The policy document, at 38 pages, is pretty light on for detail, which probably assists it to achieve two contradictory aims. First, to signal to business bosses how the Coalition will assist them with wringing more profit out of the employment relationship. Second, to signal to workers that most of their main conditions will be protected – they can safely turf the federal Labor government. It does this through displacing the exploitative elements of the employment relationship onto the union-member/worker relationship, this allows the document to paint a picture where workers overall will be better off because the Coalition will safeguard their statutory rights, and allow them to smoke in peace without having to worry about a “dodgy union boss” turning up. Have a look at the number of times the words “union” and “worker/s” are mentioned in specific context (disclaimer: I’ve done this after one count – my numbers will be substantially correct but a couple of the numbers might be a bit off):

Mentions of of the word “union”:

• (In the context of) Union right of entry: 40 (there is some weird repressed shit going on here with the sheer number of times “entry” is mentioned alone – 27 by the way)
• Union bosses: 5
• Interfering in the relationship between workers and bosses: 4
• Union officials bullying workers and employers: 6
• Holding up, setting back new projects and more generally endangering the economy: 13
• Demanding exorbitant conditions: 4
• In the context of corruption and fraud: 10

Mentions of the words  ”worker/s”:

• The right to flexibility: 16
• Being protected from unions and/or conduct of union officials: 21
• Giving workers a better deal/being better off overall: 23
• Coalition government/laws protecting/looking after workers generally: 14
• Business creating opportunities for workers: 7

Overall, the document paints workers as victims,  who can sometimes be conned into misguided action by unions, but in the main need a Coalition government to look after them and protect them from fraudulent unions. On the one hand, the Coalition will do this by making sure they are protected from fraudulent union conduct, “union bosses” coming to talk to them in the workplace and bullying from union officials. On the other, the Coalition will increase parental leave and give some underpaid workers the interest on underpayments.

On a side note, there are exactly zero mentions of the taking away of fundamental civil liberties such as the right to silence through the reinstatement of the Australian Building and Construction Commission. Individual rights are apparently fundamental but only in so far as they don’t impinge on the right of Daniel Grollo to make as much profit as possible from the business he was born into.

This policy document is entirely consistent with the Coalition strategy I’ve outlined in a previous post. This document can be viewed as part of the opening gambit where the managerial wingnuts express solidarity with workers (even the preponderance of the term workers as opposed to employees is itself evidence of a shift) and their right to have well-run and transparent unions. This is all prep work for an inquiry or Royal Commission into union governance, which will then lay the groundwork for a full-frontal assault on worker rights in a second or third term Coalition government using the findings of the Productivity Commission (you know once the pesky union movement is politically and industrially hamstrung into irrelevance).

This strategy is pure genius in the circumstances. But the circumstances it is born into is one of ideological weakness. The IR nut-jobs lost the debate – the whole neoliberal idea that ‘deregulating’ (read regulating in favour of the State/capital) the labour market will lead to some sort of equilibrium where everyone is better off has been thoroughly discredited. The vast mass of Australians know that if you remove their working rights you’re simply lowering their entire quality of life, and their ability to support their families. The timing of the policy’s release itself reveals this weakness. The Coalition wanted to get this out early to try and neutralise the charge it would lower wages and conditions for most Australians, and give it enough time to shape the debate to one about the conduct of a few union officials. As such, this is a document that is born in the twilight between the hegemonic ascendancy of neoliberal thought and the dawn light of the social justice fightback.

The only response to the Coalition policy is to go on the counter attack, we don’t stay on the defensive but run into the struggle. It is only when we appreciate the weak starting point from the Coalition’s gambit to attack workers’ rights that the broader union movement can begin to piece together a coherent response.  You respond to weakness with strength and courage.

As far as this goes, it is worth noting that the only part of the document where the worker/employer v outside union dichotomy breaks down is the part that deals with bargaining and strike action. There the language becomes one of protecting employers from the “exorbitant claims” of workers and ensuring that bargaining considers matters around “productivity”. That the Coalition wouldn’t approve of strike action is so obvious that it’s significance is easily missed. In order for the Coalition to achieve two aims that are in tension with one another (that is facilitating greater profit from the employment relationship and telling workers they will be looked after) in needs to portray Australian workers as a passive component of the marketplace. Any hint of Australian workers as active agents of change and the two aims would tear the policy document asunder.

Thus, two elements of any coherent and comprehensive response to the Coalition IR policy have to be:

(1) Responding to any Royal Commission into unions not by running but demanding a full-blown inquiry into corruption into the corporate sector, politicians and other agents of power. We can see a hint of this when Ged Kearney, ACTU President, responsed to the Coalition policy on Friday when she wrote, “Mr Abbott’s desperation in clutching onto the handful of undesirables instead of acknowledging the masses of good is hypocritical and misleading. There are hundreds of corporate fraud cases…”

(2) Doing everything we can to assist workers develop into active agents of change.

A big shout out to VB’s owner and multinational corporation, SABMiller, for lecturing the rest of us on patriotism and civic duty. I have a great respect for the, oftentimes needless, suffering of previous generations without having to have this corporate entity tell me, and everyone else, how to behave on ANZAC Day. I felt quite upset at seeing an image of a wounded soldier being exploited as part of a sophisticated promotional campaign for VB.

Make no mistake, this ad is about positioning the VB brand as uniquely patriotic – creating neurological linkages between the mythology of the ‘ANZAC’, a respected public military figure in the form of Peter Cosgrove, those institutions charitably supporting veterans in the form of the RSL and Legacy, and the beer VB. This is done in the guise of the Raise a Glass Appeal, which conveniently sounds like you can’t respect war dead without drinking VB. After all, if you’re not raising a glass of VB aren’t you basically pissing on the war memorial? Seriously though, according to the promotional website for the appeal the campaign itself has raised $5 million AUD since 2009. That’s seriously small peanuts for a global entity who’s group revenue for 2012 was US$31, 388 million or if you look at it another way it’s 0.004% of annual group revenue in any given year (assuming dollar parity). Overall, a great investment for brand recognition. It’s even better if you guilt regular Australians to donate for you, while you spend the money on advertising. Cha-ching.

You might just say, isn’t that run of the mill corporate behaviour? So what if a global corporation decides on a promotional strategy that involves a bit of money going to those who need it most? Well, the primary way veterans and their families are assisted is through the State paying for the associated physical, mental and social costs of serving in armed combat. To do that requires a healthy tax-intake. And SABMiller is a notorious global tax cheat. It doesn’t pay its fair share of the profits it makes globally.

VB’s parent company avoids millions in taxes each year in taxes in India and Africa by routing profits through a network of tax-havens around the world. Sure, it’s not like governments in developing nations require tax revenue to properly fund services that do stuff like provide basic healthcare or primary school education. Check out the full ActionAid report here.

The kicker to all of this is that SABMiller, a company originally of South African origin, learned this tax avoidance strategy as a way of avoiding apartheid sanctions. Yep, you read that right – SABMiller relocated its intangible assets to the Netherlands to both avoid apartheid sanctions and expand into foreign markets.

Despite it being a few years since the release of the ActionAid report, SABMiller hasn’t changed its ways. It has its own list of excuses, such as;

• claiming the sales taxes ordinary people pay off their own bat as part of SABMiller’s own tax contribution
• we’re not breaking the law, we’re following the regulations and guidelines in the countries we operate in
• it depends on what you mean by ‘avoid’ – we’re just doing what other corporations do

SABMiller; get out of my face, get over your excuses and pay your taxes.

No, I’m not talking about broadband vs. #fraudband policy making in Australia (as much as I theoretically appreciate the concept of fast internet).

But rather the disconnect between two parallel conversations – our political/business elites talking to each other and talking over the top of the rest of us, while the rest of us aren’t listening. What we have are two discourses – distinct and foreign to each other. In Australia, we have a solidly social democratic majority. It is a majority who believes most of the benefits of economic reforms from the 1980s and onwards have flowed to corporations. It is a majority who believe in substantial government economic intervention, and who still don’t support (nearly 20 years later) the privatisation of Qantas, Commonwealth Bank and Telstra. It is a majority who support increasing taxes for big corporations. Check out Pollytics for the polling data.

In contrast though, we have a political/economic elite who share a different consensus. That common sense rests on the view that the privatisation of government assets and services provides better outcomes for everyone, that the market should be the primary mechanism for the satisfaction of human welfare and the role of the government is to intervene on the relatively narrow terrain of ‘market failures’. The Australian people believe in an egalitarian and socially controlled economy – yet they feel they have no mainstream party to reflect these views. And this really isn’t just an Australian phenomenon either.  This recent US survey highlights how most American citizens would rather respond to their ‘budget crises’ in a progressive and egalitarian manner – a policy response which has been sidelined in the political/business elite discourse.

The great 1980s neoliberal revolution remains the unloved revolution. It’s hegemonic roots have never really taken hold in the public mind. At most we can say there was a grudging public acceptance of ‘emergency’ policy measures to deal with the global economic crises of the early 1980s – but if anything it is a public acceptance that has diminished over time. What I want to examine are the structural factors driving this disconnect.

1. The tendency of the political class to recreate itself

Having just witnessed first-hand the Labor Gellibrand pre-selection process – what I found most interesting was the tendency for the political class to recreate itself. If you really want to get into federal parliament today you have to ‘pay your dues’ to the dominant groupings in one of the major parties. This means identifying with key political leaders, taking on their attitudes and supporting the ongoing maintenance of their power/influence in the relevant political party.  The message is if you fall outside this relationship/influence network don’t even bother trying.

2. The death of mass party memberships 

This tendency towards the maintenance of the elite view in mainstream politics discourages membership in political parties. I feel this is both cause and effect. It is a vicious feedback loop where the more removed elite opinion becomes the less likely anyone is inclined to join a political party. This hits social democratic parties particularly hard. The less regular people (those who aren’t personally tied to a dominant group or faction) join, the easier it is for the political class to maintain control within a party. Branch stacking is only a problem when you don’t have a mass political membership.

3. Nobody reads the paper anymore

The only people who read The Australian are the political/economic elites and a few assorted weirdos. They think this paper is influential – it is but only within this segment. No one else cares. It, therefore, becomes possible for political/business elites to think they are conducting a public conversation that influences everyone else. No one is listening. But they think they are on solid ground until they look down and see nothing.

4. The declining rate of profit in the private sector and capital’s falling hegemony

This would definitely need more than a few sentences to thresh out. However, what I would like to posit is that the State must intervene more and more on capital’s behalf to ensure it continues to expand at a healthy rate. Hence what we have are lower corporate tax rates, the increasing financialisation of the economy, globally shifting sites of production, the opening up of whole swathes of the public sector to profit-making, and creeping authoritarianism. It flips a buck in the short-term but in the long it hampers the ability of the system to successfully recreate itself and diminishes the number of people invested in maintaining existing relationships of hierarchy and control. Besides, it’s not like anyone is reading the paper anymore.

5. The rise of insecure work and the subsequent lack of #securejobs

The global rise of insecure work – whether you call it casual work “zero hours contracts” - has come about as a way for capital to minimise labour costs and maintain a healthy profit margin (see above). There is nothing natural about the so-called flexible labour market. But what it creates is a generation of workers who have not been offered any sort of social contract. Instead they have the ‘opportunity’ to not starve and stay in housing by accepting last minute shifts through a text message. There is no future in this mode of work. These is no past. There is just the present struggle to meet the everyday needs on a fluctuating income. Under such conditions, why would you even think the political/business elites even understand your situation or concerns – they spend each day celebrating the reforms that made your ever-lasting present possible.

These are just some reasons in a bit of the detail. If anyone else has any other reasons leave a comment.

The ground crumbles beneath…

and I

fear for us                                         to fly.

falling

before we learn

Each of us knows now is the time to act. But the question remains, what is to be done? We are caught somewhere between the vanguard party and the vast planes of horizontalism – between a rock and no place. We need a structure to help us fly. But it cannot be the steel of yesteryear – it has to be far more flexible and capable of infinite replication without ripping the guts out of the natural world.

What we need is the silk of Darwin’s bark spider; tough, elastic, capable of enduring the extremes of a changing climate and so light that even the most oppressed can still carry it. A spider silk thread could span the Earth and still only weigh 500 grams.

We build a new world in silk; supporting us together when the ground has crumbled. This is the revolutionary web.

I was up in Canberra for the ACTU’s National Community Summit: Creating Secure Jobs and a Better Society earlier in the week, sitting through one of the workshop sessions on the ‘Big Society’. For me, the Tory idea of a ‘Big Society’ is essentially a public policy position to permanently alter the role of government so that large-scale multinational corporations can deliver services in a way which  flows profits back to whichever global capital the shareholders live. And it’s done in a manner so as to secure the support of some not-for-profit actors to provide a fig-leaf of charity/social justice support for a major corporate smash and grab exercise. Others have written more extensively on the idea of the Big Society, but for me we need to view the very term itself from the standpoint of capital – that is a ‘Big Society to profit from’.

In other words, the ‘Big Society’ is about how to turn even the delivery of critical social services into a stream for funneling money back to those who stand at the very top of the wealth pile. Have no doubt, this is what we’re about to see play out on the Federal scene. If you want an exercise in frustration and anguish gather together a table of union officials  to talk about how to deal with it – if I hear the phrases “we just need the government to do…” or “people just need to understand…” again I think I’ll cut myself. And then it struck me, a little idea to take on the ‘Big Society’, and assist in the early construction phase of a progressive fight back.

Let’s start with the contention that when it comes to matters of wealth distribution and equality – most people are basically social democratic in their outlook – they want a fairer distribution of the profits from productive labour. That’s a big call but let’s back it up. Watch this video below:

Well that’s just America you say, everyone knows it’s stuffed. Isn’t Australia different? If only we have the comparable data on actual wealth distribution, perceived wealth distribution and actual wealth distribution. Handily that work has already been commissioned and here it is. And what it tells you is that a clear majority of people want a far more equal distribution of wealth.

In the complex flow of life sometimes we miss the simple truths – if you want to empower people then empower them in what you do. If you believe in people power then trust in people. So let’s build the people powered fightback by letting people build it for themselves. That statement is not an abrogation of responsibility – it’s a call to arms for all those who care about real social justice, who care deeply about the development of people to have agency in their lives and realise their full potential, to take responsibility for putting together the tools that let the people build the fight back for themselves.

So back to that realisation that swung by and slapped me in the face; let’s take on the ‘Big Society’/the coming austerity and all of the increased inequality that entails with a video game. Let’s not dictate the alternative – the time of the vanguard is over, the time of the educator is now. Let’s have a video game that let’s people build and take ownership over their own positive  alternative vision, and together we can campaign on the fertile territory of shared values/proposals.

A kind of prototype of what I’m talking about already exists, it’s called Budget Hero.

Go and play it for yourself (it really only takes a few minutes). Honestly, it’s not the world’s most earth shattering game. Furthermore,  I don’t agree with all of the assumptions and limitations that have been placed around the game but it gives you a rough sense of what you can do. I’d start with some better graphics, explicitly add in the idea of wealth distribution, give greater scope to play around with taxes, give players greater control over the role of government (selling off/purchasing national assets + outsourcing/insourcing services), and tie in specific measures based on real-world experiences that traverse global geography and recent history. Basically you are giving players control over creating the sort of society they want to see.

I can already imagine a follow up game where you’ve got to go out and build a movement to win over support for the outcomes players have self-identified from the first game.

We have the resources across between the email lists of Get Up, unions, environmental groups, and NGOs to get the volunteers together to start building this tomorrow if we really wanted to get this done. We’d have the financial resources across broader progressive groups to pay for key design components, and the distribution channels are already there. As the prophet Macklemore said, “change the game/don’t let the game change you”.

Is Beppe Grillo the messiah,  or just a very naughty boy? His 5 Star Movement (5SM) swept the Italian elections earlier in the week taking 25% of the vote. This result is a stunning rebuke to the once mighty Italian left – 5SM is not really born of the Left – rather it is the intellectual property of one man – Grillo. These articles from writers far more knowledgeable on the political situation in Italy are useful contextual reading (Dr Tad here and Giovanni Tiso here). Rather, what I want to delve into is 5SM’s support base, how it is organised and what the implications are for the industrial-political situation in Australia.

I’d recommend having a look at this Demos paper on the 5SM, which includes an interesting survey of 5SM’s Facebook supporters, their economic positions,  their pressing issues and social attitudes. The first thing to note is the 5SM supporter respondents are far more likely to have completed high school than the statistically average Italian – 54 per cent of respondents had a high school diploma as opposed to 34.8% of the rest of the Italian population. Yet while they may be educationally privileged, the average 5SM supporter is also more likely to be unemployed (19 per cent of respondents identified as being unemployed as opposed to the official unemployment rate of 7.9%). Further, the average 5SM supporter is likely to identify themselves as left of centre. In other words, they are the under-utilised and educated components of the Italian working class - they are the section of the population that any successful Left movement would need to draw from for its leadership and activist base. Moreover, their top two issues are the economic situation (62% nominating this as an issue) and unemployment (61%).

And these educated working class leftists are looking towards an Italian millionaire in Grillo who believes trade unions should be “wiped out” (to be replaced with worker representatives on company boards). He can get away with this because there is a generalised anger directed towards the institutional leadership of the Italian state and key civil society actors (much like in Australia). This rage hits bankers, the Catholic Church, the Italian legal system, politicians, the press and trade unions. Interestingly, only 11% of 5SM supporters tended to trust trade unions (versus 32% of the Italian population). This is the rage of a group of workers who don’t feel the mainstream union movement effectively addresses their economic issues.

Instead, into the vacuum steps a comedian who channels and organises this anger into a vote for the 5SM. At about this time I could insert some vague comments about the organising power of the internet and make a reference back to the Gutenberg Press  (not to be confused with Steve Guttenberg). However, what stands out here is the limits 5SM places on online democratic participation. The key policy document has been co-written by Grillo and are not subject to any sort of democratic oversight or revision, and participation seems to be basically restricted to commenting on blog posts. If anyone knows what sort of democratic rights 5SM can exercise I’d actually really like to know. But while Grillo appears to exercise control over the medium, his message is one of direct democracy. His basic message appears to be, “listen, the political establishment, all those guys claiming to represent us, let us down. So fuck them – I think you should have a direct say and a direct vote in the matters of state.” There is a salient lesson, one which can be applied for progressive or reactionary ends, about power and the changing means of communication. Real power, in the age of the internet, comes not from seeking to directly control the outcome of any one debate but in controlling the field and the form in which the debate itself takes place. 5SM is essentially saying, join with us unquestioningly and have your own direct say later on. To me this is problematic and unsustainable.

While you can get a pretty good pasta on Lygon St, Australia is not Italy. However, there are important parallels to be drawn here. There are similar levels of latent anger and mistrust directed towards key institutions of civil society and the state. Now is the time for the Left (political parties, unions, writers, and activists) to respond with clarity and courage. Don’t worry about the reaction of banks, and big business. No one really trusts them anyway. If the Left doesn’t respond, some other group or person will fill the void and they may well not be benign. The response though, must take a specific form – individual leaders within left social movements have to make a courageous decision – to devolve decision-making processes down to their respective memberships. You have a choice, give up your influence or your control. You can’t hold both for any length of time.*

*On that note I’ll be returning back to the direct unionism project pretty soon.

This song is great. That Thrift Shop was recently voted number 1 on Triple J’s Hottest 100 shows how it has tapped into a collective mood. It taps into a space that a lot of people in Australia share. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis have created a pretty accurate snapshot of a generation coming into a world with no security, an unsettled future and a lot of debt. With only $20 in your pocket and an uncertain tomorrow what else are you going to do but find some kick arse clothes from the op shop and party? Revel tonight because the present is all we have. When a new day is due to bring pain, it might as well be self-inflicted.

Thrift Shop is no one hit wonder. The full album, The Heist, deserves a listen – it’s a heady mix of good time beats, self-aware humour, a seething anger at injustice and a determination to create. Same Love is probably the most obvious song but it comes from a deeply personal space with Macklemore prepared to be honest and backing his values. The Heist as a title seems to refer to the under-30s’ complex relationship with corporate and elite America. On one level it’s as victims, as Sitting Bull said of elite America, “These people have made many rules that the rich may break but the poor may not. They take their tithes from the poor and weak to support the rich and those who rule”. On another though, it’s as celebratory agents of change who will take back the future. In this vein, it is Jimmy Iovine as a song that reveals most both about Macklemore’s personal project and the overall message of the album. So there is the experience of being pushed into debt just to be able to have an opportunity to make an uncertain living:

We’ll give you a hundred thousand dollars

After your album comes out we’ll need back that money that you borrowed

So it’s really like a loan, a loan?

But then there’s resistance, which comes from an explicit rejection of the status quo:

I replied I appreciate the offer, thought that this is what I wanted

Rather be a starting artist than succeed at getting fucked

This is no mere passive selection of one choice among two. It is instead a declaration of a determination to take control of the future:

They ain’t given it, I’m takin’ it. 

And that’s what Macklemore has done, being the first independent artist to hit #1 on the US charts since Lisa Loeb. And what we’re seeing across the developed world generally is a refusal of capital to invest in the future. The present system is not providing enough opportunities, and letting too many lives go to waste. No longer can we trust big corporate institutions or government to provide a steady flow of decent jobs as a foundation for people to have a quality lives. Investment is flowing from research, development and production towards speculation in land, commodities and arcane financial products. The basis on which people can make a living is being weakened as the prices for housing, energy and food staples are being artificially inflated.

In this vein, today Fairfax is reporting new research released by Graduate Careers Australia, which shows that students completing double degrees are only marginally (4.4 per cent) more likely to find a job that those students completing single degrees. The reason? According to Bruce Guthrie, Graduate Careers Australia research manager, it’s because the “employment market for new graduates is historically low”.  They ain’t given it, so either we stay idle or we take back the future.

That’s why the next election isn’t about Gillard v Abbott. It’s an opportunity to build the power of people acting together to take back our means of making a living, to take back our future. Never forget that. Of course I think that Gillard is a much better choice as PM than Abbott. The point though, is to go beyond either making a passive choice or uncritically defending either option in total. Whoever wins, the broad Left in Australia will still need to tackle this economic trend which is rendering more and more of our fellow citizens as either redundant, temporary or part of the ‘natural rate of unemployment’. If we don’t our values will become irrelevant.

To do this we must push a common program: doing everything we can for people to have real control over their own lives, their communities and their future. Taking power so that others may be empowered. And we have the agents of change for we are busily creating the most educated and underutilised generation in history. Things are going to get interesting. And that’s why Thrift Shop and the results of Triple J’s Hottest 100 says more than anything I’ve seen in the media about #ausvotes. This is fuckin’ awesome.

I lived with my single mother who looked after me on a mixture of the single parent’s pension, whatever casual job was at hand and maintenance payments from my father. She sustained herself with cigarettes and cheap wine. We moved a lot around Melbourne’s north-east. A suburb and a street was never a community, just a place where I’d be staying and an audience for potential embarrassment. When the show was over, it was time to move on.

My father did a lot of contract work overseas. He likes to think my ‘formative experiences’ were those short weeks every year I’d visit him somewhere in Asia. The rest of my family was spread through Australia. In every direction I looked, in every relationship I valued, there was distance.

Unsurprisingly, I didn’t want to be the family charity-case or the poor kid at school who inexplicably sometimes got to go overseas. I wanted to be someone important with status, power and money (I could never had been a contender – sport wasn’t a natural talent). One day in early Year 8, I was called into the Vice-Principal’s office. My mother was there crying. We had been evicted. We would have to go into crisis accommodation. Only in retrospect can I say this was a major decision point in my early life. At the time I put more energy into handling the crisis by making things appear normal at school. But I took lessons from that moment. I remember the momentary terror I felt as having a house to live in was snatched away from me and how others came into support me. It was then how much I realised that we all really depend on each other – no success is ever ‘individual’. Any fool can succeed at something. But I wanted to live in a world where no one had to worry about whether they had a secure place to sleep at night.

Home is the place where you stand and fight with your community. Australia is my community. And we are a country formed directly through the crises of the modern era. Poverty, war, violence, forced evictions, racism and all manner of loss pushed people to Australia. We came here and poured all that trauma into the original inhabitants of the land. Some people foolishly write off Australia as a country with no history. But that’s mere prejudice. This is the land of all history; fragments from every global story have washed up on these shores.

There is, however, nowhere left to run. This leaves us with a choice. Hide or fight. Often we’ve attempted to hide from the world. It’s the easy response, it’s the childish response. We can cower down in our little corner, build up a pillow fort, pay the biggest kid to look after us, and then push off any other kid who wants to share our hiding spot. It kind of works for now, but do we seriously think that if anything major happens to our house (the world we inhabit) that hiding under the bed will do us any good? The other choice is to stand up and fight against the causes that pushed us and our ancestors here in the first place.

2013 is a big year for the Left in Australia. But’s it not because of the federal election itself, or its outcome. Rather, it’s the opportunity that the election presents for the broad Left to connect and work together. Yes, you just read that and it’s at this point that you probably think I’m some kind of crazy man. Just stop to consider this a moment before you bag out <insert Labor/Greens/revolutionary socialists/anarchists/miscellaneous> as obviously the primary strategy to win a just world. Firstly, what I’m not proposing is a magically Utopian land where all leftist differences magically disappear as we gather around the camp fire. What I’m proposing is a limited form of mutually beneficial cooperation in order to shift the country in the form of a broad left network.

What I’m proposing is that a network of representatives from key left groups and think-tanks meet on a regular basis with the shared aims of (a) building people power, and (b) shifting public opinion in a progressive direction. For the reformists, this broadens the scope of what parliamentary change is achievable through <insert your Party>. For the revolutionaries, it brings a post-Capitalist future that’s not barbarism closer. It’s the obvious differences between each group that will give rise to a creative tension and better decision making as long as there is a firm commitment to the shared aims. The idea would be to cooperatively act around a public policy problem in a manner that:

- Directly or indirectly leads to solving the problem

- Draws regular people into acting collectively to solve the problem

- Develops the leadership capacity and experience of regular people (the 99%, the proletarian whatever you want to call it)

The win is celebrated by network representatives as a positive outcome achieved by people acting collectively. But there needs to be strong room for dissent on the finality or limitations of the win. It’s only when we treat each other on the broad left in accordance with our own values of respect, solidarity, cooperation, free speech and honesty that we can even begin to hope to see a world running on these values.

So here’s my new list for 2013, once again in the form of a retrospective:

1. Some BS is going to go ‘viral’.

Remember ‘that’ video of 2013, and how it went ‘viral’? Good, because I don’t. I think maybe there was some sort of kitsch dance move involving a Korean kitten boy band called Me-Ow.

2. Bob Katter embraces Gay Marriage and wins 2013 election

Katter put his sudden about face on gay rights down to a reconciliation with his brother, “What can I say? We hugged and that’s when I got gay germs. I had no choice but to change my policies.”

Respected ABC psephologist, Anthony Green, however, put the election win down to an exclamation mark. “You can really track the upswing in the polls from when the Australia Party changed its name to Australia Party!. This brought a strong youth vote out for Katter to supplement his rural base.”

3. US embraces gun reform

Unfortunately no one told the House of Representatives so nothing changed.

4. Climate change found to be a massive conspiracy of Marxist scientists

Who would have thought that the rich old men of the climate ‘sceptics’ community would be right about anything? In a cruel twist for them though, the news was only broken after the revolution which decimated this protected group.

Dr. Number 1 Karl ‘Marx’ Kruszelnicki explains, “Back in 2007 the prospects for the revolution looked pretty grim. So we took the data from an upswing in solar activity, and blamed it on ‘global warming’. A problem that could only be solved through the dissolution of the capitalist system as we know it. Ingenious. If we had have known global finance would have given us such a free kick towards the revolution we would have directed our energies elsewhere. But that’s life for you.”

5.

Fill this space with your own prediction, and then retrospectively give me credit for coming up with it.

6. Paul Howes writes something boorish and irrelevant in the Daily Telegraph

Probably on bike lanes.

7. Prince Charles nude photo scandal

In one single drug and alcohol-fuelled weekend in Monaco, Prince Charles undoes two years of carefully managed Royal propaganda.

Notorious paparazzo, Dan Studman, “I was camped out in the building across the road, when Prince Charles and Camilla return to their hotel room. Charles starts dancing and taking off his clothes. I think, I can’t be sure, but he seemed to be doing that Me-Ow dance. You know that one from the internet? That one night has ruined my life. I keep getting flashbacks.”

8. News Corporation publishes a two-piece puff piece on Abbott written by the wife of his campaign director and on same day attacks PM for parking fines that have been paid

Nah, obviously that one would be just too ridiculous and partisan for Murdoch.

9. Disaster Chef

This is the break out hit of 2013. A group of aspiring chefs have to investigate airline disasters. “Looking back, I think it’s what we did with the Mystery Box challenge that really got the viewers.” Matt Preston.

10. US Congress outlaws ‘top 10′ lists in blogs

“There are times when we can overcome our partisan divide and unite. When we do it’s over the big issues that matter for America – the things that pose a threat to our security and our way of life.” Republican Speaker John Boehner explains the measure which takes out top 10 lists on blogs along with fake twitter accounts.

I read this post from @Dr_Tad this morning, and thought the closing quote from Gramsci particularly insightful:

The active politician is a creator, an initiator; but he neither creates from nothing nor does he move in the turbid void of his own desires and dreams. He bases himself on effective reality, but what is this effective reality? Is it something static and immobile, or is it not rather a relation of forces in continuous motion and shift of equilibrium? If one applies one’s will to the creation of a new equilibrium among the forces which really exist and are operative basing oneself on the particular force which one believes to be progressive and strengthening it to help it to victory—he still moves on the terrain of effective reality, but does so in order to dominate and transcend it (or to contribute to this). What ‘ought to be’ is therefore concrete; indeed it is the only realistic and historicist interpretation of reality, it alone is history in the making and philosophy in the making, it alone is politics. (Gramsci, Selections From The Prison Notebooks, p. 172)

To all of you reading this, I want you to go out in 2013 and be the creators. Don’t leave it up to the federal election. Don’t get overwhelmed (or perhaps that should be underwhelmed) by whatever narrative party leaders and so-called opinion makers attempt to foist onto the rest of us.

We have the capacity, and the duty, to go out and create something better whatever the (temporary) reality we’ll have to deal with in the coming year. For if we don’t stand up and struggle for what ‘ought to be’ who else will?