific nations to Australia to fill specific labour shortages in unskilled jobs in agriculture.

Mick’s metaphysics

A critique of Mick Armstrong’s pamphlet on socialist organisation

Bob Gould

In this pamphlet, Mick attempts to raise the Socialist Alternative propaganda group orientation to the level of high Marxist theory. He presents this orientation as an organic development of Marxism and Leninism and as a kind of culmination of the Marxist and Leninist tradition which is presented as a “seamless web”, so to speak, starting with Marx and Engels, and culminating ideologically in Socialist Alternative, and its menu of special theories.

Eighty years of defying authority

Issy Wyner, 1916-2008

By Tony Stephens

WHEN a teacher at Fort Street High School recommended that students read the economist John Maynard Keynes, the schoolboy Isadore Wyner suggested Karl Marx. Young Issy was reprimanded. This did not stop him from engaging with the world for another eight decades.

The DSP leadership’s ugly venture into religious bigotry

Bob Gould

Anyone who is uneasy with my classification of the DSP political leadership as unprincipled political adventurers should sit back and review the events since the DSP organised the extended exercise in religious bigotry and backwardness known as the NoToPope Coalition, and attempted to pass it off as Marxism.

The Secret River: a review

Jenny Haines

The Secret River, by Kate Grenvill, Text Publishing, Melbourne 2005

Recently Kevin Rudd on behalf of the Australian Parliament and the people said sorry to the aboriginal people of Australia for the past appalling mistreatment, abuse and massacres. But after reading The Secret River I wonder if saying sorry once is enough or if we should keep saying it again every year for the next 220 years.

The new Direct Action and the Labor Party question

Bob Gould

It’s no secret that in the internal battle inside the DSP I have been, broadly speaking, more sympathetic to the minority that has now been expelled from the DSP and started publishing Direct Action. This sympathy was based on my estimate that, taken as a whole, they are a more serious group of people, particularly the younger ones, and more interested in Marxist theory, and to some extent the history of the labour movement.

Electricity privatisation: the elephant in the room

The winter of our discontent

Bob Gould

This winter is the coldest in NSW for a long time. The practical effect of this is that Saturday morning stalls and protests against electricity privatisation, aren’t affected when it’s sunny, but evening meetings preparing for such activities are affected rather dramatically.

A second win against electricity privatisation in NSW

Bob Gould

The withdrawal of the electricity privatisation legislation in NSW until the parliamentary sitting in September is a second victory for the anti-privatisation forces in a protracted war on the question.

Yes to the agreement, but teachers are divided

Results of the Australian Education Union, Victorian branch, industrial campaign

Peter Curtis

Mary Bluett the president of the Australian Education Union, Victoria, defended a deeply divisive pay deal with gains won for those at the top and bottom of the scale by saying “you are a long time at the top”. It is not unreasonable to suggest that some of the leadership have been too long at the top. Some time at the bottom of the class may bring them back to earth.

No amount of spin can disguise bad policy

Parramatta meeting against electricity privatisation

Phil Sandford

The people of NSW have been betrayed over the proposed sell-off of the electricity industry, Unions NSW secretary John Robertson told a 60-strong meeting in Parramatta on 3 June.