Liberalism

What are we doing with a King?

~ Meals Matter ~ 1 Comment

Our forthcoming Republic demands more than banishing a foreign monarch

OUR RECENT PUBLIC holiday to celebrate the King’s birthday reminded yet again that Australia needs to move to a democratic Commonwealth with a grown-up Constitution. The existing arrangements merely sign up Australian colonies under the Crown, rather than make a careful social contract between citizens.

AS a suggestion, a preamble might begin: Finding ourselves in an industrial civilisation, imposed violently on Indigenous nations, we each agree to cooperate in this Commonwealth. Obedient to ourselves, we remain wary of rule from above, whether by kings, ideologies, autocrats or big money. We, the People, organise ourselves. The Constitution inspires, while it sets out formal principles.

As citizens of the Commonwealth, we submit to the rule of law, democratically established by an informed citizenship, and managed by the state (government and bureaucracy), overlooked by a mindful judiciary. And there’s more.

But, before getting too far, a quick note that our King’s Birthday weekend is being followed immediately by the U.S. “No Kings” day. And this leads to an admission that conservatives make a reasonable point about a king or queen possibly providing stability, unlike what’s happening in a famous republic.

Neither a poet, nor a honed legal mind, but a meal-centred scholar, let me propose some essentials for our forthcoming Constitution.

As individuals and social beings, we respect the laws of nature, notably the ecological requirements of generation and preservation. We also obey laws, democratically achieved. That more or less paraphrases seventeenth-century English political philosopher John Locke’s arguments against paternalism, particularly monarchical, and for democracy.

Thinkers in his day understood a Commonwealth as a political economy, with, traditionally, a monarch organising food-centred infrastructure and services, such as irrigation, roads, art, science and welfare.

Replacing kings and queens, Locke envisaged a Commonwealth enhancing citizens’ “natural rights”, which were to life, liberty and property. We achieve well-being through access to food and water, gardens and seashores, to housing and livable towns, to health through good medical care, knowledge gained through schools and research, and all embellished and reinforced through the arts.

The world has changed since Locke, and not only because powerful forces have abstracted “Bills of Rights” from natural realities.

The big problem now – worse than being subject to a king and queen – is Corporations. They rule more intricately, and more ideologically, than ever any monarch.

As explained in Meals Matter (2020), for-profit corporations essentially emerged after the modern republican pattern had been set. Lacking Constitutional legitimacy, corporations nonetheless gained legal support through such devices as “limited liability” and “corporate personhood”. They then appropriated rights, especially “liberty”, which supported “laissez-faire”, “free enterprise”, “neoliberalism” and lately “disruption”.

Corporate capitalist theory reassigned sovereignty to money. The system has now remodeled all in the corporate image, turning universities into businesses, and people into buying-and-selling machines.

Corporations supply our cars, and build the roads. Their advertising funds news dissemination. Their factories supply food, and armaments. This means having to engage closely with government through lobbying, consultation, outsourcing, and two-way personnel exchange. Who “understands” war better than military suppliers?

Invidiously, I mention just one of numerous experts now running the place: former SA Senator and Cabinet Minister, Christopher Pyne. To quote Wikipedia:

Since late 2020, Pyne has taken on roles in the Australian defence industry. He is chairman of the advisory board of Australia’s largest Australian owned small arms and munitions company Nioa, and chairman of the advisory board of the Australian Missile Corporation. He also sits on the board of ASX Listed, Xtek Ltd, a Canberra-based body armour and unmanned Vehicle manufacturer and supplier globally.

Lacking Constitutional status, corporations have captured government. They push politicians to the fringes, where they take photo opportunities. The frustrated electorate are expected to blame … “the government”!

In our serious Constitution, corporations lose “rights” and gain licences or something of the kind.

The loss of the Voice Referendum in Australia a year ago pointed to an uninspiring, irrelevant-seeming Constitution. Additionally, the perceived need for a consultative body highlighted the lack of power of actual citizens, in this case Indigenous people.

In the new Republic, I reckon the democratically-elected parliament might elect a President, who forms a Cabinet and outer Ministry from both elected members and from representatives of registered consultative bodies.

As recognised economic tools with government oversight, corporations might provide recommendations this way. All lobbying would be public through recorded debates and publications of registered representative assemblies.

Likewise, a wide collection of interests make their case. Trade unions make useful representations. And so on, through various advocacy groups, all overseen by a commission.

This commission is appointed by the parliament with reference to the bodies themselves. As well as collating submissions, the commission would support consultative bodies. The commission provides financial and logistical support, where appropriate.

Think of it as like a royal court of old, whose lively gossip, intelligence, opinion, and learning advised the ruler. In ridding ourselves of kings and queens in favour of parliaments, we need to replace not only monarchs, but also their clever courtiers.

The missing analysis: How money trumps people

~ Meals Matter ~ Leave a comment

STEALING FREEDOM, CAPITALISM trounces liberals.

In the recent U.S. Presidential election, whichever side you voted for, money won.

One party was aligned to neoliberal rationality and the other, the victors, represented maverick disruption. Either way, corporations won.

For more than two centuries, money stole liberty from the people. Corporate apologists eroded individual integrity in favour of laissez-faire, free enterprise, and neoliberal capitalism.

After the Cold War, promoting “liberty” for money world-wide, corporations gained neoliberal outsourcing, de-regulation and tax reduction. As a quid pro quo, newly-educated worker/consumers sought various forms of social and cultural liberation.

However, with states captured, rule by supposed rational “elites” has been giving way to rampant oligarchy.

The Democrats and similar parties need to “get back to the grassroots”. More than that, left- and social-liberals must rediscover the Enlightenment understanding of liberty belonging not to corporations but to the “preservation” of all individuals through meal-sharing.

Let the global banquet begin!

For more, read Meals Matter: A radical economics (Columbia University Press, 2020).

Doomed to disruption

~ Meals Matter ~ 1 Comment

Capitalism has abandoned neoliberalism and gone disruptive

FOLLOWING perestroika and glasnost and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, capitalism’s boosters trumpeted “liberty” worldwide. Demanding liberation for all, a new Pax Americana would make everywhere safe for corporations.

Under big money’s global message of freedom, such left-liberal political leaders as David Lange, Paul Keating, Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Helen Clark, Kevin Rudd and Barack Obama pushed progressive cultural reforms with particular support for racial, women’s, gay and other rights.

The trap was that the “rights revolution” in such areas as feminism and multiculturalism provided cover for the corporate capture of government. Under the banner of neoliberalism, the same leaders pushed through deregulation, fiscal “rectitude”, lower corporate taxes, “flexible” job markets, outsourcing, lower trade “barriers”, individual responsibility, etc.

In the flurry of freedom, cultural liberation was outmatched by the bolstering of corporate power.

With governments now firmly in its grip, capitalism moved from neoliberalism to “disruption”. Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg instructed: “Move fast and break things”. Powerful corporate leaders from Zuckerberg, Musk and down asserted their sacred right to do what they wanted – AI, rockets to Mars, armaments, opioids, drill, baby, drill…

Writing about the “disruption machine” in the New Yorker in 2014, Jill Lepore observed that innovation had become “the idea of progress stripped of the aspirations of the Enlightenment, scrubbed clean of the horrors of the twentieth century, and relieved of its critics”.

Long-time Silicon Valley reporter Kara Swisher (Washington Post, 15/02/24) had “watched founders transform from young, idealistic strivers in a scrappy upstart industry into leaders of some of America’s largest and most influential businesses.” With few exceptions, “the richer and more powerful people grew, the more compromised they became.”

Upon Trump’s election as President, digital CEOs rushed for an audience, Swisher reported:

“There was a heap of money at stake, and they wanted to avoid a lot of damage the incoming Trump administration could do to the tech sector. … they also wanted contracts with the new government, especially the military. … More than anything, they wanted to be shielded from regulation, which they had neatly and completely avoided.”

The “invisible hand” of money unleashed disruption (and corruption), and broke pay parity, democracy and civility (not forgetting nature). Along with that, fewer and fewer billionaires supported left-liberal causes, preferring to boost their own fortunes by backing think-tanks and increasingly authoritarian ideologies.

Right-wing populists blamed the “politically correct”, the “woke”, university-educated “elites”, and mysterious liberals who controlled the “deep state”. Raising the “cloud of confusion”, Murdoch opinion-leaders baited their opponents until seeming actually to believe environmental degradation was an esoteric belief, and supporting women of colour impoverished white men.

Historian Ellen Schrecker has charted how the unprecedented invigoration of American universities during the Sixties eventually rebounded, when the right both attacked universities’ “liberalism” and corporatised them (in her studies of universities’ Lost Promise (2021) and Lost Soul (2010)).

Those endeavouring to save the welfare state, worker rights, universities, democracy and the environment have been tempted to display militancy. Israel’s brutality has now prompted campus protests in the Sixties manner.

Caution is warranted, nonetheless. Given how abusive politics suits aspiring demagogues, supporters of left/progressive/Green politics should prefer exposing the sin of over-commitment over indulging in it. Rather than shout back, the liberal left could usefully resort to honesty and openness, and appreciate complexity.

Arguing the benefits of civilised society also means understanding politics more deeply than as just warfare (“class struggle” already proved insufficient).

Contesting the authoritarian appeal of “the strong always win” means re-discovering lost principles. Countering disruption requires a return to something more like Enlightenment political philosophy, seized and shattered by capitalism.

The pre-capitalist basis of radicalism is described in Meals Matter: A radical economics through gastronomy (Columbia UP, 2020). The book also shows how money’s polemicists borrowed selectively from liberal-democratic arguments, and trampled on them.

Grassroots change comes from care and conversation at and about meals (at their different levels)

Australian Blak activist Natalie Cromb has just advocated, with “violence all around us”, for “reimagining our communities to be as they should be – caring, nurturing, healthy, happy and with enough”.

The centre can be radical. Look what happened at the recent Australian election

~ Meals Matter ~ 1 Comment

THE POLITICALLY COMMITTED often decry the “centre” as wishy-washy, and as cosying up to the other side. But, being less ideological, the centre can be more radical.

Just one piece of evidence is the recent electoral success of “community independents”, whose pronounced liberalism produced policies more radical than either main party, left or right.

Liberalism? Corporate capitalism has rewritten our political language (chronicled in Meals Matter), and that necessitates being more open to rethinking liberalism.

The liberalism of its often-acknowledged founder, John Locke, tends to live on with so-called “small-l” or “left-” or “social-” liberals, who have multiplied over recent decades.

They eschew extremes, and yet have become such a threat that the right’s “culture warriors” have ridiculed them variously as “chardonnay socialists”, “latte liberals”, “smoked salmon socialists”, “gauche caviar”, “Toskana-Fraktion”,  “Salonsozialist”, “yuppies”, “politically correct”, “chattering classes”, “bobos”, “educated classes”, “liberal elite”, “inner-city greenies”, “mad left”, and on and on.

These liberals are committed to everyday, kitchen-table reality, which is perceived through practical experiences and face-to-face conversations, and informed by learning, with a consequent embrace of equality, tolerance, and democracy. Combined with the rejection of high authority and ideology and other extremes, these liberals are definitively radical in the sense of getting back to material basics.

The recent rise of so-called “teal” independents has been explained as “professional women” rejecting “merely” climate inaction, political corruption, and mistreatment of women.

They are better identified as genuine liberals, unimpressed by the Coalition’s obfuscations on global warming and women. Disturbed by political corruption and capture, they are determinedly “community” candidates, and I have already described their “kitchen table conversations” – grassroots exercises in interpersonal respect and participatory democracy.

Community independents belong to a centre that’s definitely not a weak compromise, not at least in terms of climate action, political integrity and gender equality.

Their policies are reliant on facts and expertise, not ideology, suggesting radicalism that’s not extreme, but literally getting to the root of the matter (deriving from Latin radix radicis).

Max Chandler-Mather

Likewise, the Greens would appear to have somewhat furled their wilderness and class war wings, and boosted their liberal radicalism. “People have lost faith in a political system that puts the interests of a few big corporations ahead of the rest of us,” according to Max Chandler-Mather. So, he ran “the biggest grassroots campaign in Greens’ history”, and won the Brisbane seat of Griffith.

Unusually for an Australian campaign, they established themselves as community carers by, for example, building a community garden on Defence land being disposed of to a developer. Their volunteer teams used some of the garden’s produce when helping out during covid lockdowns and after floods.

Historically, the major Australian parties – Labor and Liberal – represented the interests of the working class and bosses, respectively, although both always contained liberal elements.

Labor outgrew the class war with the Whitlam revolution of 1972, although its liberal leadership then fell in with neoliberalism. Labor’s agenda remains hypnotised by “jobs, jobs, jobs”, which is sunny way to support corporate capitalism.

We might be lucky, and the new Labor government might get behind the common-wealth of health, social justice, infrastructure, environment, education, research and the arts. But that means standing up to capitalist rule by profit.

Perhaps Labor needs to become the Labourer/Worker/Housekeeper/Carer/Professional/ Artisan/Farmer/Small businessperson/LGBTIQA+/Immigrant/Aged/Disabled/Indigenous/Abused/Student/Etc Party. A new name is not easy to come up with… Perhaps “Commonwealth Party”?

The “Liberal” name is already taken by the occasionally liberal party of Robert Menzies, but whose main demand is “freedom” for money, and which now has to choose between becoming a “broad church” or a reality-inventing, fact-denying, cynical rump.

Likewise, the National Party has to decide between being a Country Party, concerned with increasingly perilous bread-and-butter rural issues, or Trumpian authoritarians.

Perhaps the party system is doomed, anyway, as a relic of hierarchies with “party discipline” under the Leader, announcing policy, allocating ministries, and making “captain’s picks”.

Rather than rely on backroom deals, sloganised messaging and last-minute hi-vis pageantry, Members and Senators might deliberate on the floor of parliament. Now that’s an idea.

The community independents have shown the way. And let’s not forget that a thriving democracy in a complex society requires a highly informed citizenry, and therefore strong public education, responsible media, and a committed and open public service.

With determination, it’s possible that a new centre might hold, and a radical centre at that.

To repeat, by “centre”, I do not speak of midway between two extremes, but caring, honest, informed and pragmatic “liberalism”.

Australian Republican Movement, listen! We’re the “head of state”

~ Meals Matter ~ 1 Comment

THE AUSTRALIAN REPUBLICAN Movement has proposed a two-step model for appointing a “head of state” to replace Queen Elizabeth (or King Charles, Andrew, Harry or whomever). Of all people, republicans shouldn’t cling like this to the monarchical archetype.

The simple fact is that the head of state is (or should be) the people. We are in charge. Our appointment merely requires simple assertion: Australia belongs to the people! The #AusRepublic proposal betrays nostalgia for hierarchical rule by our betters – “something higher than the politicians”, when it is actually us.

According to the ARM model, the head of state would be little more than “ceremonial”, that is, perform as pseudo-royalty. In terms of power, this official could merely ask members of the House of Representatives who has their “confidence” to form a government. If that’s no-one, the HOS calls an election. Parliament could do that by itself.

So far, Australia has largely got away with a mediocre Constitution, no Bill of Rights, and little by way of a popular or even elite understanding of civics, liberal theory, political philosophy, jurisprudence, republicanism, or however you want to approach the requisite knowledge.

A republic is not achieved by merely replacing a powerful, foreign “figurehead’ with a powerless one. However, getting an Australian republic even half right would require massive research, contemplation, education, inspiration and debate.

The inadequate comprehension around these parts showed up, as Marion Maddox pointed out, when the 1998 Constitutional Convention opted for recognition in the Preamble of some supreme “generic God”. Come on, the supreme national authority is the people, with only the natural economy/ecosystem more formidable.

Since at least the 1930s, when William Cooper petitioned for enfranchisement, direct representation in parliament, and land rights, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander campaigners have sought serious constitutional recognition, with Treaty pressures escalating from the 1970s.

That might sound gradual. Discussion has scarcely even emerged on the constitutional status of corporations. As I show in Meals Matter: A radical economics through gastronomy, corporate apologists have got away with claiming the human right of “liberty” for businesses, while denigrating government by the people. No republic is wanted, when money runs things.

A republic would require renewed investigation of familiar topics – the role of the judiciary, States’ rights, taxation, border security, health, education, etc. – but often in unfamiliar ways. A proper democracy requires a real commitment to education, research and the arts, and not just training, tech and the leisure industries, for example.

But we’re a long way from a fundamental understanding when even political philosophers fail to recognise that John Locke argued his liberal case in basic economic terms, i.e., the human need to eat and to cooperate on that within nature. My next book will cover more of that.

PS: Governors’ residences could be put to good use as retreats for Australians of the Year, poets laureate, writers, playwrights, thinkers … generating more discussions like Grace Tame’s than the present Governor General’s. Yarralumla’s State Dining Room could experiment with banquets, given that’s what political economies are centred on (again, see Meals Matter).