This bottler of a meme from Chris Graham and New Matilda shows a truth many deny. We got Abbott courtesy of Rudd and Gillard.
Mike said in response, in a comment that was inadvertently spammed, ‘Voters.’ Of course voters voted Abbott and the rest of his crew in. However they did so in a fit of reaction against Labor.
There is a continuity in our politics. We have two parties of neoliberalism who argue over the detail.
The first and arguably most successful governments of neoliberalism (most successful from the point of view of the bosses) were the Hawke and Keating Labor governments.
Hawke and Keating and their neoliberalism made Howard acceptable. Rudd and Gillard and their neoliberalism made Abbott acceptable.
Shorten and co and their neoliberalism are making Abbott potentially re-electable.
The degeneration of Labor from a capitalist workers’ party to a capitalist party (or at least a long way down the road in that direction) has created a vacuum on the left that no new social democratic or revolutionary group has been able to fill. Yet.
A major part of that degeneration has to do with the lack of class struggle in Australia and the class collaboration of the trade union leadership. The idea of struggle is seemingly dead. Its actuality at the moment certainly is.
However the old mole of class struggle and revolution is burrowing away beneath the surface, waiting for the right to time to re-emerge into the light of day.
That is why it is important today to help build the groups on the left like Solidarity and the struggles of the day to keep alive the idea of struggle and be part of it now and for the future.
