Showing papers in "Australian Left Review in 1970"

The Development of Consciousness

Abstract: A G RO W IN G EM PH A SIS in the left is on the priority to be given to the developm ent of consciousness as the key factor in the revolutionary process, and, within this, the building of a body of ideas challenging those prevailing in our society. “Revolu­ tionary culture” , “counter-hegem ony” , “counter-consensus” are various terms used. A cceptance of the key place of consciousness in the developm ent of revolution directs attention to the processes by which consciousness develops or may be developed in large numbers of people. I t is, clearly, a most intricate subject. Tt involves physiology, psychology, philosophy. It involves the reaction of hum an beings on each other individually and as “classes” , politically and culturally; the role of social institutions and structures. I t involves the different ways in which the process might take place in different groups of people.

Schools and Education

Abstract: ANTONIO GRAMSCI first gave the notion of hegemony its correct place in marxist theories of the exercise of political control According to Gramsci, societal power did not rest solely on coercion but on manipulation and con­ sensual agreement between the rulers and the ruled The exact proportion in which coercion and consensus co­ existed depended on which society was examined at which stage of history He thought that in advanced capitalist societies and transitional societies, like the Italy he exam­ ined in the early thirties, the emphasis was more and more on obtaining consensus through manipulation, rather than ruling through coercion So at least one of his central concerns in his research was to establish and describe just how the rulers of a society manipulated the populace to obtain their agreement in the way society was run Obviously the indoctrination of the young was very important Through the type of schooling which existed the rulers could inculcate the values and beliefs necessary for the maintenance of their type of social system Thus Gramsci was always very interested in the “Questione scolastica” and wrote a number of significant notes on schools and their organisation and their role in the instil­ lation of hegemonic values in his prison notes Only since 1958 has really significant work on Gramsci’s pedagogical theory been done in Italy and practically nothing has been done outside his name What follows is a translation of one of his two most important essays on the schooling system Alastair Davidson

Problems of Communist History

Abstract: W E A R E TO D A Y at the end of that historical epoch in the development of socialism which began with the collapse of the Second International in 1914 and the victory of the Bolsheviks in October 1917. This is therefore a suitable time to survey the history of the Com m unist Parties which were the characteristic and dom inant forms of the revolutionary movem ent in this era. The task is difficult because Communist Party historiography has special com plications, which will be considered below in connection with Jam es Klugm ann’s regrettable failure to overcome them 1, but also for wider reasons.

An Early Alliance of the Left

Abstract: TH E STATE LABOR PARTY (1940-1944) is seldom remembered these days. It gets only a passing reference in James Jupp1, while Alistair Davidson in his recent history of the Communist Party of Australia seems to regard it as little more than a convenient legal party for under-cover Communists*. A t a time when the CPA is actively seeking closer cooperation and alliance with various Left elements it is worth examining this earlier alliance more carefully. The following pages represent a brief and somewhat personal account of this story. I write it this way because my own political biography is a part of the story and because to tell it as a participant is perhaps better than to write it as an academic exercise.

Vietnam: Beyond Pity

Abstract: VIETNAM IS A KNIFE that was not twisted into me until the end of my second year at University, 1965. Before then, I had been afforded, and allowed myself to enjoy, the luxury of a casual approach to what was happening in that country. The pictures of the Buddhist monks who immolated themselves just before Diem’s downfall in 1963 had aroused a momentary, uncomprehending horror in me, but nothing more . . . it was only when the monks again burned themselves to death in 1966, this time in opposition to Ky’s regime, that they burned their way through to me as well. What had happened to change my response?

Italy in Crisis

Abstract: R EC EN TLY T H E R E HAS A RISEN in Italy a movement involving workers in the metal, chemical, cement and building industries, and elsewhere, which has drawn in more than 2,500,000 workers, to speak of the industrial sector alone. In the course of the last month alone, Italian workers engaged in 250 million hours of strike action. All these groupings are acting in unity for a national contract and for the right to negotiate at the level of the enterprise on the main aspects of workers’ conditions. The main demands in the national contract are a wage increase of around 20 per cent; the 40-hour working week in five days; and trade union rights.

Lenin: An Impression

Abstract: THE DEATH OF LENIN makes the world poorer by the loss of one of the really great men produced by the war. It seems probable that our age will go down to history as that of Lenin and Einstein — the two men who have succeeded in .agreat work of synthesis in an, analytic age, one in thought, the other in action. Lenin appeared to the outraged bourgeoisie of the world as a destroyer, but it was not the work of destruction that made him pre-eminent. Others could have destroyed, but I doubt whether any other living man could have built so well on the new foundations. His mind was orderly and creative: he was a philosophic system-maker in the sphere of practice. In revolutions, three types of men come to the fore. There are those who love revolution because they have an anarchic and turbulent tempera­ ment. There are those who are embittered by personal grievances. And there are those who have a definite conception of a society different from that which exists, who, if the revolution succeeds, set to work to create a stable world in accordance with their conception. Lenin belonged to this third type — the rarest, but by far the most beneficent of the three.

Vietnam Third Force

Abstract: IT IS SU RELY a sign of the times, and one that gives ground for the greatest satisfaction, that a m ajor Australian: political figure should be occupying himself with serious and sym pathetic study of the revolutionary history of an Asian society. One has only to reckon the im probability of such a thing happening 20 or 30 years ago to m easure something of the shift in the centre of gravity of A ustralian political life which has taken, place over those years and is continuing at an accelerated rate.

Entrism and Revolution

Abstract: FOLLOW ING THE LENGTHY PERIOD during which their past perspectives and tradition have been examined, the CPA has emerged with a detailed analysis of Australian society as it sees it. It is not my intention to analyse these documents, rather I wish to comment on the issues raised by Eric Aarons in his statement “The Congress and After” (Australian Left Review No. 25). The question concerns the CPA attitude to the ALP. Eric Aarons goes to considerable effort to establish that the Trotskyist concept of entrism “remains unexplained, while its failure to produce significant results over a period of over thirty years is not analysed.” As one who has upheld the validity in the past of “entrism sui generis* , it seems necessary that I should spell out in clear terms what is entailed by the above term.

Industrial Policy in the 30s

Abstract: THE DECADE 1930-40 was a very significant and creative period for the Communist Party of Australia. During these years our influence among the working people grew rapidly, and the political consolidation of the Party, of its political line, tactics and organisa­ tion took place. The Communist Party had been founded, October 30, 1920, in the aftermath of the socialist revolution in Russia and the creation of the Communist International. But for the next ten years the Party was unable to consolidate its position, overcome internal differences and provide answers to the many political prob­ lems before it.

The Congress and After

Abstract: THE UNUSUALLY WIDE and sustained interest in its 22nd Congress shows that the Communist Party of Australia still forms a reference Doint for the different parts of the Australian Left, however they assess its past, its present and its future prospects. Many claim that the Congress reveals the Party to be in a state of confusion. The planners of and participants in it would be the last to deny its limitations and the existence of unresolved and knotty problems of theory and organisation, let alone the great difficulties still in the way of advance and renewal. They would accept, indeed affirm, the description of the Congress as being a transitional one. Nevertheless, the main characteristic of the Congress was precisely that it did, within the above limits, decisively resolve on a dis­ tinctive course which has been endorsed with no little enthusiasm, and will be resolutely pushed ahead by a large proportion of the rank-and-file and by committees with a significantly lower average age.

Books: 1. The State in Capitalist Society

Abstract: Laski's sole he ir am ong the senior staff is the b rillian t Belgian-born co­ editor of the annual Socialist Register, R alph M iliband, who is best known as the au th o r of Parliamentary Social­ ism (1961). T h is work, an historical critique of the B ritish Labour Party in terms of \"parliam entary cretinism ”, dem onstrated th a t Labour entirely ex­ cluded all forms of action except vot­ ing, debating and negotiating, includ­ ing even the elem entary m ilitancy of industrial action. Not surprisingly, it was described by B ernard Crick, M ili­ band's form er colleague at the I.SE and a m em ber of th e Labour Party, as \"a piece of p ro tracted teleology, ra th e r like A rthu r Schlesinger, Jr's notorious history of the New Deal.\" (Most of the reviews of this book in the scholarly journals were com plete­ ly illiterate, bu t an excellent critique by the M arxist h istorian Eric Hobsbawm appeared in Universities and l.e ft Review). More recently, M iliband's support for the rebels du rin g the LSF. studen t revolt of 1968-69 did no t im ­ prove his standing w ith the m ajority of his professional colleagues who when u n d e r pressure are every b it as reactionary as their counterparts in the US and Australia.