I’ll let you in a dirty little secret of mine. I subscribe to the Australian Financial Review. I think all serious revolutionaries with a bit of money should.
Why? After all, it is the bosses’ paper.
And that’s the reason I subscribe. It is the bosses’ paper.
The AFR reflects the concerns and debates within the ruling class over the class issues of the day. Unlike the crass reaction of The Australian it has a more nuanced and reflective analysis of Australian capitalism.
That makes it both more dangerous and more informative than any other newspaper in Australia for those who want to know what the class enemy is thinking.
What are the current issues and debates it is dealing with?
There’s the crises of capitalism – my words not theirs – in Europe and the US.
There’s the magic pudding of China and whether it can last for Australian capitalism.
And as always there are the constant refrains about poor labour productivity and how to increase it.
And let’s not forget the need to ‘refine’ industrial relations laws to, you know, make it even harder for workers to strike and to restrict and punish unions even more.
The ‘spike’ in industrial action has been getting a lot of attention, as has debate about the bourgeoisie’s best response or responses. (I put spike in inverted commas because it is like an occasional heartbeat in a flat-lining patient.)
Often there is debate in the pages of the paper of the way forward for the bourgeoisie. So social democrat and Keynesian John Quiggin gets a good hearing, with an article every few weeks.
This reflects I think that section of the bourgeoisie worried about austerity and adopting policies that will drive what is basically a successful capitalist economy like Australia’s into the ground with attacks on government spending, public services and public servants in the name of some Thatcherite nirvana, destroying the very success it seeks to provide.
The AFR trots out bitter former Labor leader Mark Latham every few weeks to spew forth his bile about Labor politicians. They deserve it but for reasons far removed from Latham’s vitriol.
But, even then, occasionally he provides rare insights into the machinations within the ALP and its complete degeneration into just another party of capital. While that might be unwitting on Latham’s part it can sometimes be a good read.
Then there are the regular employed journalists whose work ferrets out the truth of capitalism in ways advantageous to socialists. Every day there are gems of disclosure, real insights into the debates and discussions at the table of the robber barons.
But when it comes to the working class, the band of hostile brothers is united. When Alan Joyce locked out QANTAS workers the Fin was full of the ruling class support for his actions and the development of lockouts as a way forward in the fight against workers. Page after page supported Joyce (with the occasional dissenter, like John Quiggin, whose defence of full employment and workers in the Fin is admirable.)
This support tells me something important about the class struggle in Australia. After 30 years of class collaboration the bosses feel pretty confident.
They may not expect Labor to deliver everything they want but the ALP’s links to the trade union bureaucracy – in the main the agents today of capitalism in the workforce – make it a valuable partner in developing and implementing the neoliberal agenda and thus laying the groundwork for an Abbott Liberal government.
More personally the material the AFR runs on tax and tax policy, often including the battles between the ATO and business over tax matters, are far and away the best reporting on tax matters in Australia. I learn a lot about the bourgeoisie’s tax thinking and disagreements and which company has a billion dollar fight with the Tax Office when I read the Fin.
I don’t want to make a fetish of this. It is after all the bosses’ paper. It is a good way of discovering, as Marx put it, the motives behind the motives.
But once you realise that, it is a useful paper for those who want to get some sense of what the capitalist class is thinking. That, and listening to their paid parrots in Labor and the Coalition, and watching and understanding their attacks on unions and workers.
And just to point out to Cut and Paste in The Australian, the important thing is to learn the lessons from the AFR for the coming battles, not to be seduced by them. When the class struggle erupts, forget the Financial Review and join the workers on the picket line. Their side is organised. So should ours be. Their side has its newspaper. So should ours. Organise, organise, organise, knowing that the AFR and the other bourgeois papers are our class enemy, not our friend.
Via:
No comments:
Post a Comment