80 comments

1. David O'NeileApril 30, 2024 at 9:35 am

   It is time to:

   Nationalise Education

   Nationalise Health

   and #abolishHECS

2. Terry MillsApril 30, 2024 at 11:07 am

   Remember The Kent State shootings ? Where the killing of four and wounding of nine unarmed college students by the Ohio National Guard on the Kent State University campus. The shootings took place on May 4, 1970, during a rally opposing the expanding involvement of the Vietnam War into Cambodia by United States military forces as well as protesting the National Guard presence on campus.

   “Twenty-eight National Guard soldiers fired about 67 rounds over 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis. Students Allison Krause, 19, Jeffrey Glenn Miller, 20, and Sandra Lee Scheuer, 20, died on the scene, while William Knox Schroeder, 19, was pronounced dead at Robinson Memorial Hospital in nearby Ravenna shortly afterward.”

   Let’s hope that it doesn’t get to this again !

3. ArndApril 30, 2024 at 11:11 am

   David O’Neile:

   It is time to:

   Nationalise Education

   Have you actually read Lucy’s article?

   The problem is that state authority – in the form of police and National Guard -is unduly clamping down on student dissent. And the solution is: subject education to direct governance by state authority.

   Please explain!

4. Steve DavisApril 30, 2024 at 1:34 pm

   Lucy, I think the time has come when you have to nail your colours to the mast. Or at the very least, distinguish between liberalism and neo-liberalism.
   I’ve just done some checking, and Stanford has a comprehensive account of neo-liberalism, with a few helpful comparisons with liberalism as well.

   From Stanford — “Neoliberals wield the rule of law against those who favor more extensive states,…” As do liberals.

   “Neoliberals obviously embrace strong rights to private property, rights that apply not only to goods and services for one’s own consumption but to capital as well.” As do liberals.

   “In defending capitalism, neoliberals focus on defeating two foes: socialism and Keynesianism,…” As do liberals.

   It’s beginning to look as though any differences between libs and neo-libs are merely cosmetic. Differences at the margins.
   One difference that I could find in the Stanford account of the two was here :
   “Neoliberals also stress that freedom allows people with different ends to cooperate and create peace.” The record shows otherwise. Perhaps that’s true at the social level, but at the international level the current era of unprecedented neoliberal influence in the US has been one of an unwillingness to cooperate, and a readiness to engage in conflict so irresponsible as to inch us towards nuclear war. I hasten to add, this love of conflict is in line with their liberal origins.

   But this was the real stinger that came as something of a shock — “Neoliberals support modest taxation, the redistribution of wealth, the provision of public goods, and the implementation of social insurance, … For instance, Hayek (Caldwell 2004: 291), Friedman (Butler 1985: 206), and Buchanan (1975: 35–52) favor government provision of public goods because markets will under-produce public goods, and so government should act even if it will sometimes fail.”
   Now I don’t know how correct that is, but if true, neo-liberals sit to the left of liberals and have regard for social justice.

   This supports the argument I’ve made here consistently for some time — the problem is liberalism.

   So Lucy, with the problems you’ve outlined in the article, is neo-liberalism the problem, or is it liberalism?

5. Phil PryorApril 30, 2024 at 2:39 pm

   Neo-liberalism is regarded as a USA “hybrid”, which aimed to cover certan politically flexible positions which were hard to define with old type structural certainty. Apparently, Charles Peters, editor of the Washington Monthly, commented on ideas from the 1970’s which “needed” clarity, e.g., rejecting many New Deal and Great Society concepts which were not seen to fit older USA liberalism, itself, no doubt, always floating away from older European positions. It certainly rejected Keynesianisms, perhaps as a reaction to Bretton Woods days. The Welfare State was questioned, Democratic Party warmth towards Unions was criticised, some state in the economy was accepted, but foreign policy discussion seemed insular, stressing conventional preparedness, even nuclear arms reduction. Recommended is “Liberalism and its discontents,” P. Neal. Generally, for centuries, individuals have struggled, often in groups, to free themselves, from Nobility, clergy, royalty, military, bureaucracy, any oppressive coercive control, so “government” is a target, with liberty seen as a vital good status. However, tolerance and generosity seem, to me, concepts treated badly or indifferently. And, the dominating saturation of capitalism make liberalism ineffective in addressing inequality, climate, environment, militarism, etc.

6. leefeApril 30, 2024 at 3:17 pm

   Arnd:

   And the state is doing that due to pressure from the religious extremists. Universal secular education is essential, rather than indoctrination into mystical fantasies.

   Steve:

   Just because you conflate the terms “liberal” and “neoliberal”, doesn’t mean everyone else has to. It seems to me a useful distinction to distinguish those who promote the primacy of the individual in regard to personal and social matters from those who put corporations and profits ahead of human needs.

7. KatieApril 30, 2024 at 4:25 pm

   Yet more and more proof – as if we really needed any more – that right-wing extremists are about as dumb as a box of bricks! The fact is that most of them get their skewed, false and devious information from the lying, Z-rated pages owned and operated by that notorious LNP Propaganda Minister, Rupert Murdoch. The horrific neoliberal sociopaths in the LNP/Murdoch/IPA Alliance have, without any doubt, plundered, infected and corrupted EVERY form of media in this country INCLUDING our taxpayer-owned ABC into which the LNP parachuted that appalling Murdoch-owned harridan, Ita Buttrose, into the ABC as Chairwoman in order to corrupt it with long-term right-wing extremists like the openly-biased David Speers (who just happens to be a signed-up MEMBER of the LNP) and that appalling LNP puppet, Fauziah Ibrahim, who called anyone left-wing “lobotomised shit heads!” and ALL of them probably placed on water-tight, long-term contracts to keep them there for years! WOW!

   There are many (good) reasons WHY they used to call the ALP “the academic party” back in the early 1970’s (in the halcyon days of Gough Whitlam) and THAT is because the Labor Party was so often supported by the huge majority of teachers, academics and doctors and nurses (who reviled the LNP’s appalling, and continuing, habit of constantly and relentlessly defunding Medicare and the constant attempts to privatise it – which ranks high on the terrifying Agenda of the IPA) … see the horrific “profit at any price” Agenda of the IPA hereunder and understand that the horrific neoliberal IPA Agenda to sell-off and privatise EVERYTHING Australians own is the SAME Agenda as the LNP! Make no mistake about it, all the profits the neoliberal capitalists in the LNP/Murdoch/IPA Alliance make from selling off everything WE own will NEVER be returned to us but, rather, handed over to THEMSELVES or their sycophantic billionaires in the Top 1% …..

   IPA agenda to re-shape Australia

   Any Australian who has an intellectual quotient in double digits KNOWS (or SHOULD know by now) that the ONLY self-serving elitists (or would-be elitists) who unfairly benefit from the ruthlessly inhumane American-styled version of neoliberal capitalism are the avaricious, non-taxpaying parasites in the Top 1% and, of course, the corrupt, prosperity-obsessed, right-wing politicians who support it! Neoliberal capitalism has always – and WILL ALWAYS – openly favoured wealthy multi-millionaires, reckless industries who make a grotesque profit no matter how many employees they underpay or dismiss, how much pollution they pour into our rivers or how badly they vandalise our environment or how determined they are to keep women way way below that glass ceiling!

   As the interesting and informative article in link below (provided by The Guardian) reveals, “the term ‘Neoliberalism’ is used as a catchall for anything that smacks of deregulation, liberalisation, privatisation or fiscal austerity. Today it is routinely reviled as a shorthand for the ideas and practices that have produced growing economic insecurity and inequality, led to the loss of our political values and ideals, and even precipitated our current populist backlash”. As such, any form of rampant capitalistic neoliberalism that inhumanely puts profits before the best interests of ordinary working- and middle-class citizens, is cancerous, undemocratic and destructive to EVERYTHING we value! It not only stifles productivity, constantly works to denigrate Unions and Union membership which eventually inhibits the fair wages, overtime and OH&S working conditions of vulnerable employees; constantly denigrates and unfairly attacks and under-values contributions made by the rest of us, it is simply BAD ECONOMICS!

   https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/14/the-fatal-flaw-of-neoliberalism-its-bad-economics

8. Steve DavisApril 30, 2024 at 4:53 pm

   leefe, I’m not conflating the terms, I’m pointing out the similarities between the two, as described by “authorities.”

   I’ve asked Lucy to explain her view of the difference between the two, and so I ask the same of you. You’ve indicated that there is a distinction, but a little too concisely to help me. Thanks.

9. leefeApril 30, 2024 at 5:06 pm

   Steve:

   Not up to writing an essay on this at the moment. Neoliberal refers to a particular type of economical ideology – the type that gives us the so-called “trickle-down effect”; it’s about minimal government regulation, minimal taxation especially for corporations, minimal welfare/social security. What it effectively does is lead into global corporate feudalism. That outlook needs to be distinguished from a liberal – ie free – attitude towards personal and many social matters, including (but not limiited to) sexuality, gender, identity, etc. I’ve explained this before.

10. Steve DavisApril 30, 2024 at 5:55 pm

    No need for an essay leefe, you’ve done well, thanks.

    I like your interpretation of liberal, but it is not related to liberalism.
    You used the word liberal as an adjective, and it’s important to keep that in mind always. Because liberals on the other hand, care little for your personal freedom other than to deceitfully use it as a vote magnet.

    We made the mistake in Australia of trying to differentiate between small “l” liberals and Liberals. Small “l” libs are for the most part just good honest folk who joined the wrong party. As they realise when push comes to shove and they get purged from the party.

    Liberalism is an economic and political ideology that developed to justify the inequities that are inherent to capitalism. The liberty that is so loved by liberals is the liberty of individuals to have unlimited access to resources.

11. Lucy HamiltonApril 30, 2024 at 7:13 pm

    Well said, Leefe.
    Steve. You continue to decide on your own preferred definitions of complex terms. Socialism is in “National Socialism” but nobody here thinks that’s material outside historical developments.

    Neoliberalism was, from its earliest moments at the Mont Pelerin Society, closer to fascism. It was expressed to be in service of the elites and funded by fossil fuel from the outset. It was about freedom for the rich and subjugation of everyone else to profit. The Chicago School was radicalised into this service of monopolies, duopolies and oligopolies in its interaction with the MPS.

12. Steve DavisApril 30, 2024 at 8:13 pm

    Lucy, thanks for your response.

    I must clarify one point again — I do not make these definitions up; they are provided by those who would be generally accepted as authorities. Stanford, Britannica etc.

    I tend to agree with your explanation of neo-liberalism as being close to fascism, although when I first looked into this years ago I concluded that liberalism would, because of several factors but mainly its focus on the rule of law, transform eventually into authoritarianism. A slight difference on the face of it, but significant. Hey, I was wrong Lucy — I was wrong! 🙂

    But you say that neo-liberalism was “from its earliest moments… closer to fascism.”
    Surely that cannot be the case.
    Neo-liberalism as the name suggests grew out of liberalism; it did not appear from nowhere.
    We see that when prominent neo-libs such as Hayek and Friedman are also referred to as libs.
    All the features of neo-liberalisnm that leefe outlined, and that you endorsed, are found also in liberalism. The seeds of the fascism we detect in neo-liberalism are to be found in liberalism.

    There are no doubt differences between the two on some details, or differing ideas as to achieving the same outcomes. I noted some differences according to Stanford in an earlier comment, and the claim there that neo-libs are to the left of the libs (that’s my wording) has troubled me.

    If that claim is true, we must conclude that neo-libs are not the problem — it’s the libs! Is that the case?

    Or is it the case that liberalism no longer exists because the entire movement has transformed into neo-liberalism?

13. paul walterApril 30, 2024 at 8:46 pm

    Terry Mills, wherever you go these days, seems thuggery and reaction is the go. Everywhere from Gaza to the usual cranks in Klan-Land

14. ArndApril 30, 2024 at 9:02 pm

    leefe:

    And the state is doing that due to pressure from the religious extremists.

    But not just any religious extremist, but only seriously cashed-up religious extremists.

    Universal secular education is essential …

    Really now? I would much rather build on Ivan Illich’s ideas about Deschooling Society, rather than insist on imposing a universal one-size-fits-all educational model, which might be very suitable for a few, tolerable for many, and seriously problematic for a growing number of people with divergent personality traits and learning styles.

    … rather than indoctrination into mystical fantasies.

    I’m with you on the indoctrination part – but (reading between the lines here) you seem rather certain that there cannot possibly be any metaphysical dimension to the human condition, and that reflection and discourse on that subject should not be permissible.

    That doesn’t exactly strike me as a “mottled shades of grey” stance to take. Also, it seems somewhat prescriptive for a self-professed “liberal”?

15. ArndApril 30, 2024 at 9:13 pm

    Lucy:

    Socialism is in “National Socialism” but nobody here thinks that’s material outside historical developments.

    I certainly had to realise quite some time ago that the concepts of National Socialism are once again building momentum. I find it seriously troubling that well-informed and highly articulate writers like yourself seem oblivious to this development.

    Amongst others, Pankaj Mishra tried to call attention to what’s going on four years ago in The Guardian. His warnings seem to have fallen on deaf ears.

16. Steve DavisApril 30, 2024 at 10:01 pm

    Arnd, from the Guardian article you linked to — “Looking ahead to our own era, Gandhi predicted that even “the states that are today nominally democratic” are likely to “become frankly totalitarian” since a regime in which “the weakest go to the wall” and a “few capitalist owners” thrive “cannot be sustained except by violence, veiled if not open”

    I was going to comment that Gandhi the rascal beat me to it, then I realised that the way he worded it meant that it was obvious to any thinking person.

17. ArndApril 30, 2024 at 10:36 pm

    Steve Davis:

    Liberalism is an economic and political ideology that developed to justify the inequities that are inherent to capitalism.

    I don’t think that’s entirely fair or correct. I believe that Neo-liberalism developed and gained momentum in response to the despotic oppression of Bolshevism and Maoism, and that once the post-WWII Keynesian compact that defined and made possible the “economic miracle” in the West ran out of puff and up against its natural limits – as it was bound to do – neo-liberalism became unstoppable.

    As I said before, a huge part of the problem is that the progressive side – various Labor parties and Social-Democrats – have never been able to identify a credible alternatives to the notion that the pursuit of monetary profit is the only legitimate economic motive force. All they managed, from time to time, is to insist that state institutions provide some of the infrastructure that make the private pursuit of pecuniary profit more efficient. In other words, the progressive side of politics is just as captured by the ideations of market capitalism as their more reactionary counterparts, the only difference being that their version of neo-liberalism is slightly more sophisticated … – and more insidious.

    In a nutshell, the whole dispute between progressives and reactionaries is about whether Big Government or Big Business is better able to administrate and manage the public weal.

    “Neither”, is my anarchist reply. But in our polarised polity, that answer doesn’t get the numbers it’d need to make any impact.

    Onwards to perdition!

18. ArndApril 30, 2024 at 11:09 pm

    Steve Davis:

    … that it was obvious to any thinking person.

    That’s what I thought, when all those decades ago, in the early 90s, I first tweaked to how we might go about resolving this incongruence between formal political liberty and equality on the one hand, and ever starker concentrations of economic wealth and commercial power and influence coupled with ever wider poverty on the other hand.

    I was certain that some erudite humanities academic would catch on to the basic home truths, and lay it all out with irresistible scholarly precision.

    Didn’t happen. What we did get was Francis Fukuyama’s excruciatingly naive “End of History”.

    Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century finally came out in the early 10s, two decades later than I expected, and only about one third of the book that was needed: Piketty restricted himself to outlining how capitalism might be saved from itself, and failed completely to investigate any of the political, legal and ethical implications.

    There are a few post-hoc rationalisations I can offer as to this dramatic failure of our intelligentsia to actually attend to these matters with some intelligence, but the enduring failure of academia and our public intellectuals and opinion leaders to grasp the actual problems still baffles me. More with every passing day.

    If you feel like wending your way through a protracted exchange I had on The Conversation over seven years ago, here’s the link to my first comment:

    https://theconversation.com/berlin-who-will-stand-up-for-liberalism-and-tolerance-now-70651#comment_1164864

    I can’t help but credit myself with a certain degree of prescience! Not that that will win me any prizes, unfortunately.

    In fact, what I should have done, instead of wasting my time on The Conversation, is invest heavily in arms manufacturers shares. I’d be a lot richer now.

    Damn it all!

19. Steve DavisMay 1, 2024 at 8:23 am

    “I was certain that some erudite humanities academic would catch on to the basic home truths, and lay it all out with irresistible scholarly precision… but the enduring failure of academia and our public intellectuals and opinion leaders to grasp the actual problems still baffles me. More with every passing day.”
    Arnd, I’m fairly sure it was Upton Sinclair who explained that particular puzzle — “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

    Then there’s this — “You cannot wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.” Navajo proverb.

    Or this —
    “Mourn not the dead that in the cool earth lie, but rather mourn the apathetic throng, the coward, and the meek who see the world’s great anguish and its wrong, and dare not speak.” Ralph Chaplin, US labor activist.

20. leefeMay 1, 2024 at 8:32 am

    Arnd:

    Woooheee, where do I start?

    I didn’t say “one size fits all”, I said universal and secular. Meaning everyone should have access to resources sufficient to allow them to reach an appropriate level of learning and that religions should not be involved in that process. Neurodiversity and other factors mean that that needs to be tailored to individuals wherever possible. It doesn’t mean cramming everyone into Dickensian factory schools and forcing them to chant their times tables in unison.

    but (reading between the lines here) you seem rather certain that there cannot possibly be any metaphysical dimension to the human condition, and that reflection and discourse on that subject should not be permissible.

    That’s not so much reading between the lines as shoving an entire essay between every letter of what I wrote.
    I said, and I mean very precisely, no religious indoctrination. Teach comparative religion – it is, after all, a large and important facet of our history – but don’t teach “this is the way”. Once people have enough basic information and understanding, they are more than capable of exploring the possibilities of metaphysical dimensions to anything, but that’s a long way from cramming “one and only way to worship one and only creator* type ideas into relatively empty minds. And that goes regardless of which particular colour of faith you adhere to.

    That doesn’t exactly strike me as a “mottled shades of grey” stance to take. Also, it seems somewhat prescriptive for a self-professed “liberal”?

    It wouldn’t given how you’ve interpreted it.
    People can’t make rational, independant, informed decisions when they’re shackled by religious indoctrination. You, after all, are the one who professes a complete ethical rejection of coercion. Indoctrination of children is coercive, religious or otherwise. You can teach fact and basic ethics without including your personal flavour of belief. I don’t care what you believe, I care how you act, including what you say; I care about how that affects other people and other living things. What you believe doesn’t affect anyone; speaking does, doing does so even more. The belief is only relevant as a motivation (not justification, not excuse) for the words and acts.

21. leefeMay 1, 2024 at 8:42 am

    *In a nutshell, the whole dispute between progressives and reactionaries is about whether Big Government or Big Business is better able to administrate and manage the public weal.

    “Neither”, is my anarchist reply.*

    Given the global human population, what?
    Homo supposedlysapienns is a social species. Communities are going to form and, to keep them reasonably stable, there needs to be some set of rules to prevent, or at least limit, conflict. Because conflict is inevitable when there are limited resources; hell, any time you have two or more people together you will eventually get conflict because people are different.

22. Phil PryorMay 1, 2024 at 4:24 pm

    There was some almost incestuous conversation here, rather enclosed and searching for application, while Bonza has gone, neoliberalism is declared noxious and no relief for us exists in areas including transport, tolls, electricity, etc. John Quiggin’s comments, available in the Guardian, are sensible and useful, not abstruse, prolix, circular or vague. Should governments here “renationalize?”

23. Denis HayMay 1, 2024 at 4:54 pm

    Neoliberalism is a cancer on society and our environment: https://socialjusticeaustralia.com/neoliberalism-in-australia.html. We all have a responsitility to stamp this cancer out and replace it with a form of social democracy: https://socialjusticeaustralia.com/neoliberal-social-justice.html

24. ArndMay 1, 2024 at 6:27 pm

    leefe:

    Communities are going to form and, to keep them reasonably stable, there needs to be some set of rules to prevent, or at least limit, conflict.

    Two points:

    As I have explained on this site previously (and you did respond): anarchism (especially in its original definitions) is very precisely NOT about the absence of rules, but about the absence of rulers. Already Aristotle concerned himself with the question whether, ideally, people should subject themselves to the governance of rulers and their arbitrary decisions, or conduct their affairs according to agreed-upon rules. He found in favour of the latter, and established the first solid defence of what we now refer to as The Rule of Law.

    The absence of rules has been discussed for more than a hundred years under the heading of anomie.

    For someone who doesn’t much like established rules and definitions, about marriage, sex and gender, for example, and decried them as unconscionable patriarchal imposition, you are strangely defensive about rules and the (supposed) stability the guarantee.

    Which sort of brings me back to my recurrent complaint – also voiced on Lucy’s previous thread about the Paradox of Liberalism – about bourgeois liberalism in its more advanced stages: it increasingly becomes about state authority imposing a nihilistic absence of definition – for to advance definitions necessarily limits and conscribes individual liberty.

    Thirdly, there is the question whether the creation of rules and processes of government really era best left to BIG government and/or BIG business – or whether we may not be better off with more devoluted powers and greater awareness of the principle of subsidiarity.

    This also in response to your earlier reply that “I didn’t say “one size fits all”, I said universal and secular.” As far as I can see, “universal” does necessarily imply a dimension of “one size fits all” – and the larger and more removed from everyday life the deciding authority, the more simplistic and one-dimensional their “universal” rules should be expected. Diversity only comes through devolution.

    I said, and I mean very precisely, no religious indoctrination.

    So what? Secular indoctrination is fine?

    Look here: I know that as Christian, I subscribe to a belief system that includes hair-raising improbabilities, such as some guy walking on water, turning water into wine, and strolling about alive and well three days after having been subjected to a torturous execution. Alas, my whole ethics framework does not make sense without these assumptions – and as far as I am concerned, I should be allowed to make statements to that effect, including to “defenceless children”.

    In actual fact, I never really have done that: my now 22-year old daughter would be very surprised to read my assertions about my Christian convictions on this thread. A little less so for my anarcho-communist views. Still, any mention of political philosophy elicits exasperated eye rolls. If I ever, inadvertently, made any attempts at indoctrination, they certainly have not come to fruition. And that fine: based on personal experience, I hold that everybody everybody must beat their own path to the truth. No shortcuts.

    In other words: I have recognised the necessity to create a lot of room for self-determination. But this insight necessarily leads to an anarchist perspective on the human condition. To the very extent to which you would limit self-determination (auto-nomy), to that very extent you need to advicate for submission to “other-determination”(hetero-nomy), and the limitations to liberty that come with that. It simply is one of those black-and-white dialectic dualities.

25. Frank Sterle Jr.May 2, 2024 at 7:56 am

    Palestinians have long been collectively perceived thus treated as not being of equal [human] value to Israelis. This might help explain the relative poverty, with Palestinian children picking through the mountains of Israeli waste basically dumped on territory annexed or on the way to being annexed.

    Ergo, their great suffering and deaths are somehow less worthy of our actionable concern.

    Could it be that Israel and Westerners in general, including our news-media, have been getting too accustomed to so many Palestinian deaths over many decades of violent struggle with Israel?

    And while U.S. President Joe Biden had — finally! — called for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, it appears to have been for political reasons — for re-election purposes. A sizable chunk of traditionally Democrat voters, adamantly against and angry about the unrelenting bombing and mass slaughter by Israel, were/are credibly threatening to abandon Biden at the ballot box.

    The Biden administration and too many Democratic senators and congressional representatives have wanted it both ways: to unconditionally heavily arm the Israeli state against Gaza AND to keep the anti-war voters actively onside come election time.

    It’s doubtful that Arabic/Palestinian/Muslim voters will collectively compromise, sell their souls, by giving Biden a pass on the consequential pro-Israel/-IDF stance he took/takes towards the mass slaughter of Palestinian non-combatants, especially women and children. And who could honestly blame them?

    U.S. Republicans, meanwhile, went into their good-Christian mode by withholding their political support for helping literally starving Palestinian children.

    And, on this topic, the mainstream news-media have lost much of their humanity and independence. Today’s legacy news-media know quite well what readership butters most, if not all, of their bread and accordingly go in that self-compromised editorial direction.

    The most journalistically compromised news-media I’ve read is Canada’s National Post newspaper. It epitomizes an extreme example of an echo chamber promoting unconditional support for the state of Israel, including its very-long-practiced cruelty towards the Palestinian people. And I mean unconditional support.

    More progressive outlets like Canada’s other national newspaper, The Globe and Mail — progressive in regards to essentially following “woke” ideology — can be more deceitful and/or apologist in their pro-Israel coverage and especially op/ed writing since the 10/7 Hamas attack on Israel.

    I feel that genuine journalists with integrity would tender their resignations and publicly proclaim they can no longer help propagate their employer’s corrupt media product, be it from the Right or Left.

26. Frank Sterle Jr.May 2, 2024 at 8:15 am

    Institutional ‘Christians’ generally fail to fully grasp that, though no pushover, Jesus fundamentally was about compassion and charity. His teachings and practices epitomize so much of the primary component of socialism — do not hoard morbidly gratuitous wealth in the midst of poverty. He clearly would not tolerate the accumulation of tens of billions of dollars by individual people — especially while so many others go hungry and homeless.

    What would Christ have said about ‘Christians’ who, for example, seemingly unconditionally support a superfluously rich politician who has done nothing remotely resembling Christ-like conduct?

    I’m talking about Jesus through his teachings and practices — not pragmatism, politics or conservative/liberal goals. I mean the Savior who hardly would roll his eyes and sigh: ‘Oh well, I’m against everything the man stands for; but what can you do when you even more dislike their political competition?’

    Institutional Christianity seems to insist upon creating their Creator’s nature in their own fallible and often angry, vengeful image; for example, proclaiming at publicized protests that ‘God hates’ such-and-such group of people.

    Often being the most vocal, they make very bad examples of Christ’s fundamental message, especially to the young and impressionable. This is why I, a believer in Christ’s unmistakable miracles, openly critique those in public life who claim to be Christian yet behave nothing like Christ nor his basic teachings.

    P.S. What’s bitterly ironic is that some of the best humanitarians I’ve met or heard about were/are atheists or agnostics who’d make better examples of many, if not most, of Christ’s teachings than too many institutional ‘Christians’ (i.e. those apparently most resistant to Christ’s fundamental teachings of non-violence, compassion and non-wealth).

    Conversely, some of the worst human(e) beings I’ve met or heard about are the most devout believers/preachers of fundamental Biblical theology.

27. wamMay 2, 2024 at 8:47 am

    A good thing about not continuing HECS/HELP is the number of ‘universities’ that will close. If apprentices, including nurses, primary teachers were employed and began a 4 day week, 4 year contract, at 15. (The 5th day being spent in a senior school environment, studying Eng, Maths and Science) qualification would be gained 3/4 years earlier than now?
    ps
    Good one Frank, Humanity is real with or without the bible.
    Our useful society is men ruling and if a superman is available then use him.

28. New England CockyMay 2, 2024 at 9:53 am

    Another perceptive analysis, thank you Lucy.

    I support PP ….. privatisation has failed the people and enriched the wealthy for no good reason. Time to return former public services to government management and control. Remember the mess that the Campbell Newman NLP misgovernment made of Queensland???? The QPS is still recovering so very slowly.

29. New England CockyMay 2, 2024 at 9:56 am

    Oops!! Senior’s moment ….. HECS debts should ALL be forgiven and wiped off. If Biden can do it in America then the puppet state Australia should have the same financial benefits for the younger generation, rather than expect them to accept ”taxation slavery” to prop up the wealthy who frequently pay little/no personal taxation.

30. Phil PryorMay 2, 2024 at 10:48 am

    The Cocky returns and hints at the scene and need for evidence, so, look at the post-Thatcher disgraceful privatisation of Thames Water, a horrible money sucking insider leeching with no maintenance, control, decency and endless sewage into the rivers and streams. It has to be refinanced, with taxpayer money of course, while maggots ate up the dividends, salaries, perks. WE the Australian people need to control electricity, water, infrastructure, essentials, our rights to fair sharing. Privatisation is plotted and planned “legalised” theft, by the cunning parasites of neoliberalism. It might be a shitfight to get this into thick skulls, for some resent everything except resentment, and will attack an ALP government in particular. A FAIR GO demands people’s direct controls over essentials to our lives and future. But, is this nation fit and ready to see ahead?

31. LiamMay 2, 2024 at 1:26 pm

    Classical Liberalism wanted to free the nouveau rich from the arbitrary dictates of a king, while granting a social space separate from that of peerage.

    Neoliberslism tried to synthesize social liberalism, with classical liberalism in an oxymoron term ‘economic freedom’.

    Inequality, they argued, could be absolved by equal opportunity, whereupon it would become a meritocracy, those essential and working hard at the top, while the mediocre fill out the rest.

    The power of corporations and capital, they said, would be curtailed by free choice. Don’t like the conditions? Move employer. Don’t like what is on the shelf? Buy elsewhere! The might of any collective effort paling in comparison to the omniscient power of the Freed Individual.

    While a grand theory, the facts of the matter do not work.

    Equality of opportunity does not, in fact, lead to much more equality of outcomes. Consider the Australian Open. 128 players start in the first round, only one wins the cup and prize money. If you could have every player begin with exactly the same ability, there would still only be one winner. Market competition to the extent the rewards only exist on the margins, is much the same, only, every participant needs food, clothing, shelter somehow.

    The Classical Liberal part of neoliberalism sees that whenever the state comes into conflict with the rich, the latter wins over the state. This directly errodes protections and regulations in labour or finance, but indirectly weakens funding for public services, health, education, housing, broadcasting, welfare. Each time there are cuts, the easy target are the services the majority depends on, while those exclusively of benefit to the wealthy are left alone.

    Whenever there is surplus to go around, the wealthy always ensure their interests are well looked after, through subsidies, tax cuts, and grants toward their favoured causes. An army of lobbyists makes known the priority of the rich, while media oligopolies filter the views of the public reaching politicians’ ears and eyes.

    On the social front, things are not much better. Each choice the free individual makes comes at a mental cost. Economic competition drives working longer hours, under increasingly intense workloads. The neglect of puclic services leaves less space for any alternative. Even chartity is not immune, with the organization heads recently allocating themselves excessive salaries on the backs of a largely volunteer workforce. A whole society reduced to ‘accumulate wealth at any cost’.

    In conclusion, it is not that neoliberalism has an interest in the failure of education, rather it has no interest in its success.

32. ClakkaMay 2, 2024 at 3:49 pm

    Conned into the great “death-cult race”

    Indeed, “Everyone wants to be a millionaire.”

    Do we ever hear, for the sake of ethics and equity, “I’d rather be poor.”?

33. LiamMay 2, 2024 at 4:08 pm

    What of the students protesting the material and moral support by their institution, of an appaling military campaign against Gaza and the West Bank?
    They lack the resources to buy a lobbyist who could reach their member of congress, unlike the arms industry who profit from the status quo. Even their university, who’s raison d’etre they represent, is beholden to the interests of money (the political views or business interest of donors) over that of its own constituents.

    It’s well past time to take money, not only out of politics, but out of the core of society. Some institutions, norms and spaces have no place being “market comodities”.

34. Steve DavisMay 2, 2024 at 4:21 pm

    “It’s well past time to take money, not only out of politics, but out of the core of society.”

    Heartily agree Liam.

    The only way to do that is to change the fundamentals of the financial system.
    I’ve argued that for months here, with little support, due I think, to the point made by Arnd that many of us cannot imagine a world without capitalism.

35. Centrelink customerMay 2, 2024 at 4:44 pm

    For ACOSS CEO
    Dear Cassandra Goldie,

    I urge you to publicly acknowledge 2 illegal debt schemes administered by Services Australia.

    Scheme #1. Fake Review scheme. Instead of a formal review decision, Services Australia sent me an objection decision by an anonymous “delegate or authorised officer”. This is illegal. I provided your office with plenty of documents from different public officials supporting this scheme.

    Scheme #2. Family Assistance Office automatically issue debts for the whole Rent Assistance, if a parent was ineligible for FTB. This is illegal. Instead of a debt for around 15% of Rent assistance (dependent on FTB), FAO request to return the rest 85% of Rent Assistance as well.

    ACOSS refused to answer simple questions regarding legality of the schemes or debt notices I received.
    Cassandra Goldie, please, comment this information.

36. CanguroMay 2, 2024 at 4:45 pm

    Perhaps Liam and Steve Davis, and Arnd if he so chooses, might like to proffer an alternative for humanity en masse if money is taken out of the equation: how does one go about being fairly recompensed for one’s labour, how does one manage the necessary process of acquisition of goods & services and such necessities as housing, essential services, food, clothing, education and more? How are governments meant to manage such fundamentals as provision of access to transport per road, rail, air etc., or health services, infrastructural maintenance or development etc.etc.?

    I’m sure many critical minds have pondered these questions, both presently and in the past. If viable alternatives exist to the current miasma of capitalism with all its failings, what are they and why aren’t they being implemented?

    All very well to play the fairy godmother with her magic wand, and yes, we’re well down the path after the master & serf era, or monarchs with absolute power playing favourites with their aristocratic sycophants while the rest of us scrabble in the mud for an existence, or the failed endeavours of classical communism, but what’s next? What’s the solution to this global fiasco that’s staring us all in the face but is yet to be implemented?

    Poor pun indeed, but for my money, the exchange of such whether in hard currency or fiat seems to be a reasonable attempt at a working solution for the dilemma of humans seeking to be rewarded for labour or exchange of goods & services.

37. Steve DavisMay 2, 2024 at 5:03 pm

    Canguro, you might recall that I did not suggest doing away with money, I suggested changes to the fundamentals of the financial system.

    The system is the problem — how we regard and manipulate money, not the money itself.

    One problem with the system has been explained by the economist Prof. Michael Hudson.
    According to Hudson, previous civilisations had protections in place for debtors and responsibilities in place for creditors. Even to the extent of having at regular intervals a ritual wiping of all debts. Known as the Jubilee Year iirc.

    These ancient civilisations had learned the hard way that the accumulation of debt eventually leads to a weakened society.
    But economic history is no longer taught, no longer regarded as relevant. And so we in our wisdom have set up a system in which creditors are protected and debtors are penalised.

    When the wealthy can lobby to have legislation enacted in their favour, it doesn’t take a genius to work out what follows.

38. wamMay 3, 2024 at 12:06 am

    Review is truly fake as the concept of knowing the results replaced ‘evaluate’ the process.For us it was when the commonwealth left us to the clp moresby mafia.
    ps
    do you have money to manipulate, steve???

39. ArndMay 3, 2024 at 12:29 pm

    Canguro:

    … and Arnd if he so chooses, might like to proffer an alternative for humanity en masse …

    Well … ?!?

    Thanks for asking, Canguro.

    Or not?!? It is a huge question! One that is impossible to answer in a few hundred words.

    But I’ll try anyway.

    I’ll cut right to the chase: for me, the primary concept that emerged out of the complex and vexing thickets of political economics, some thirty years ago, was the Right to Inheritance, and the idea that its continued existence is incompatible with the basic ideals that inform neo-liberalism. Put simply: if indeed we want to benefit from the efficiencies and accuracies of resources and reward allocation that supposedly follow from submitting to anonymous market forces, we cannot continue to permit the (inter-generational) transmission of at times very great wealth, and the economic power and commercial influence that go with it, on principles other than market principles – i.e. the hereditary principle – because to do so would create economic parameters such that exponentially growing market distortions are inevitable.

    I think economic history since has confirmed this insight.

    In practical terms: so as to prevent these clearly UN-liberal economic dynamics from forming and rising to dominance would require the imposition AND COMPLIANCE WITH a taxation regime built around the one central measure of a 100% Confiscatory Inheritance Tax.

    What I, as libertarian communist, like about this idea, is that it does not insist that the neo-liberals have it all wrong and need to be confronted head-on, but that quite on the contrary, I am fully endorsing their ideals, and, purely out of a spirit of helpfulness, merely endeavour to help them to implement their ideals more fully than even they themselves ever thought possible! IPA, are you reading this?

    Ok, let’s dial down the sarcasm: I know as well as the next commenter that this idea is politically and administratively impossible. But all that means is that the ideals of neo-liberalism cannot be fully realised, and Margaret Thatcher’s insistence on TINA (There Is No Alternative) is revealed as the patent bollocks it really is: there are plenty of alternatives, some more promising than others. But neo-liberalism, in its Mont Pelerin/Chicago School/Thatcherism fashion IS NOT ONE OF THEM!!

    Thus, for me, it is patently possible, and has been so for over thirty years, to imagine the end of capitalism, and the building of a truly human world.

40. Steve DavisMay 4, 2024 at 9:20 am

    An important point to be kept in mind as we ponder what has gone wrong with society, is that most of the earlier highly developed societies had put measures in place to restrain the aspirations of the trading and banking class — the bourgeoisie.
    This class was seen by all as one characterized by moral vacancy, as success among the bourgeoisie was determined by letting nothing, no matter how sacred in whatever sense, impede the accumulation of capital.

    Let’s be clear on an important point. The ethos of the bourgeoisie, now the liberals, is the ethos that was designed for the protection and nurturing of liberals. For protecting and nurturing the accumulation of capital.
    So while ethics are by definition the standards that protect society, liberal ethics are designed to protect the interests of a sub-set of society, a community within society. Liberal ethics therefore have the same moral standing as the ethics of the Ku Klux Klan or the Hells Angels.

    And because the liberal ethos is confined to the material and the quantifiable but most crucially, on the commodifiable, the world came increasingly to be looked upon with the mentality of a ledger keeper, with little regard for intuitive or subconscious thought.

    So that’s where the problem lies.
    We are dealing with the consequences of adopting standards (or having them thrust upon us) that are not designed to protect and nurture those things that we know intuitively have real value. A permanent value. A value that cannot be quantified.

    And when we protest against attacks on the things that really matter, as in Gaza, we see in the reaction from the leading liberal democracies what liberal ethics is all about.

41. ArndMay 4, 2024 at 5:51 pm

    Steve,

    An important point to be kept in mind as we ponder what has gone wrong with society, is that most of the earlier highly developed societies had put measures in place to restrain the aspirations of the trading and banking class — the bourgeoisie.

    Another important point to be kept in mind as we ponder what has gone wrong … – AND STILL IS GOING WRONG! – is that practically all earlier highly developed societies went to the wall in any n one way or another. “The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” is one extensive investigation into one example.

    The Roman Empire, the Spanish Empire, the British Empire, the Chinese Middle Kingdom, the Twelve-Year Empire (initially styled The Thousand Year Reich, but fell short by a not entirely negligible 988 years, damn it all!). American Coca-colonialism seems on the wane, too …

    Am I the only one to see a pattern here?

    I always thought that the Upton Sinclair quote sums it up quite nicely – but that quote is accessible to all, so I did expect someone in high places to tweak. But then again, once someone in a high place tweaks, s/he basically can’t function in that role anymore, and won’t remain in that high place for long – see Carne Ross.

    Canguro asked, and both Steve and I answered – but Canguro couldn’t be arsed to even say thank you, let alone engage further. Truth be told, I am a little bit stinky about that. But it’s not the first time that happened: the very moment such exchanges proceed from impotent bickering to actually thinking about possible solutions, interlocutors tend to scatter.

    Never mind: mine is the 41th comment on this thread; one more, and we’ll have 42, which, I have on good authority, is The Answer To Life, The Universe And Everything.

42. Steve DavisMay 4, 2024 at 7:33 pm

    Arnd, according to Michael Hudson the political turmoil that plagued ancient Greece and Rome, was the struggle between rulers and the populace combining against the oligarchs for economic control.

    The victory of the Roman oligarchs had consequences that we are dealing with today — not only is our legal system based on that of the victors, but we inherited their protection of creditors and their use of debt as a means of social control.

    Hudson says all empires in their final days turn to financialisation for wealth. Money-making schemes instead of production of goods. Rome, Spain, Britain, and now as you note, the US.

43. Steve DavisMay 4, 2024 at 7:43 pm

    My previous comment was from memory, but I just found this, Hudson responding to an interview question.

    “In Rome, certainly, you have century after century, any popular leader who said, we’ve got to preserve economic balance by canceling the debts and not letting people lose their land, they were assassinated. The typical oligarchic political response was violence and political assassination. And that went right down to the second century when the leading reformers were killed.
    Catiline and his army urged that cancellation, he was killed. And finally, Julius Caesar was killed because they had feared that he was going to cancel the debts, although he only canceled the debts of the wealthy, not really the poor people.
    So I find the common theme that made Western civilization different from everything that went before was the fact that they didn’t cancel the debts, that Western civilization let an oligarchy take over.
    Instead of the basic rule, that debts have to be written down to the ability to pay, Rome introduced a pro-creditor law. All the debts have to be paid no matter what the social consequences are, no matter how much society is injured by families losing their land and the land being concentrated, the money being concentrated, the wealth being concentrated and political power being concentrated in the hands of a creditor oligarchy.
    A debt is a debt, and it has to be paid. Well, the Roman law is still the philosophy of modern law. The whole modern legal system is still based on that of Greece and Rome.”

44. CanguroMay 4, 2024 at 10:14 pm

    Thank you Arnd, I appreciate your reply. We live in difficult times, and perfect solutions to the major issues that dog us are not within easy reach. My brother, now slowly dying with advanced Parkinsons, long had a cartoon above his office desk of a heron with a frog in its mouth, the frog’s legs were around the beak of the bird and the caption read ‘Never give up.’ I think that sums it up, that despite everything, one has to continue to make an effort … if not to make a better world for all then at least to make the best of one’s one life.

45. Steve DavisMay 5, 2024 at 9:59 am

    I stated in an earlier comment that while ethics are by definition the standards that protect society, liberal ethics are designed to protect the interests of a sub-set of society, a community within society. Liberal ethics therefore have the same moral standing as the ethics of the Ku Klux Klan or the Hells Angels.

    That might have sounded a bit over the top? Check out this example of the liberal ethos at work today in the Guardian.
    “UK surgeon who described Gaza ‘massacre’ denied entry to France”

    A London surgeon who has provided testimony over the current war in Gaza after operating during the conflict has been denied entry to France, where he was due to speak in the French senate later on Saturday.
    After arriving at Charles de Gaulle airport north of Paris on Saturday morning on a flight from London, Prof Ghassan Abu-Sitta, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, was informed by French authorities that Germany had enforced a Schengen-wide ban on his entry to Europe.
    French police said the German authorities, who had previously refused Abu-Sitta entry to Germany in April, had put a visa ban on him for a year, meaning he was banned from entering any Schengen country.
    https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/04/uk-surgeon-who-described-gaza-massacre-denied-entry-to-france
    And this from UCLA.

    Germany as Defender of the Liberal International Order

    Take no notice of what liberal democracies say, take note of what they do.

46. Steve DavisMay 5, 2024 at 10:25 am

    It’s worth noting from the UCLA article I linked to, that we have, in fact, two international orders.
    We have international law as determined by global consensus through the UN, and we have a liberal international order as designed by the Western powers that developed and grew rich by colonial plunder.

    Check out the tone of the UCLA article. See if you detect a sense of elitism and assumed superiority in its description of the relationship between the liberal West and the rest of the world.

    It does not take a genius to work out which of these international orders has the welfare of humanity at heart.
    Or to put it another way — which of the two is truly international in outlook.

47. leefeMay 6, 2024 at 9:06 am

    Arnd:

    Sorry about leaving you hanging; went bush for a bit and am currently dog-sitting so no chance to get back to this until now.

    For someone who doesn’t much like established rules and definitions, about marriage, sex and gender, for example, and decried them as unconscionable patriarchal imposition, you are strangely defensive about rules and the (supposed) stability the guarantee.

    You’re an intelligent person, so I’m sure you can distinguish between the concept of essential rules (or at least guidelines) for dealing with inevitable events (such as conflict), and specific rules that have no logic or justice behind them.

    *This also in response to your earlier reply that “I didn’t say “one size fits all”, I said universal and secular.” As far as I can see, “universal” does necessarily imply a dimension of “one size fits all” *

    Then your vision is blinkered or otherwise limited. I explained what I meant by universal: available to all. That neither says nor implies that everyone has to be forced into the same constricted mould. It means what I said and you didn’t quote in your reply: the availability of necessary resources for each individual to achieve as much as needed or desired.

    So what? Secular indoctrination is fine?

    Unless by “indoctrination” you mean “education in facts of which you disapprove or with which you disagree”, no. This discussion was not meant to go into fine detail; I was simply trying for a broad delineation of certain essentials. In my opinion, there should be no schools operated by faith-based organisations and no promulgation of religious ideas in schools. Any instruction in any kind of ideology needs to be both tailored to individual levels of understanding and be done in such a way that it is clearly understood to be an explanation of what some people think rather than what the instructed should think.

    Look here: I know that as Christian, I subscribe to a belief system that includes hair-raising improbabilities, such as some guy walking on water, turning water into wine, and strolling about alive and well three days after having been subjected to a torturous execution. Alas, my whole ethics framework does not make sense without these assumptions – and as far as I am concerned, I should be allowed to make statements to that effect, including to “defenceless children”.

    That’s getting into a darker shade of grey, for me. You like to draw inferences where no such meanings were intended, which makes me even more uncomfortable than usual with finding possible tacit meanings in what you’ve written, but … it’s not uncommon amongst the religious to claim that religion is necessary for ethics and/or morals and I sincerely hope you aren’t one such.
    Religion is not necessary to be an ethical or moral person, nor does belief guarantee that the believer is ethical or moral. Even the most cursory examination of human history disproves both ideas. So, telling someone how you think humans should act – fine, with the above provisos re ideological instruction. Ditto with telling them why you think that behaviour is best as long as that person is capable of subjecting your commments to a critical evaluation. Children don’t yet have that capacity.

    To get thoroughly off the topic: “christian anarchist” is an oxymoron. Organised religion, by its very nature, is arbitrary, authoritarian and hierarchical.

    Over and out

    Steve:

    It does not take a genius to work out which of these international orders has the welfare of humanity at heart.

    Neither of them do. Both are about obtaining power and wealth and imposing their own corrupt systems on as much of the world as they can. The sins of the one do not absolve the sins of the other.

48. Steve DavisMay 6, 2024 at 9:51 am

    leefe, in reference to the UN system of international law and the liberal international order you said “Both are about obtaining power and wealth and imposing their own corrupt systems on as much of the world as they can. The sins of the one do not absolve the sins of the other.”

    The UN system as the custodian and enforcer of international law has many problems that impede its effectiveness, but it has little in common with the liberal order.

    The UN system, at least in theory and on paper, has global welfare and the enforcement of international law as its aim. Its failures in those areas can be attributed to the machinations of the liberal order whose aims and actions are contrary to global welfare and international law.

    There’s a reason that the liberal order only refers to international law when it suits. Its overwhelming message is about “the rules based order”, which is basically telling the world “we’re gunna do it our way.”

49. Lucy HamiltonMay 6, 2024 at 11:32 am

    Arnd – you misunderstood my purpose. I was saying to Steve that the fact “liberalism” is in “neoliberalism” is about as relevant as “socialism” in “national socialism”. The terminologies have historical relevances whereas the ideologies have diverged. I am absolutely not discounting fascist politics or the threat of neofascism which I write about way too often.

    Steve. Neoliberalism was indeed closer to fascism from the outset. Just because the word liberalism is there doesn’t mean the two are intertwined. The Mont Pelerin Society claimed to be about freedom but as I said above, I think I remember, they claimed when asked to be serving the elites and to be seriously mistrusting of democratic projects and the masses. The MPS radicalised the Chicago School which had been strongly fighting monopolies at that point, and redirected its focus to make sure that neoliberalism grew to serve the power players by making sure government was subject to them and working for their ability to forge monopolies/duopolies and oligopolies. Go read the history around the two if you don’t believe it.

    As I said, Steve, our definitions of liberal don’t coincide and that’s fine. That’s why I’m trying not to engage overmuch because I just think we will be boring for bystanders if we keep tussling over separate ground. Democracy contains the seeds of its own destruction in the same way that liberalism does. This does not invalidate the goal to have some kind of representative government. These projects need shaping towards being their best incarnations.

50. paul walterMay 6, 2024 at 11:57 am

    Lucy Hamilton. Liberalism in original form was about having identity, being free. It followed the Enlightenment Project, that tried to reconstruct a better society from the ruins of the Ancien Regime and feudalism

    Neo liberalism has “freedom” as self’ego rather than authentic self, and self will run riot. Neo liberalism seems to have eliminate the “other” aspect of liberalism and sent it back to the dark ages

    Not about “free to roam the foothills” but appetitive “free to do what I want, no matter within others space or not, without respect for others freedom. Within such a harsh millieu, it seems to degenerate very quickly to reaction, the drum and whistle types in bellicosity turn on those who they have trodden on, in pursuit of selfish goals. So, it is Neanderthal degeneration, pretty purposeless and little hope of the unity of team effort for improvement.

51. Steve DavisMay 6, 2024 at 12:39 pm

    Lucy, thanks for your response.

    You said it might be boring for bystanders if we keep tussling over definitions, but judging by the number of post views it seems there is a general interest in a discussion of liberalism as the dominant political ideology, and how we got to where we are.

    I see your national socialism analogy as flawed. The party began as the German Workers Party, which became the National Socialist German Workers Party. Socialism was held in high regard across Europe and much of the world at that time, so with the party being a party of the working class we can assume that there was a socialist element to it.

    So where you said “The terminologies have historical relevances whereas the ideologies have diverged” this supports my position that liberalism must by its inherent nature evolve into a more authoritarian form and that neo-liberalism is that form. There are certainly differences, but the divergence is not so great as to form a new entity. There is an undeniable liberal element to neo-liberalism.

    But as you say, it’s pointless to keep this going too long, so you might have noticed that I’ve aimed now at the actions of liberal democracies, rather than the nebulous nature of liberal philosophy. Because all the now increasingly authoritarian champions of the liberal international order cling desperately to the liberal label for its assumed public relations value, a value that was and is based on illusions.

52. paul walterMay 6, 2024 at 12:55 pm

    Centrelink customer, no one has directly addressed your post.

    I beleive you in the abscence of much research on the topic, but understand that the system has still employed the same or similar processes of ROBOdebt assessment in other departments. Correct me if I am wrong.

    Little wonder it is a perfect example of liberalism/social democracy, being deliberatly eroded to a neo liberal level, with the victims as undesirables and exploiters of the sanctified rest. People on the down are now in direct conflict with the mortgage belt and it smells of ideology/alibi, since the conflict manufactured is artificial and not based on real issues.Remember,
    politics is now against community and individual interests opposed to the mindless appetiveness of modern capitalism oligarchs.

    Sorry to say it, but Gaza is a modern example. Thinkj about that Levantine gas just off Gaza that the Gazans will likely never benefit from.

    The rationality and sense of proportion has disappeared and we live in an age of reactionary modernism.

53. Lucy HamiltonMay 6, 2024 at 1:53 pm

    Steve, just because bad guys use a label, doesn’t mean they get to keep or co-opt it. Lots of absolute grifters and creeps take the label “Christian” and millions of people who hold that label would reject the grifters’ and creeps’ right to use it let alone define it according to their own biases. You are welcome to think whatever you like. It’s not how I, nor many others, define the labels. I maintain again that it is easy for people of the default identity to discount the social aspect of liberalism which has allowed the rest of us to demand that our own disparate experience be taken into account when shaping society.

54. Steve DavisMay 6, 2024 at 3:00 pm

    “…the social aspect of liberalism which has allowed the rest of us to demand that our own disparate experience be taken into account when shaping society.”
    This is what I’m having trouble getting my head around. You seem to be implying that respect for individuality and diversity was lacking before the rise of liberalism.

    Is that what you are saying?

55. paul walterMay 6, 2024 at 3:14 pm

    Probably got it wrong, but I have read somewhere, socialism as a refinement of liberalism. socialists and liberals alike accept that much is yet to done before we’ve reached the ideal, against conservatives (neolibs) who seek to outlaw change as deviating from an already realised norm.

56. Steve DavisMay 6, 2024 at 3:23 pm

    That raises the question paul, as to what the ideal is for liberals.
    It’s quite a bit different to that of socialists, so to conflate the two is not really worthwhile.

    As for outlawing change, any success would be fleeting, ensuring revolution.

57. Steve DavisMay 6, 2024 at 3:51 pm

    There’s a short video on the ABC site right now, only 1min 40secs.
    “Alan Kohler takes a look at Australia’s declining happiness”

    Tells us a lot about the futility of the liberal ideal.
    Futility for ordinary folks, that is.
    The libs are doing just fine.

58. ClakkaMay 6, 2024 at 5:16 pm

    Goodness gracious, this thread persists. I well know my comments can bang on a tad, but this has to take the cake at the end of the world, the universe and everything.

    Although not of religious faith, the phenomenon used to intrigue me. Same too for philosophy, economics, justice and politics.

    Seeking to tell stories about them, and even moreso to have a contest of ideas requires a familiarity with someone else’s designer tags expressing tonal nuances of the same old ululations.

    In what should essentially be of mathematics, like the eternal fractals, or Fibonacci sequences of growth and decay, the problem of ethics and equity inevitably deal with human corruptibility, supremacy and ownership or not.

    There, it seems no-one wins, it’s just a pile on until resources are exhausted.

59. Steve DavisMay 6, 2024 at 6:22 pm

    “Goodness gracious, this thread persists… this has to take the cake…”

    Is this not important to you Clakka?

    If these matters are of no interest to you then you either have no imagination or no soul.

60. ArndMay 6, 2024 at 7:17 pm

    leefe,

    I’m envious. My last bush walk was in October.

    My disappointment was mainly aimed at Canguro … who has since redeemed himself with a rather bland and non-committal “oh, it’s all very difficult, and nobody has the full answer” reply”. So what, we’re not even trying to narrow it down a bit? Whatever!

    … I’m sure you can distinguish between the concept of essential rules (or at least guidelines) for dealing with inevitable events (such as conflict), and specific rules that have no logic or justice behind them.

    Ha! I’ve been digging into law, jurisprudence, philosophy of law and political philosophy on and off since age 11, and I am now going on 63. I’m sorry to have to report to you that nothing – NOTHING! – is as simple and clear cut as you seem to think and insist. If it was, we wouldn’t have Putin attack Ukraine, and Bibi raze Gaza, we wouldn’t have spent I don’t know how many millions on the Lehrmann/Higgins imbroglio, etc. etc. If things were as clear cut as you seem to think, we wouldn’t even have the exchanges on this thread that were currently engaged in.

    … there should be no schools operated by faith-based organisations and no promulgation of religious ideas in schools.

    Does that include instruction in Economics? Because as far as I am concerned, bourgeois economics is very bad voodoo. And bourgeois law isn’t all that much better. Both are a far cry from “with sober senses”.

    it’s not uncommon amongst the religious to claim that religion is necessary for ethics and/or morals and I sincerely hope you aren’t one such.

    Sorry to have to disappoint you here. I did offer an explanation on Brian Morris’s thread Easter is rooted in A-theism. A shorter version is offered by Peter Harrison, in his take-down of Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now:

    In all of this, Pinker exhibits a common, but confused position on what are quite distinct issues. One is whether we can be moral without religion, to which the answer, empirically speaking, is yes. But whether it is possible to establish an objective content for morality, how we justify moral claims, and whence the normative force of morality – in other words, why we should be moral at all – are far less straightforward. In dealing with these latter issues, a number of Enlightenment thinkers found a role for religion.

    Just some food for thought.

    “christian anarchist” is an oxymoron.

    There’s plenty of bothe Christians and atheist anarchists who absolutely agree with you – and I can see why. The problem is that Christianity has so thoroughly ingratiated itself with the temporal powers of government and commerce, that merely identifying as Christian is totally misleading.

    Organised religion, by its very nature, is arbitrary, authoritarian and hierarchical.

    Come to think of it, that may well be the exact reason why o am not part of
    organised religion.

    Also, two-way radio etiquette has it that you say “Over” at the end of your transmission to indicate your release of the PTT (press to talk) button, but that you expect a reply. If you want to end the whole conversation, you would repeat your call sign and then “Out” – in your case “leefe, Out!” That means that the radio channel is free for other parties to start a new conversation.

61. ArndMay 6, 2024 at 8:25 pm

    Lucy:

    I was saying to Steve that the fact “liberalism” is in “neoliberalism” is about as relevant as “socialism” in “national socialism”

    Thanks for your reply, and I had another look at the comments in question.

    I am kind of with Steve, where he points out that the National Socialism of nearly a hundred years ago was not merely about adopting a false definition to deceive the people, but that it I deed had an identifiable socialist dimension to it, AND that it was this socialist dimension that made it so efficient. Only pity was that they used that efficiency to pursue destructive and murderous aims – but you got to admit yourself that they did so with utmost dedication and efficiency! Just imagine that energy and commitment had been deployed towards productive rather than destructive ends.

    In other words: we do want to pursue a socialist agenda – but we want to be careful exactly which kind of socialism we pursue.

    And yes, this clarification unfortunately does involve a bit of semantic whack-a-mole.

62. ArndMay 6, 2024 at 8:53 pm

    Steve, going through the comments again, I have to say that whilst I agree with you that National Socialism did have an identifiable socialist dimension and was not merely a case of fraudulent misappropriation of the term, I find myself in agreement with Lucy (but most likely for reasons of which she is not really aware) that the “liberalism” in “neo-liberalism” is indeed a fraudulent misappropriation, and for the reason indicated in my earlier reply to Canguro, including this:

    In practical terms: so as to prevent these clearly UN-liberal economic dynamics from forming and rising to dominance would require the imposition AND COMPLIANCE WITH a taxation regime built around the one central measure of a 100% Confiscatory Inheritance Tax.

    I mean, think about it: the defining aspect of our ideal of liberal
    democracy and the concomitant “universal and equal political liberty” is that, unlike under the preceding feudalist arrangements, political office and power is not hereditary. Instead there are extensive provisions to regulate the access to, and exercise of, political office, including term limits, the separation of political power into separate and mutually limiting and controlling Legislative, Executive and Judicative, etc.

    Whereas for commercial wealth and power, we insist on leaving to chance – to the lottery of who is born into which family – who gets to exercise those powers.

    In other words, our definitions of political liberty and commercial liberty are badly at odds.

63. ClakkaMay 6, 2024 at 10:38 pm

    @SD

    Your comment at me is a presumptive non-sequitur. Nowhere did I say the issues were unimportant, of course the notion of importance depends upon what one sees as the underlying issues, and end objective. You ignore the balance of my output, and opt for concluding with an absurd if-so-hap-so that reflects more upon you – perhaps that’s your underlying style should you fail to comprehend that commenters do not need to adopt the strain of your output. On the other hand, maybe you’re just exasperated in your quest by the dialectic being concealed by history’s political tag lines.

    I observe Arnd’s comment, ” …. a bit of semantic whack-a-mole.”, seems to have some resonance here, sans conclusions.

    May your understanding of peace and happiness be fulfilled.

64. Steve DavisMay 7, 2024 at 8:01 am

    Arnd, you said “…the defining aspect of our ideal of liberal democracy… is that, … political office and power is not hereditary. Instead there are extensive provisions to regulate the access to, and exercise of, political office, including term limits, the separation of political power into separate and mutually limiting and controlling Legislative, Executive and Judicative, etc. Whereas for commercial wealth and power, we insist on leaving to chance – to the lottery of who is born into which family – who gets to exercise those powers. In other words, our definitions of political liberty and commercial liberty are badly at odds.”

    That’s a good way of expressing differences in the workings of liberty, for which there are historical reasons.

    The relationship between political and commercial liberty was a dilemma for which the early liberals were desperate for an answer. Check out the verbal contortions, and the stretching of logic to breaking point that John Locke went through. In regard to commercial liberty he was forced to concede that natural resources were owned in common, and so then had to justify why those you mentioned who were born with a head start in life, were entitled to take more than a fair share from the common store. So he did. There’s a reason Locke was so frequently mentioned in the debates that led to the US Consitution — they loved him for that. Still do.

    Once that was dealt with, liberals had to come up with a system of political liberty that kept the populace happy while the wealthy plundered the common store. So they did.
    Representative democracy. Democracy at a distance. A democracy so vulnerable to corruption and disdainful of ethical standards that the conservative Burke was led to declare in exasperation “a cabal of the closet and back stair was substituted in place of a national administration.” The liberal order. An order with the illusion of liberty. This all evolved over time of course, and was modified as needed.

    So when you refer to “our definitions of political liberty and commercial liberty,” are they really ours? Or have liberal definitions been thrust upon us?
    It must be kept in mind that everything done or proposed by liberals serves the interests of liberals. That’s why we have two international orders — the UN system of international law based with at least some reference to democratic principles, and the liberal international order that regards democratic principles with contempt. And so it is that our definitions of political liberty and commercial liberty also serve the interests of liberals.

    Because our rights and freedoms serve the interests of liberals with only the illusion of universality, Marx explained as far back as 1843 that liberal rights and freedoms are the rights and freedoms of an imaginary human being, because they are rights and freedoms that have no relation to the very real differences that exist in wealth, privilege, education, occupation, kinship etc.

    And so, still to this day, the universality of liberal freedom is in reality, in practice, no more than a freedom for example, to cosy up to politicians and judges at ten thousand dollar per head fundraising dinners. We all have that right, so all are free.

65. ArndMay 7, 2024 at 9:53 am

    Steve Davis:

    So when you refer to “our definitions of political liberty and commercial liberty,” are they really ours?

    Well, “we” (excluding myself since I saw the light, back one day in the northern spring of 1992!!) collectively do accept and subscribe to those definitions, and none of my attempts to shake them loose over the last thirty years have gone anywhere. So yes, these – mutually incompatible – definitions of political and commercial liberty are ours.

    Both proponents as well as opponents of “market liberalism (neo-liberal version)” accept that definition. There’s countless articles, including by such luminaries as George Monbiot, who forcefully denounce and articulate searing criticisms of “market liberalism” without ever once tweaking to the fact that what they are criticising is not actually a “liberal” market. It is, in fact, a capitalist market.

    Why this should be so, and why the conflation of “free market capitalism” should prove so impossible to crack, let alone dislodge, beats me.

    Give it only a minute’s worth of thought. Joe Hockey, then-treasurer of Australia, gave a speech about how The age of entitlement is over:

    Despite an ageing population and a higher standard of living than that enjoyed by our children, western democracies in particular have been reluctant to wind back universal access to payments and entitlements from the state.

    As we have already witnessed, it is not popular to take entitlements away from millions of voters in countries with frequent elections.

    It is ironic that the entitlement system seems to be most obvious and prevalent in some of the most democratic societies. Most undemocratic nations are simply unable to afford the largesse of universal entitlement systems. So, ultimately the fiscal impact of popular programs must be brought to account no matter what the political values of the government are or how popular a spending program may be.

    Let me put it to you this way: The Age of Entitlement is over. We should not take this as cause for despair. It is our market based economies which have forced this change on unwilling participants.”

    And this in the very city – London – where just four short years later, a very young Hugh Richard Louis Grosvenor “inherited his title and control of the Grosvenor Estate, then worth an estimated £9 billion, from his father in 2016. As such, Grosvenor is one of the wealthiest men in Britain.”

    That, my friend, is the true, literal and original definition of “entitlement” … – and nobody, not Joe Hockey, nor Monbiot, not any of the other senior Guardianistas – with the exception of the afore-mentioned Pankaj Mishra – beats an eyelid?

    Neither does it seem as if Lucy Hamilton has cottoned on to the simple fact that ever since Margaret Thatcher rose to power in 1979, we have been subjected to a viciously enforced double standard in the basic definition of “liberty”. And look, I’m not blaming Lucy as such – she’s got plenty of company all over the world.

    But it doesn’t make that double standard any less visible – once you have seen it, it (and the manifold consequences and implications that insinuate themselves into literally every aspect of our lives) is impossible to unsee!

66. Steve DavisMay 7, 2024 at 10:09 am

    ” since I saw the light…”
    Exactly Arnd.
    It’s the red pill/blue pill choice at work.

    I find Monbiot good on environmental issues, but shallow on the political analysis.

    Will have to check out the Grosvenor story, in particular how they managed to hold onto their wealth when progressive taxation sent many of the landed gentry to the wall. Or so the story goes. Perhaps it was just good old-fashioned incompetence.

67. paul walterMay 7, 2024 at 10:59 am

    Been a little while since theyve had a thread continue like this..

    Eternally vexed , but at the mo I’d take John Hewson over Richard Marles today as to sincerity. So tell me I’m wrong on this.

68. Steve DavisMay 8, 2024 at 6:52 pm

    Lucy said in an earlier comment, when distinguishing neo-liberals from liberals, “they (neo-libs) claimed when asked, to be serving the elites and to be seriously mistrusting of democratic projects and the masses.”
    I just stumbled across an article that seems to confirm my contrary view — that neo-liberalism grew out of liberalism and that there’s little difference between the two. Or as I put it months ago, neo-libs are just honest libs with the friendly mask removed.

    The fact that neo-liberal elitism also lies at the heart of liberalism was beautifully but inadvertently exposed by that journalistic heartthrob of liberals everywhere, Anne Applebaum, shortly after the start of the Ukraine conflict. She was so fearful of the potential defeat of Ukraine that in order to rally the troops she was prepared to go so far as to declare liberalism itself to be in danger. Why such extreme language? Because, or so she claimed, there was no liberal world order to provide stability, despite fatuous rhetoric about “the rules based order” having been circulated for years.

    She concluded a 2022 article “There is No Liberal World Order” with this — “Precisely because there is no liberal world order, no norms and no rules, we must fight ferociously for the values and the hopes of liberalism if we want our open societies to continue to exist.”

    It’s astounding how much damage can be done by a single sentence.

    By saying “there is… no norms, no rules” Applebaum has completely bypassed international law. International law is of no interest to liberals. It can be ignored. Where it serves no liberal purpose it does not exist. In the eyes of liberals, the “values and hopes of liberalism” are of greater value and have more meaning than the entire body of international law that has been painstakingly developed since the formation of the UN. Their contempt for democratic values is there for all to see.

    And so, with a single sentence Anne Applebaum has destroyed hundreds of years of carefully crafted illusions. We see in that sentence the innate sense of superiority that drives liberalism. We see that for liberals their values have more weight than democratic values.

    We see a political movement that held power by feeding the insecurities that liberalism itself created, telling its victims they were special and that all that mattered in life was the liberty to be oneself, while giving them freedoms that have no substance. Telling them, as we see with the response by liberal democracies to the pro-Palestine protests, don’t worry about our perpetual wars. Don’t worry about the mortgage, or unemployment, or environmental chaos. All that matters is you’re free.

    So what is the true face of liberalism? Liberalism is, like neo-liberalism, elitist and fearful of the masses.

69. leefeMay 8, 2024 at 8:49 pm

    Arnd:

    You’re like the blokes who can’t understand – or can’t accept – that choosing the bear is a rational decision based on a true understanding of all the potential risks. Or, rather, won’t.

    I’m not diving back iinto this because the whole discussion is turning into one of those cyclical arguments where the participants eventually end up disappearing up their own bodily orifices. But your last reply to me does raise one question that needs to be asked: Are you capable of having a discussion with someone who disagrees with you without being a patronising, condescending expletive deleted?

70. ArndMay 9, 2024 at 1:45 pm

    leefe:

    Are you capable of having a discussion with someone who disagrees with you without being a patronising, condescending expletive deleted?

    What exactly, do you think, is the purpose of discussing things with people you do not agree with, if not trying to convince the other of one’s own point of view, or learning something from the other, or both, and perhaps even coming to a conclusion that incorporates insights from both sides? A dialectic synthesis?

    As for the circularity of such exchanges: yes, true. And tiring. To the point of vexing, and then some! Like being trapped inside an Escher drawing. I’ve been running myself around these very circles for many years – until I discovered what I believe to be the way out.

    As for my supposed condescension: all I am doing is point out the rather obvious inconsistencies and outright contradictions in your thinking.

    As a matter of principle, I do not resort to personal insult. Whereas you just did!!

    As for women “choosing the bear” over me, I can’t recall any occasion where that may actually have been the case. Quite the contrary: I recall a few occasions where, as I now believe (but do not know nor claim to know for sure!) the woman in my company might have welcomed my being a little less backwards about coming forwards rather gladly. What’s worse: they were the kind of impressive, generous and self-possessed women that make me wonder what I missed out on. We live and learn. As indeed I have: I’ve been lucky enough to share my life with exactly such a woman for the last 25 years.

    Quite frankly, I think that, on this thread at least, I (and Steve) have shown greater patience and preparedness to engage with dissenting views than you (or Lucy?) You two do strike me as succumbing to the same kind of brittle exasperation with disagreement that prompted Hillary Clinton to call out working class supporters of Donald Trump as “deplorables”, and therewith antagonizing enough additional voters into voting for The Orange One, and to change the course of world history.

    I mean, honestly: if we here on the AIMN can’t review and compare our conceptions and opinions without resorting to expletives deleted, what hope is there for the wider world?

71. ArndMay 9, 2024 at 2:34 pm

    Steve Davis:

    Or as I put it months ago, neo-libs are just honest libs with the friendly mask removed.

    On New Discourses – the website of James Lindsay, of Cynical Theory fame, I came across an essay by a women’s studies professor, who, under an assumed name – explained how she was not “not woke” anymore, and that her outlook on political theory was now firmly predicated on the principles of Classical Liberalism.

    Mrrrrt! Fail! Here’s a thumbnail how: Classical liberalism, as it came to the fore during the 18th and 19th centuries, obviously wasn’t then known as “classical”. It was just “liberalism”, a developing perspective on political philosophy and political economy different, and in opposition to, mercantilism, feudalism, the “Devine Right of Kings”, etc. Indeed, I doubt that at first it was even known as “liberalism”, but merely an accumulating … (It’s phone’s off now)

72. Harry LimeMay 9, 2024 at 3:55 pm

    Having read through this thread,again.I await my degree in “Liberalism”,if not a doctorate.I’ve learned fuck all,but that doesn’t make me ineligible.
    Must say it has been very enjoyable.

73. Steve DavisMay 9, 2024 at 4:18 pm

    “…but that doesn’t make me ineligible.”

    Exactly Harry, in fact that means that you’ve got such a grip on this, you could go straight for a doctoral thesis. 🙂

    Thanks for your interest.

74. leefeMay 9, 2024 at 4:51 pm

    Arnd:

    Does it occur to you that your “debating style” may provoke exasperation in others? Particularly when you continually and deliberately misinterpret and misrepresent what those others have said? If youj disagree with that, hark back to the “universal” part of of our exchange, where you completely ignored part of my first clarification re my use of that word.
    The only contradictions you fiind in what I say are due to misinterpretation and the relative brevity of my remarks. Remember – mottled in shades of grey; there is not space enough here for me to go into all the nuances I see in even one simple (if there is such a thiing) topic.

    As for the “patronising and condescending” critique – did it ever occur to you that I might be fully cognizant of radio communication protocols (as indeed, I am and have been for over 35 years, not least because you can’t get a coxswain’s ticket without that knowledge)? Or were you aware of the possibility but prefered to indulge in potentially totally pointless mansplaining (I don’t know, maybe to put me in my place)? Either way, patronising and condescending are both accurate and apposite terms for that part of your post.
    For the record, I deliberately used a cliched non-procedural term to signify that I was done with this particular topic for now; due to impending departure I lacked the time or will to fully explain that but, obviously wrongly, assumed it was reasonably clear.
    Also, there’s the issue that, while I have been trained and tested re said radio operator procedures, we – unless I have managed to miss something major – are not communicating via radio and those protocols are, thus, irrelevant.

    Oh, and frequently, no. I do not discuss these issues here because I am trying to change anyone’s mind. I am trying to understand their ideas, their motivations, their rationale for various behaviours and attitudes while, at the same time, trying to explain mine. A glimmer of iinttellectual understanding is the best we can hope for most of the time. This is particularly relevant with regard to non-factual matters such as faith and religion because, as someone once said in a moment of wisdom, you can’t logic people out of a position they weren’t logicked into.

75. ArndMay 11, 2024 at 12:51 pm

    (Ok, I’m off the plane, jetlag kicked in, phone’s back on …)

    … bit merely an accumulating body of ideas about issues like political economy (Adam Smith, perhaps in response to the mercantilism of the French physiocrats), and political philosophy (any number of thinkers, especially British ones, with respect to the American and French revolutions, and expanding disapproval of slavery.

    This also, in reply to Steve a few comments past to Lucy: “You seem to be implying that respect for individuality and diversity was lacking before the rise of liberalism” : I can’t speak for Luce, but yes, that is my understanding precisely: Liberté became part of the political vernacular with the French revolution.

    But that complex of values and ideas, which is now well over two hundred years ago, is only now becoming known as Classical Liberalism, was revolutionary back then, but is not just “conservative” now, but outright reactionary.

    The point I am driving at I s this: to insist, like James Lindsay’s non-woke women’s studies professor, that the US rose to political supremacy during the 19th and early 20th centuries on the back of its subscribing to “classical liberalism, and should therefore return to those values, is like saying the the YS rose to international industrial pre-eminence during the age of steam, and that therefore a return to the reciprocal steam engine powering factories, railways and shipping will MAGA …, and this is clearly not how these things work.

    In other words: we now need to review and update our still very much 18th century understanding of liberty, to one fit for the challenges of the 21st century – and that process includes working up to the realisation that established and long since accepted notions of liberty are invalid. A process that is clearly irritating and disorienting for many, including Harry Lime and leefe.

    But it’s not a process we can do without.

76. ArndMay 11, 2024 at 1:28 pm

    leefe:

    … because, as someone once said in a moment of wisdom, you can’t logic people out of a position they weren’t logicked into.

    See, leefe, if I were as thin-skinned as you are, I’d consider this comment “patronising and condescending” in the extreme, seeing how it categorically denies the rationality and capacity for logical thought of those who see sense in basing their understanding of the human condition on faith-based assumptions.

    As it stands, I just consider that comment as more evidence that your understanding of logic has great gaps, and that you have never yet run up against and explored the vexing limits of logic.

    As it says in the Wikipedia entry on Pascal’s Wager:

    Notably, Pascal’s wager is significant as it marks the initial formal application of decision theory, existentialism, pragmatism, and voluntarism.

    In that sense, I consider my own updated version of Pascal’s Wager the most logical and rational position to take. Up until now, that is. It may well be that I run across a better one at some later state.

    But I always found the assumption that something for which I can’t produce empirical proof therefore doesn’t exist way too facile, risky and cocksure to be considered “rational” at all. The very basic notion that “Absence of evidence” does not equate to “Evidence of Absence” seems strangely beyond the grasp of some of the most vociferous advocates of atheism, and mostly seems to be a consequence of their mistaking their motivated reasoning for objective logical thinking.

77. ArndMay 11, 2024 at 2:18 pm

    Harry Lime:

    Having read through this thread, again. I await my degree in “Liberalism”, if not a doctorate. I’ve learned fuck all, but that doesn’t make me ineligible. Must say it has been very enjoyable.

    I’m glad you enjoyed this interminable and (seemingly) aimless hither-and-dither.

    As for your sense of confusion: try to get your hands on a copy of the Meno. This stuff has gone on for over two and a half thousand years … with leefe taking on the part of Anytus, and doing so with great enthusiasm.

    Have a look at Isaiah Berlin’s Two Concepts of Liberty. It’s available as download. In this authoritative, but not flawless 1950s review of liberty, Berlin references the “more than 200 senses of the term ‘liberty’ recorded by historians of ideas”, and that it is “so porous that there is little interpretation that it seems able to resist”. Quite!

    And look at the Republicans in the US: I am old enough to remember Ronnie Reagan: “Mr Gorbachev, take down this wall!”. And now, a mere 40 years later? Trump crapping on about how he’s “gonna build a wall. A big wall. It’s gonna be beautiful. And the Mexicans are paying for it!” Something has obviously shifted in the general understanding of “freedom”.

    Of late, even the inscription on the Statue of Liberty has attracted attention: is it still relevant – or has our understanding of liberty somehow been turned into a grotesque caricature of its former self over the last century and a half?

    Harry, you’re not the only one who’s at a bit of a loss concerning liberalism. But at least you know that. Whereas for some others … Dunning and Kruger send their regards.

78. Steve DavisMay 11, 2024 at 6:10 pm

    Arnd, you said “ in reply to Steve a few comments past to Lucy: “You seem to be implying that respect for individuality and diversity was lacking before the rise of liberalism” : I can’t speak for Luce, but yes, that is my understanding precisely: Liberté became part of the political vernacular with the French revolution.”

    Here’s a couple of examples of respect for liberty, individuality and diversity that were current long before liberalism gazed down approvingly on a tortured world.

    From the Leveller Gerard Winstanley about 1650 C.E. — Winstanley argued that
    “In the beginning of Time, the great Creator Reason, made the Earth to be a Common Treasury, to preserve Beasts, Birds, Fishes, and Man, the lord that was to govern this Creation; for Man had Domination given to him, over the Beasts, Birds, and Fishes; but not one word was spoken in the beginning, That one branch of mankind should rule over another. And the Reason is this, Every single man, Male and Female, is a perfect Creature of himself; and the same Spirit that made the Globe, dwels in man to govern the Globe; so that the flesh of man being subject to Reason, his Maker, hath him to be his Teacher and Ruler within himself, therefore needs not run abroad after any Teacher and Ruler without him, for he needs not that any man should teach him, for the same Anoynting that ruled in the Son of man, teacheth him all things… And so selfish imaginations taking possession of the Five Sences, and ruling as King in the room of Reason therein, and working with Covetousnesse, did set up one man to teach and rule over another; and thereby the Spirit was killed, and man was brought into bondage, and became a greater Slave to such of his own kind, then the Beasts of the field were to him.”

    Winstanley took as his basic texts the Biblical sacred history, and so claimed universal liberty as there were no masters or slaves under the New Covenant.
    He interpreted Christian teaching as calling for the abolition of landed property and the aristocracy.
    Winstanley wrote: “Seeing the common people of England by joynt consent of person and purse have caste out Charles our Norman oppressour, wee have by this victory recovered ourselves from under his Norman yoake.”

    This theme was rooted in ancient English radical thought. It went back at least to the days of the Peasants’ Revolt (1381) led by Wat Tyler, because that is when a verse of the Lollard priest John Ball was circulated: “When Adam delved and Eve span, Who was then the Gentleman?” This was a declaration that the ruling class was not a natural phenomenon, but a human construct.

    Winstanley’s reference to the “Norman yoake” is interesting to me personally, as I argued elsewhere years ago, that the seeds of liberalism were sown by the Normans. Interesting also that his belief in the “Common Treasury” was accepted by Lockean liberals.

    It’s also worth noting that the strike for freedom by the peasants in the 14th century was not restricted to England; it occurred across Europe.

    To summarise, the Levellers, and before them Tyler and Ball, declared themselves to be free and individual — perfect creatures in themselves, and in the eyes of God. And because this concept of humanity is universal, is common to people everywhere since the dawn of time, liberal propaganda has latched onto it, taken control of it, and perverted it.

79. ArndMay 13, 2024 at 11:56 pm

    Steve, of course there were individuals and even groups of malcontents who endeavoured to claim their freedom.

    But freedom only became a constitutional principle with the American and French revolutions.

    I have thought for a long time now that that had to do with the European expansion into the Americas, which both allowed and necessitated the development of a new and previously unimaginable understanding of individual human agency.

    But here is also the problem: the conditions that fostered this new understanding of personal liberty do not now exist anymore – yet the attitudes and habits of those days persist, and now turn against each other.

    What we really need is a thorough root-and-branch review of all aspects of social contract theory. But there seems perplexingly little awareness or taste for that. Mostly, what we get in response to facile one-dimensional right-wing populism is facile one-dimensional left-wing populism – a kind of ritualised “having at one another with blunt philosophical implements”, which has been sanctified under the heading of Agonism by such luminaries as Chantal Mouffe – who really seems to think of her ideas as a valid response to those of the lines of Carl Schmitt.

    And here I was, thinking it might be time to move on a bit. But apparently not!

80. Steve DavisMay 14, 2024 at 3:07 pm

    Time to move on?
    Arnd, I’m jest warmin’ up !

    You said “… freedom only became a constitutional principle with the American and French revolutions.”
    Surely you overlook the Magna Carta, a.k.a. The Great Charter of Freedoms. Overlook as well the poor man’s magna carta, the Charter of The Forest, also from 1215, which remained in force until recent times.

    But you’re right about the concept of liberty changing with European expansion into the New World. Even here in Australia the colonies were allowed significant freedom by the British Parliament. Apparently they looked on Australia as a social experiment to a degree.

    However, a common theme runs through all these new interpretations and establishments of liberty.
    All required an alliance between the bourgeoisie and the working class, and in every case that I’m aware of, when the dust settled after revolutions, or after new economic systems were established in the case of colonising ventures, the working class found that the freedom they were promised as a reward for rebellion, or in the case of colonisation, for subduing indigenous populations, failed to eventuate or were slowly whittled away. That’s a somewhat simplistic summary, but the whittling away is a constant.

    The Charter of the Forest is of particular interest here.
    From Open Democracy — “The Charter of the Forest was the first environmental charter forced on any government. It was the first to assert the rights of the property-less, of the commoners, and of the commons. It also made a modest advance for feminism, as it coincided with recognition of the rights of widows to have access to means of subsistence and to refuse to be remarried.
    The Charter has the distinction of having been on the statute books for longer than any other piece of legislation. It was repealed 754 years later, in 1971, by a Tory government.
    In 2015, while spending lavishly on celebrating the Magna Carta anniversary, the government was asked in a written question in the House of Lords whether it would be celebrating the Charter this year. A Minister of Justice, Lord Faulks, airily dismissed the idea, stating that it was unimportant, without international significance.
    It is scarcely surprising that the political Right want to ignore the Charter. It is about the economic rights of the property-less, limiting private property rights and rolling back the enclosure of land, returning vast expanses to the commons. It was remarkably subversive. Sadly, whereas every school child is taught about the Magna Carta, few hear of the Charter.
    Yet for hundreds of years the Charter led the Magna Carta. It had to be read out in every church in England four times a year. It inspired struggles against enclosure and the plunder of the commons by the monarchy, aristocracy and emerging capitalist class, famously influencing the Diggers and Levellers in the 17th century, and protests against enclosure in the 18th and 19th.
    The Charter has 17 articles, which assert the eternal right of free men and women to work on their own volition in ways that would yield all elements of subsistence on the commons, including such basics as the right to pick fruit, the right to gather wood for buildings and other purposes, the right to dig and use clay for utensils and housing, the right to pasture animals, the right to fish, the right to take peat for fuel, the right to water, and even the right to take honey.”

    I find that to be an inspiring story, but on reflection, it’s actually dispiriting.

    It encapsulates the fate of all freedoms enjoyed by common folk everywhere, when those freedoms clash with the economic demands of the business class. Despite the Charter being a legal decree and having the support of the justice system, enclosure of the commons continued, bit by bit for centuries, and most of the rights of the commoners were slowly extinguished. The same process occurred in the late 20th century in the US with the near destruction of the unions. Rights to union organisation in the US are protected by law, but are not protected by the officers of the law.

    Such is the history of rights and freedoms under liberalism. Not even the law can protect rights and freedoms under liberalism. Or as it was famously put in describing liberal values, All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned …

    So we can certainly have “a thorough root-and-branch review of all aspects of social contract theory” as you suggest, but history suggests that it will come to nought.