Talking about Aged Care in the ALP and the Greens

The following article by Tristan Ewins examines the huge deficit of Aged Care services in Australia; and the need for progressive tax reform to fund a radical improvement in the sector.  The author regrets that Aged Care did not seem to have been prioritised by the Greens in a recent survey: but is hoping this will change with a shift of policy by botht the ALP and the Greens.

by Tristan Ewins

 The Greens are to be applauded for their recent web-video putting the case for a reformed Mining Tax to fund social welfare and services, and to invest for the future.

See: http://greensmps.org.au/mining-tax

But while the Greens provided a survey asking people which areas they think the money from such reform ($100 billion) should be spent, they did not include Aged Care.  I was upset at this for a number of reasons – all related to the urgent need for reform in that area.

Firstly:  We have an ageing population.  Even to maintain current quality of service will require greatly increased funding.

Secondly: Staff including nurses are underpaid, and there are inadequate ratios. This impacts upon residents’ quality of life – as staff need to turn residents in their beds to avoid bedsores; check to ensure residents are eating their meals; facilitate exchange and communications between residents to ensure they remain socially engaged… Not having enough nurses and staff to check that residents eat their meals can result in starvation and literally a physical 'withering away' so that those concerned cannot even stand up or walk.

Thirdly:  The current funding mechanism is grossly unfair: requiring families to sell or take equity out against their homes operates like a regressive tax.  Yet levying more proportionately from the wealthy and the upper middle class is considered ‘taboo’ and referred to as ‘class war’.

Finally:  There are broader questions of quality of life for these most vulnerable Australians that barely register in our public discourse.  Provision of gardens could provide an escape and a diversity of scenery that in its way could radically improve quality of life.  Private rooms could help maintain a sense of dignity, private space and connection with past and one’s identity which could also radically improve quality of life. In the future information technology could be crucial in keeping residents socially and intellectually engaged.

Furthermore where possible residents should be taken on outings to create diversity and quality of life.  And those aged Australians who would be better suited to lower intensity care – eg: hostels – should not be forced prematurely into high intensity care in order to ‘save a buck’.

By the same principle there must be greater assistance for aged Australians to remain living in their homes – if that is what they choose; and for family/carers’ to provide the necessary support without having to make too great a sacrifice.

When the shortfalls are considered: service quality, the funding mechanism, the wages and conditions of staff – and the ageing population is also taken into account – a figure of an additional $3.5 billion/year to be invested in the system   - is not unreasonable at this point, with 'more in the pipeline' for the future.  Though this should be in the context of a funding mechanism which operates like a progressive tax – and enables investment in the quality of life for vulnerable families, and working class families who deserve better after spending a lifetime paying their taxes.   A more robust mining tax could pay for such Aged Care reform.

 My hope is that the Greens and the ALP will respond to this issue and run with it as we approach the next election.   But the Coalition often takes the votes of many aged Australians for granted.  They should also be pressed to ‘put their money where their mouths are’ when it comes to Aged Care.  The bottom line is that this is a matter of basic human rights – and of the acute suffering of our most vulnerable spending their final years in circumstances of public neglect, dehumanisation and despair.

 If any of you reading this are Greens/ALP members I urge you to take this issue up in your branches and via your parliamentarians.  For the Greens especially – their survey should have included reference to this most critical of issues.  Here at ALP Socialist Left Forum I think we would all appreciate an official response.

And if by some miracle there are Conservatives reading this – I ask them to look within their hearts – to their basic underlying humanity – To confront the suffering and neglect experienced by our most vulnerable aged – and to DO SOMETHING.  

In place of tax cuts instead commit funds for aged Australia.

Tristan Ewins

Around March 16 2012 Daniel Pocock at Facebook argued against using MRRT money this way:

“I definitely think the bias should be on construction of long-lasting public infrastructure. That will create jobs, more taxes, and the taxes on salaries should fund the welfare state. I think it is actually dangerous to use taxes from non-renewable resources (like mining) to fund ongoing expenditures (like welfare).”

To which I respond here:

 I appreciate that the MRRT money isn’t going to last at current levels forever.  Hence I can understand Daniel’s concern about being ‘structurally locked in’ to funding Aged Care or other social wage measures via the MRRT.

 On the other hand BOTH investment in infastructure AND welfare measures are necessary - and using the MRRT money could be part of that picture - using MRRT money to 'free up' *other* money for Aged Care.

MRRT money could also be put in a Sovereign Wealth Fund with the profits from that being directed - sustainably - into Aged Care and other services as well.  The point, here, is that Sovereign Wealth Fund investments could provide a source for social wage expenditure for decades into the future.  But since then that fund would be slow to build up it begs the question where the money would come from for Aged Care now. 

That means there would have to be tax reform elsewhere.  I support such an agenda 100% - raising in the vincinity of $20 billion new money a year for programs like Gonski, the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Aged Care and welfare reform.  The question is whether Labor and the government can be convinced of the need for such a far reaching agenda. 

Arguably Labor is now in the position where only a radical policy shift – only a radical ‘delivering of the goods’ – can shift voters’ perceptions and voting intentions.  Radical reform of Aged Care could be part of this ‘big picture’ policy agenda which could turn the tide for Labor again by re-engaging with working class Australia.

Labor‘s Socialist Objective in the 21st century - principles for economic democracy and equity ?

From the author, Geoff Drechsler: The following is an open letter to Australian Fabian News. I posted it here in the hope it will generate some discussion on some of the issues raised in the book 'Looking for the Light on the Hill: Modern Labor‘s Challenges.'

by Geoff Drechsler

One of the 'more' curious aspects of the current debate around modernising Australian Labor is the recurring proposal to abandon the party’s socialist objective, and commit Labor wholeheartedly to a neo liberal economic model. Troy Bramston‘s Looking for the Light on the Hill: Modern Labor‘s Challenges takes up this theme also. This is 'curious' because we are presently witnessing the greatest failing of free market neo liberal economics since The Great Depression, largely stemming from a lack of regulation and governance. So, it is a strange time to be advancing a position supporting free market economics, particularly in a debate about the future of a social democratic party, when one looks at the concrete realities of the current situation.

In this debate, the reality is that the choices being presented are between the principles of economic democracy and of equity of the socialist objective or a neo liberal agenda of privatisation and deregulation that has progressive social policy grafted to it, with the aim that the latter will mitigate the effects of the former. Since the late ‘80s, there has been a shift to the right in terms of economic policy by social democratic governments internationally, and all these experiences have shown the reality that such programs have meant less equitable outcomes for Labor’s people, and led to declining electoral support.

Locally, this approach is exemplified by the recent activities of the current Queensland state government and the former NSW government. Both have driven supporters away electorally, and are unlikely to deliver equitable outcomes in the long term.

Many of the opponents of the socialist objective use warnings of some grim imagined Sovietesque economic basket case, that they claim would be the practical manifestation of any implementation of the socialist objective too. This is disingenuous.

As a social democratic party, participating in politics in an advanced industrial country like Australia, it would be much more instructive to look to the labour and social democratic parties of Europe and their experiences, in regards to economic policy and programs.

In this debate, one country’s experience is informative, Sweden, because the Swedish social democrats developed an alternative economic model that achieved economic growth and equity in the post-war period. And the Swedish social democrats understood that free market economics were incompatible with the interests of working people and social justice, so attempted to develop their own economic model, rather than rely on existing mainstream economics. Just like the first Labor activists in Australia who drafted the original socialist objective here. The Swedish social democrats goal of economic democracy centred around 2 themes-industrial democracy and collective capital formation, which it was envisaged would lead gradually to the transformation of private ownership of the means of production to social ownership.

The Swedish economic model is also interesting because nationalisation as a strategy was rejected early on, and Sweden has also never had a large public sector either.

Practically, this alternative economic model lifted Sweden out of the Great Depression earlier than other advanced economies and, in the post-war period, led to high rates of economic growth and lower rates of unemployment than comparable economies. The Swedish social democrats themselves experienced an unprecedented period of electoral success over the same period.

The end result is a country with a high standard of living, more equitable distribution of wealth and a modern dynamic developed economy. All in all, an economic program worth further examination in any debate around the socialist objective.

We need to see this debate in terms of the need for an economic model that meets both the party’s economic and social goals, and clearly free market economics has already discredited itself, as recent history shows. Sadly, one only needs to look to the US to see the shrinking middle class, the product of a sustained neo liberal economic agenda over the last few decades.

A quote from Keynes’s is probably an apt conclusion at this point-“Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually slaves of some defunct economist.”

Luke Whitington on Equality as a Labor value

above: Grassroots ALP Left Activist, Luke Whitington

The following is an article submitted by left-wing ALP blogger Luke Whitington on what he sees as the abandonment of ideology in the Labor Party.  Luke believes that attempts to distance the ALP and the Left specifically from socialism in the wake of the collapse of Communism in Europe has left the Party and the Left without an 'ideological point of reference.'   Luke is a grassroots ALP member and at this blog we are trying to encourage inclusive and constructive debate on policy, strategy and ideology on the ALP Left.

We encourage debate on these matters here at the blog, and at our Facebook page.  PLS feel welcome to join our Facebook group if you are an ALP Left member or supporter.

see: http://www.facebook.com/groups/102658893193637/

You don’t hear much about equality as a policy aim these days.

You might hear ‘equity’ or ‘social justice’. The PM talks about equality of opportunity.

But I am interested in good old fashioned equality. “Egalite” as the French say.

‘Australian egalitarianism’, the thing that allegedly sets us apart from our European forebears (those of us that have them), and also our Asian neighbours and American cousins. Only the kiwis, our closest siblings, have the same professed national culture of equality, notwithstanding the many cultures that celebrate equality. We seem to have made it a reality more than most societies, yet we are still very unequal, and getting more so every year, as the rich get richer faster than the poor, who are generally just staying poor, if not getting poorer.

I’m interested in equality for many reasons, but essentially it’s just an instinct for me. I chafe at outward manifestations of rank and hierarchy, and I see unquestioned hierarchies of wealth and privilege as the source of so much pain and suffering in our world. My large family taught me about equality of shares, and the importance of the strong being fair and kind to the weak. My schooling was imbued with these values as well, especially at my infants years at Hornsby Heights PS.

I am an inveterate egalitarian. So the works of Hemingway and Orwell which I discovered in high school, my study of ancient Athens and Rome, the twentieth century and of Australian history, my study of historiography, especially Marxist, post-colonial and transnational history has all reinforced my strong belief in the desirability of equality, and the evil consequences of hierarchies.

It has also given me a perspective on what I describe as self-replicating, self-perpetuating hierarchical systems, such as capitalism, nationalism, liberalism and patriarchy.
My political mission, as I see it, in one respect, is to disrupt the accumulation of power in to the hands of fewer and fewer individuals through these self-replicating, expanding systems of control. Einstein wasn’t kidding when he said the most powerful force in the universe was compound interest. The ability of money to attract money, as as social system, agreed to by so many, either willingly or unwillingly, shapes everything we do, and that system keeps expanding, into the farthest reaches of the world. Either for good or ill, it expands, and those with money already continue to accumulate it.
If you want equality you must confront this fact.

So how does that play out in terms of public policy, especially at a provincial level, in NSW State politics?

Well I believe the first thing we need to do is recognise the problem.

Since the end of the Cold War, people in the Labor Party have essentially subscribed to the Fukuyama ‘end of history’ view, helped by Graham Freudenberg’s history of the NSW Branch of the ALP, which deliberately sought to distance Labor from the communist project in order that Labor would in no way go down with that sinking ship. It has left the ALP, including the Left, an ideology free zone. And this has meant there has been no intellectual comeback to the moves to privatise, cut, outsource, eliminate debt, build through public-private partnerships, ‘rationalise’ and corporatise government departments and instrumentalities, ‘monetise’ education services, health services, wildlife and parks services, generally run the State as much like a capitalist enterprise as possible, in the name of efficiency.

The unwitting consequence is of course that all the human relationships, and our relationship with the land and air and water becomes one of exploitation and hierarchy. Everyone gets used to thinking in terms of structures and titles. That guy is a manager. The other is a worker. She’s on this much and I’m on this much because she is higher up, she earns more money for the enterprise. This land is owned by this state or private owned corporation, and therefore is blocked to you, unless you have our permission. These are all socially constructed, highly contingent relationships, which rely on mental architecture that is ‘naturalised’ in a capitalist, nationalist, liberal system. But there is nothing ‘natural’ about any of it. From a sociological point of view, it is robust because the systems are self replicating. But, as we’ve seen in Greece, Rome, Iceland and elsewhere, when people stop believing that they’re part of an imagined community with rules about ownership and control and proper social behaviour, the whole system can collapse in an afternoon.

If we can understand that power is centrifugal then we can start to implement policies that redistribute power, and stop pursuing policies that help the small numbers of men accumulate a lot of it. We can recognise that despite it being regarded as a natural condition of life and society, capitalist property relations, and nationalist political relations are contingent and historical, liable, like all historically contingent and socially constructed structures, to sudden death or slow decay. So, if we wish to perpetuate our society and our culture, and protect our natural resources and our physical bodies, we must act collectively to control and master the impersonal but impressive systems that dictate so much of what we do. Instead of living ‘under’ capitalism, or ‘under’ a Government, let us live ‘over’ capitalism and ‘over’ our Governments. Let our governments be an expression of democratic control over our systems of wealth creation and trade. And if necessary, let our culture and our society be an expression of democratic control over our governments! Because, for many of our citizens, ‘Government’ has not represented anything helpful or useful to their lives, and in fact has been a threat and a danger to their health and wellbeing.


Luke Whitington is an ALP Left grassroots activist and blogger based in New South Wales.

Socialism and ‘saving capitalism from itself’ – A response to Nigel Farndale

above:   the red-flag in a characteristically Australian context

The following is the first-ever post for 'ALP Socialist Left Forum'. To 'kick off debate' this article comprises discussion of British author Nigel Farndale's call for moves to 'save capitalism from itself'. What are your views?   What is the relevance of this debate for how we see ourselves on the Left; and for our policy agenda?   We welcome opinions across the spectrum of the ALP Left - whether more radical or relatively moderate.

ALP Socialist Left Forum is also a Facebook Group and blog open to ALL ALP Left members and genuine supporters. 

The purpose of the Group and the Blog is to discuss Policy, Strategy, Theory - and all matters relevant to the Party. 

Already we are over 200 members at Facebook.  The aim of this blog and the related Facebook Group is to create a space for shared discourse across the entire ALP Left.  If you're an ALP Left member or supporter - that means we want YOUR participation: In the group and in the blog; through formal sumbissions of articles or policy paper for this blog - or just through debate.  If you're a Left member or supporter your participation is welcome. (Pls join)   

To join or examine our Facebook group See: http://www.facebook.com/groups/102658893193637/

In the midst of the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression, British author Nigel Farndale has had published in the Sydney Morning Herald an interesting article exploring the means in which capitalism might be reformed – perhaps ‘to save it from itself’.

 Farndale considers two economic movements in the context of his article. 

Firstly, he considers the ‘decroissance’ (ie: ‘decrease’) movement in France.  This movement denies the centrality of General Domestic Product (GDP) to ‘economic success’ – pursuing ‘quality’ for all rather than mere ‘quantity’. Hence Farndale quotes UBS chief-economist, George Magnus on “the need for a happiness index, or an economic and social well-being index”. Crucially, this perspective seems also to recognise environmental constraints for certain kinds of growth – capitalist or socialist. 

Secondly, Farndale mentions the “PARECON” movement – which promotes ‘participatory economics’ – with worker’s self-management and solidarity, and greater equality for people in their status as consumers as well as workers.  But although otherwise sympathetic, Farndale dismisses the concerns of this movement for equality in terms of economic power as “back to basics communism”.

 Farndale argues that capitalism is a dynamic and evolving system.  Indeed, he contends that ‘capitalism is to thank’ for the welfare state. He seems to argue that only capitalism – through competition and enterprise – can provide growth and recovery. After all – what alternative is there if capitalism ‘has been [with us] through antiquity, feudalism” and so on? And if capitalism is reducible to the existence of markets surely it is inevitable in one form or another…

In response to Farndale, it is important to challenge his conception of both modern capitalism and socialism.

For Marx modern capitalism meant more than the existence of private ownership and markets.  Under the modern capitalism identified by Marx production for profit, and the rise and dominance of a specifically capital-owning bourgeois class came to eclipse the remains of feudalism. It also saw the demise of artisanship and craft labour and the marginalisation of old forms of self-employment.  In their place capitalism brought mass production, mechanisation, deskilling, and an unprecedented commodification of labour.

During this early period wage labour was a matter of subsistence with workers realising little of the increased productivity for themselves. And unlike with artisanship and the craft economy, the product of the worker did not belong to him/her, but was expropriated for sale by the capitalist. (Hence for workers there was – and still remains - a degree of unpaid labour time and effort) This was in addition to the alienation resulting from brutally demanding and unsafe work practices, involving men, women and children on 14 hour days, with night labour, and worse.

 Increasingly, however, the capitalists who expropriated surplus from these workers were seen to develop into a ‘rentier’ class: who by virtue of their wealth could simply delegate matters of management. Of course it wasn’t all like this: there were innovators and visionaries (as there are today); and there were the small capitalists who worked as hard as anyone. These people often went bust in the face of competition; and more particularly in the face of increasing monopolisation. (which meant they could not compete)  While Marxists such as Karl Kautsky appealed to the small-capitalist middle classes that socialism would provide them with security, Conservative, fascist or economically-liberal forces (a mixed bunch) tried to turn their attention against the organised working class as a threat to their survival in the capitalist context.

But the boom and bust cycle – and capitalist crisis more generally - was more than the ultimately ‘creative destruction’ Farndale refers to. There arose structural and functional unemployment – with a ‘reserve army of labour’ exploited to inhibit working class organisation; driving down wages and conditions, as well as inhibiting employment security. There was immense waste as competition forced the premature and continuous modernisation of the means of production - even when existing machinery had not yet been sufficiently utilised.

Only the monopolists with huge reserves of capital could survive in this environment – hastening the concentration of ownership AND power. In the event of cyclical crises immense amounts of capital and produce were destroyed because unprofitable in the marketplace– even where there was massive unmet human demand and need. Inequality of wealth amongst consumers narrowed the market and thus actually inhibited the system.  

Farndale is right, though, that capitalism has evolved. In different guises it survived the 20^th Century in the sense of becoming a HYBRID system.

 On the one hand - From laissez-faire origins and the age of the individual entrepreneur there emerged the joint-stock company, the trust, the rise and interpenetration of industrial and banking capital. There arose what ‘Austro-Marxist’ Rudolf Hilferding called ‘Finance Capital’ – with unprecedented centralisation of ownership, control, and hence political-economic power. Capitalism evolved with the rise of imperialism, and the competition between nation-states and their constituent capitalist classes for control of markets. At various times capitalism has adopted an ‘organised’ form: especially under conditions of total war.

On the other hand post-war hybrid economies saw the introduction of the advanced welfare state; of labour market regulation and rights for organised labour; of the mixed economy – with emphasis on areas of ‘natural public sector monopoly’. In countries such as Sweden and the other Nordics there emerged some of the most extensive welfare states anywhere: where security was combined with efficiency to provide ‘the best of both worlds’. Innovative ideas also included collective capital formation and co-determination.

Even in 20^th Century Australia a compromise developed involving labour market regulation and strong unions, as well as socialised health-care, and ‘natural monopolies’ in energy, gas, water, communications, and other crucial infrastructure. Also there was strategic public ownership in areas like banking and insurance to actually maintain competition and provide for consumers otherwise excluded or discriminated against because of lack of market power. For a long time even political conservatives in Australia - in the Liberal Party and Democratic Labor Party - supported much of this compromise.

 In recent decades these variants have themselves been displaced by resurgent ‘laissez faire’ capitalism. Falling profits have been responded to with assaults on the rights of labour. Exploitation has intensified with a mix of ‘labour market deregulation’ and increasingly draconian limits on the industrial action available to workers. (so much for the ‘liberty’ held high by faux-liberals!) Various forms of ‘corporate welfare’ have emerged. This has involved an effective subsidy through maintained provision of infrastructure, education and training even in the context of corporate tax cuts, and increasingly regressive taxes for workers, consumers and citizens. But the myth of triumphant capitalism has remained partly through the effect of technological innovation on peoples’ lives; and partly because of enduring myths about socialism; and the reality of Stalinist implosion in the late 20^th Century.

 In the short to medium term capitalism must again hybridise if it is to survive, and if it is to provide security and happiness for citizens, consumers and workers it must again incorporate significant socialist aspects.

A mixed system including economic socialisation and democratisation, here, is one possible response. In Sweden socialists attempted to extract a greater share of democratic ownership in the economy as a trade-off for years of restrained wages; as compensation for resulting excess profits in some areas; and as a response to centralisation of private capital ownership. That effort (for ‘Meidner wage earner funds’) failed because it attempted too much too quickly – and because it promoted exclusively wage earner funds rather than funds controlled by ALL citizens. But many of its principles remain valid and instructive.

Many of the problems identified by Marx still exist for modern capitalism. There remains a tendency for profits to fall – though ameliorated by the countervailing impact of qualitative technological leaps in productivity and material living standards. Labour and Nature remain the sources of all material goods: and regardless of objectivist and subjective interpretations of value, the reality of surplus extraction remains – even if it cannot be nailed down with precision. (there is the question of fair return on investment; considering the deferred gratification of small investors; as well as return for innovation and initiative)  

 More recently, with rapidly evolving technologies there has emerged the practice of planned obsolescence: unnecessarily staggered release of technology intended to maximise sales.  

As well as demand management there is a need to capture the forces of innovation and efficiency that are unleashed by competition, while at the same time experimenting with more co-operative forms, and countering the effects of unnecessary and counter-productive cost-structure duplication, and private monopolistic abuse of market power.  Also there is a need to counter demand-crises rising from inequality, and other forms of excess and waste.  Hence strategic re-deployment of natural public monopoly and other appropriate forms of public sector extension.   Finally, collective consumption via the social wage and welfare state provide the most efficient and equitable means for citizens and consumers to access essential services in health, aged care, education, unemployment insurance, and other necessities.

Farndale condemns the idea of some ‘New Man’ he sees as embodied in the Marxism of Stalin and Mao. But for earlier moderate and democratic Marxists such as Karl Kautsky one of the most noble aims of socialism was to democratise culture – to bring culture to the people. Since then we have seen the rise of universal education including a critical element incorporating the humanities and social sciences.  Abundance that Marx could barely dream of has brought music, literature and new information technologies to the masses.   The aim of socialists today is to further that democratisation of culture – through further extension of critical participation in the humanities and social sciences; through a culture of active citizenship; through the development of a participatory media and public sphere.

In bringing our attention to the PARECON and ‘decroissance’ (‘decrease’) movements Farndale does readers a genuine service, however.  Though over the longer term there is still the dream of a more robust democratic socialism, these movements continue to demonstrate some of capitalism’s greatest failings; and show that current-day crises can only be fought off with compromise – with a HYRBID system – as much liberal democratic socialist as capitalist.

Tristan Ewins is a Politics PhD candidate, as well as a long-time freelance writer, having written for many publications including 'The Canberra Times' and the 'Journal of Australian Political Economy'.  He is also a long-term grassroots ALP Left activist.