Private provision is a public menace

Ben Spies-Butcher presents a persuasive case that the increased weight of private provision of "superior goods" of health, education and retirement incomes, along with housing, is overall costly and damaging. More public provision in these areas is socially beneficial, and less costly as well as being better for low income people. His critique describes the government decisions that have driven this shift, and their effects, without looking at the reasons why governments have pursued a set of policies which can only be considered irrational on the basis of the evidence in the article. Ben S-B does however point out that this policy approach invariably favours the most well-off, both as consumers of the services in question, and in making profits out of their provision.

The issues that Ben S-B leaves me pondering are:
1. Since this policy shift has been so detrimental and irrational considering the interests of the majority in a democracy, why is there not a more coherent and vocal challenge to this policy?
2. Funding public provision - most of the revenue is raised federally, as are most of the tax rules, policies etc which favour private provision. Most of the responsibility for public provision (except for retirement incomes) is state. So even IF a state government wanted to return to favouring public provision over private, it could not reallocate the funding to enable this to happen. Just read the public hearing into NSW Education and Training estimates, and the savings that the NSW Government is demanding from teachers to get an idea of the budget challenges to public education.
3. How can the advocates of public provision come together with people who would most benefit from an increase in the weight of public provision, to develop demands to achieve it?
4. What are the reservations people have about public provision, and how can they be addressed? I think that one legitimate reservation is the difficulty of having complaints addressed and problems solved in a bureaucratic public system. Accountability is as important an issue as funding.
Now the "market" is clearly failing as a system for managing production, maybe now is a good time to get people thinking more about the ideas raised in Ben Spies Butcher's article - "restocking the economic toolkit".

Quality child care should not be a market risk

Watching Insight on SBS - Holding the baby - there seems to be general agreement amongst the researchers that almost all parents would rather not have their babies in care at under 6 months, and amongst the child care workers present that a ratio of 1 carer to 3 children would be ideal up to the age of 2 years. Unfortunately I was interrupted before the end of the discussion on how to fund childcare - but I did hear one audience member advocating that all funding go to individual parents as cash for them to spend as they wished. I couldn't disagree more - this only fosters private provision for profit. Standards are better enforced if community based care is publicly funded to provide it and supervised by parents on democratic governing bodies. Then parents advocating improvements in centres are advocating on behalf of all children, rather than behaving as paying customers/consumers pursuing only their own interests - and only having the power of changing centres, disrupting their child even further if they are dissatisfied. Work based and family day care could also be funded, but cash to parents to spend in the market does not produce quality, in the most important aspect - reduced ratios. It would be a shame if the market had to be discredited by collapses and scandals in child care the way the financial market is currently being discredited. The market is too risky to care for our kids.

Who will do a better job than the bankers?

How can we answer the question WHO will do a better job than the bankers and lenders who have caused the economic crisis? First I think we need to understand WHY does credit / capital get allocated where it does? Why do the prices of currencies, credit and real estate bounce around so much? Why should they send production into a spin, when the productive resources - labour, machinery, land, buildings, raw materials, etc are there just the same?

So WHO are these people deciding where to make production happen, what kind of production it should be? And why do THEY get to decide? If their decisions can be so bad for everyone else (and even themselves in some cases) - then who else could decide? And how? How more democratically?

If democratic economic decision making would take a lot of time - think - how many people are employed in finance, accounting and management to make those decisions? Share their hours around the workforce, and we could all be paid at least 1 day a week to take the time to participate in planning and deciding...

And if the loss makers are to be in effect nationalised, why not nationalise the lot - losers and profiteers? It would simplify and streamline the regulation of the financial system, and give a lot more flexibility to what voters could demand of governments (including tackling climate change, more public transport, renewable energy) and a lot less income to the excessively rich!

It's very frustrating to see these powerful people messing up, and even if a few of them get into trouble, really they are causing a lot more trouble and suffering for workers losing their homes, losing their jobs... people who just want to live their lives without having power over other people. But if we don't organise to take their power away and run things differently, then they'll just sort out the mess on their own terms, and rerun the show again...

Renewing Labor locally

An excerpt from Darcy Byrne's inaugural address upon his election to Leichhardt Municipal Council.
"As a Councillor I am determined to contribute to the renewal of a Labor Party that
is grass roots in structure, radical in intent and unwavering in its commitment to
fighting for equality...

I am proud to have put forward positive policies during the campaign and I will be
working hard as a Councillor to implement that agenda.

We need a big increase in sporting fields for our kids, a new parking system for our
residents, to build new affordable housing for our workers and pensioners and to
find practical ways to strengthen our sense of community by bringing all our
residents together.

I will continue to get out into the community to put these ideas forward because the
only way to represent the community is to be part of the community and I look
forward to seeing you all along the way. "

Darcy's address silent on a couple of major points of local opposition to the NSW government - saving Callan Park from take over by Sydney Uni, and the planned construction of a $150million extra bridge over Iron Cove. What about light rail and public transport? If Darcy cannot bring himself to unequivocally oppose the unpopular policies of the state Labor government, then I don't think he will make much progress in renewing labour as a grass roots radical force. His concern with equality is however a refreshing and welcome one. Let's see.

It will take more than the Wall Street crash to end capitalism

The Wall Street crash had to come, with the USA's extraordinary triple balloon of debt - household real estate debt (working class debt), government debt (in the trillions and rising to pay for the Iraq war) and the balance of trade deficit. There is a sudden wide opening for making the case for socialism, for democratic working class planning of the economy. This article explains it well.

"Capitalism is a system which works by way of periodic economic and social tsunamis that leave in their wake tremendous destruction in many millions of lives. A manic-depressive system which, like its equivalent in individual psychologies, plunges from crazy heights to destructive, paralysing depths.

'The Market' has been elevated to the place in the social and economic theology of the ruling class occupied in religion by God. It is a harsh and relentless, and sometimes a very cruel and destructive, God, to be sure; but also one who essentially looks out for human beings and continuously bestows a tremendous stream of gifts on us."...

"One of the great lessons of the 20th century is that there is no such thing as an insoluble crisis for capitalism. Given time, given the chance to hold on tight, given the lack of a politically coherent alternative to itself, it recovers. Economic devastations, immensely tragic for vast numbers of people and even for individual capitalists, can, paradoxically, clear the way for capitalist economic revival. The manic-depressive system climbs out of the trough and begins a rise to peaks from which it will again, in time, plunge down. The cycle goes on." Unless a socialist movement is built to stop it! There is another pressing consideration which socialists, anti-capitalists need to integrate into the critique of the crash, and that is the inability of the "market" to reduce carbon in the atmosphere.

So - now we look for the points at which working class people could see that collectively we could assert more rational, beneficial decisions for humanity if we had the power, and not the system that allows capital and traders of capital to gamble with our future.

Of which stories am I a part?

I first came across this question posed in a book called Leadership for social change. Alan Johnson quoted A MacIntyre, who I have since discovered is a Scottish philosopher. Here is a paraphrase of this part of MacIntyre's view, which is consistent with the meaning Alan Johnson gave it - "So basically, to answer the question of what I as an individual should do, one must first know of which stories I am a part, and what my roles in those stories require. Hence, the conception of an individual's good is embedded in the histories in which the individual himself is embedded. The narrative unity of a life, then, is the unity of the narrative which is an individual life. MacIntyre writes: "To ask 'What is the good for me?' is to ask how best I might live out that unity and bring it to completion." Only this way can my life as a whole be intelligible, and only thus does it constitute a unity."

This seems to me a powerful help in understanding why not many people are choosing to be socialist activists in Australia right now, and why people who do begin to engage in left politics might decide on the path of careerism rather than democratic mobilisation. As less people live out a socialist tradition, a rank and file working class tradition, the story is less visible, the practices and values that comprise it are harder to learn, and harder to share. I just came across Teo-lohi's post here and explanation of MacIntyre adds depth to the original reference I read. Teo-lohi also explains the connection of the story with practice and values. MacIntyre may well not be writing about dissent, rebellion or revolution (feminists have criticised him for not recognsing the power behind certain practices) but I would argue that dissent, self-organisation against power are also practices, with values, and stories, a conception of history or at least historical possibilities. In fact this helps me to make more sense of what are referred to as internicine and sectarian differences on the left. These differences actually reflect different stories, about humanity, history, the path to liberation and the role that each group sees for itself in that history/ narrative, though these differences can be difficult to make explicit, transparent.

MacIntyre may hold completely different values from me, see himself in a different story, but he does see the individual as part of a collective story - a person in a human, social, collective context. To me that is an important clue - how as socialists can we bring to life the story that people could be part of, without clutching at horror stories as the Stalinists have, of USSR, China, Vietnam, fantasy stories Cuba, Venezuela etc, or being stuck in very old stories unlinked to any current continuing practice - Paris Commune, 1917, Barcelona, Hungary 1956, etc.

MacIntyre also throws another light on meaninglessness of post-modernism. How are people to see themselves as part of a story, if there is no more narrative / history to be part of, and to change?

Why not give a proxy for the NRMA AGM - CO2

The NRMA makes an attractive offer "You will go into the draw for the chance to win one of 40 Caltex StarCash cards worth $500 each just by;

* appointing a proxy to attend and, if required, vote on your behalf if you are unable to attend the meeting, or
* by attending the 2008 AGM in person."

The more I think about it - the worse this seems, so I wrote to the NRMA...

"I want to appoint a proxy. I would appoint a proxy if I could find out other NRMA members apart from the Board Members who will be attending, and who are making a commitment to represent concerns that correspond to mine. The MyNRMA website is sufficiently advanced, with a member login system, to provide members an online forum for stating the concerns that they would raise at the AGM, and offering to represent members via their proxies, but I cannot find this on MyNRMA website. This would be the democratic way to promote a higher level of membership participation in the AGM. A possible petrol voucher to persuade me to give my proxy to a current Board member (it's pretty impractical for me to find anyone else with any clout to give my proxy to) on the other hand is not democratic - more a bribe with a tiny bit of largesse from those who already run the NRMA and control its resources.

And the concerns I would like to have raised? Although I am a motorist and NRMA member, I don't WANT to be a motorist to the extent that I am. I am rather a citizen who needs to travel, and who is concerned about many issues, especially the urgent matters of global warming, environmental sustainability and inequality. I would rather see the NRMA advocating better transport in general, including public transport and bicycle transport, and making the case for much, much more investment in public transport, instead of prioritising advocacy of measures to make it easier for the driver of the private vehicle to continue making more use of a private vehicle. Greener private vehicles yes, but public transport would make a much bigger difference to CO2 emissions.

Until I can find a suitable proxy, I will not be appointing one."

Policy before position would be ideal in local politics

Last weekend’s local government election reminded me of the debacle of the previous Leichhardt Council mayoral appointment. I talked to Labor Councillor Robert Webb outside the Orange Grove booth on Saturday. I told Robert how outrageous I had found it when Labor kept the Greens out of the Mayor's position 4 years ago, by doing a deal with the Liberals (and Community Independents). Why didn't Labor share the Mayor with the Greens, I asked. Oh they were impossible to negotiate with, we tried, he said. At the Council meeting to elect the Mayor 4 years ago, I had also asked Green candidate for Mayor, Jamie Parker - what are you proposing to Labor? Why don't you stand up in Council and make a last open appeal? He didn't. I asked Robert - why were the terms of the negotiations not made open? It would help the voter, such as myself, to make sense of what was going on? He shrugged and said that the Liberal Mayor couldn't do anything that Labor didn't want in any case. I said that wasn't the point.

I left the conversation with Robert with a dawning realisation - the negotiations between the parties over Mayor had most likely been negotiations over position, not policy. Who would get the position for how much time? If the negotiations had been over policy - then it would have been easy to make them public. If the negotiations had been over policy - it would be a break from what appears to be current standard ALP practice. If the negotiations had been over policy, then voters would be able to make informed choices about who to support, on the basis of policy.

It looks as though the Greens may have the numbers to be Mayor this time, unless it gets drawn out of a hat against them. And it may be that they feel very keen to get pay back from last time. It may be redundant to be trying to work out how Greens and left Labor Councillors, such as Darcy Byrne, might work together on LMC this time round.

However - it is clear that Greens are winning supporters from amongst traditional Labor voters.

I think there are 3 reasons for this
- Labor Governments at both levels, are running policy agendas that are barely distinguishable from the Liberals, they do not stand up to capital and privilege for working class people, the social good, the greater good.
- the role of mobilised trade unions, and social movements, is weak and even more weakly reflected in the ALP as an independent force from Labor Governments (with the exception of the electricity privatisation issue in NSW, and an ambiguous Federal result from the anti-WorkChoices campaign, in that Labor was elected, but provisions of WorkChoices continue to be used, and Gillard’s new draft IR provisions are anti-union and anti-employee).
- the Greens are not beholden to justifying the unjustifiable acts of any serving governments or ministers.

I think the most productive pathway for left ALP members in relation to the Greens, is to engage in open policy dialogue, actually seeking to build local movements and activism in alliance with Greens, and to attempt to defuse competition among councillors for positions, and "bureaucratic level" (as it were) hostilities. What the ALP has in its favour over the Greens is that it has an organised working class social base - but this is being eroded on many fronts, and is an advantage that can only be preserved if that activist base is rebuilt, reengaged by leaders who stand for policy and principle. Competition for positions is a secondary concern to rank and filers who care about social progress, and is a central part of the turn off from politics by young people, in my opinion.

The Greens appeal because of their apparent policy commitments. The weaknesses in the Greens policies are many, especially on the economy, capital and class, in my opinion - but the weaknesses are not so obvious because the Greens are not in a position to enact policy, and because they are not engaged by anyone from the left, in policy debates that explore these weaknesses.

I think that the strengths of the Greens and the strengths of left Labor COULD combine to rebuild a progressive movement and a renewed left IF the movement of the rank and file, and policy and principle were the guiding motives, and issues of position, organisational and factional allegiance were subordinated. (Gary Moore's 15 Sept letter to the SMH expressed a similar caution). It would be hard work - it wouldn't be smooth - but it is a project that I could commit to if there were others also committed to it. I think that John Kaye's work in NSW Parliament on electricity privatisation, and the co-ordination between his efforts and Power to the People are the example of a positive way for left/rank and file Labor and Greens to relate. Where there are Greens who do not have John Kaye's instincts, then it should be possible to make open proposals to try to draw Greens in that direction so that Green supporters can see the limitations of some of their representatives.

Rights at work for construction workers

Sign up for rights on site - http://www.rightsonsite.org.au/ . Not too many people have high expectations of the Rudd Government getting rid of anti-union laws. Construction workers fighting for their rights need our support. If there is a future for an active workers movement in Australia, that can buck Labor conservatism, then this campaign could be one of the catalysts.

It’s the socio-economic inequality stupid…

In the first national assessment of literacy and numeracy (pdf) in Australia, results released Friday 12 September, the results were predictable.

The Northern Territory has highest proportion of indigenous students, in the lowest income bracket in the country, and NT has the lowest results. Whereas the ACT , where the population is uniformly better educated and comfortably off scored the highest overall results.

The stated aim of the tests are to identify schools in need of more funding and assistance to improve their results. Will this funding be additional $ in the education budget? Will it be provided by dismantling the system set up by Howard which rorts school funding in favour of many wealthy private schools? Or will $ be reallocated from high scoring public schools to low scoring public schools?

The new NSW Education Minister Verity Firth says how happy she is with NSW results - results achieved by NSW school teachers. Will the NSW Government stop undermining the staffing system which delivered these results?

And most importantly - what will be done to address the general social inequality underlying the unequal results across the country? It's not fair to place all the pressure on the education system to change problems created by the economic and political system.

How special does your school make you feel?

This school yard is the main recreation space at this school. What do you think of it? Would your opinion be different knowing that this indoor pool belonged to the school across the road?

Would you feel special if your parents could afford to send you to the school with the pool?

NSW ALP Conference can call Labor Government to account

When Michael Costa and Morris Iemma both left the NSW Government on Friday 5 September, it was the culmination of their failure to privatise NSW electricity generation in the face of a huge vote against taken by NSW ALP State Conference in May. No NSW Labor Government will be in a hurry to defy State Conference again. For the first time in living memory the NSW Premier and Deputy Premier were both from the "left" faction, although Nathan Rees formally declared himself "unaligned" in order to take up his new position as Premier. On Friday and over the weekend it seemed to be a good moment for supporters of public ownership, union rights and public services to press on and intensify all campaigns for improvements from NSW Labor. By Monday new Premier Nathan Rees was making it clear that he would 'not be raising taxes to fix the state's economic woes, but has labelled government departments "absolutely ripe for reform". Mr Rees's new cabinet team will tomorrow be briefed on the grim economic outlook that has put the state's triple-A credit rating at risk.' according to the Sydney Morning Herald. This is a critical moment for Unions NSW under the leadership of John Robertson. They can claim a lot of credit for the defeat of privatisation of electricity generation, and of the Howard Government at the last federal election. How will they react to Rees declaration of intent to cut the public sector and cap pay rises below the rate of inflation?

No education revolution

What are all the forces pressing Labor governments to pursue education policies to further intensify inequality and competition at all levels from kindergarten to university? Ross Gittins calls the Rudd government's policy "change without change". Rudd won't redistribute from the rich schools, Gillard won't declare a quality public education system to be a common good. What are they left with for an education revolution but computers and increased competition accompanied by a good deal of union bashing?

And union bashing it is - Peter Hartcher, editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, cheers Rudd on in his article Pugilistic Prime Minister has picked a classy fight. Today on ABC radio I heard Heather Ridout of the Business Council lamenting that NSW is so far behind Victoria which has given power to hire and fire to school principals, and is making all TAFE funding contestable. These are all mechanisms that put more power in the hands of specific education managers, but it will be the power to manage a more constrained budget and respond to more scrutiny and external demands with insufficient resources, i.e. to pass on the costs of improvement to teachers and other support staff within their jurisdiction.

So now Verity Firth is the new NSW Education Minister. I might like to hope that she will pull back from Della Bosca and Coutts-Trotter's dismantling of the teacher transfer system, and at least return to the endorsement that new Deputy Premier Tebbutt made as Education Minister - that the transfer system guarantees staffing for hard to staff schools. But - even if Firth were to withdraw the changes to the transfer system - the direction of government policy is set. Look at the national picture too.

Hartcher does make some points which do reflect parent's experience of schools - that poor teachers hang on as teachers, and that many teachers find parent questions to be an unwelcome intrusion. Many Teachers Fed members are also parents and are also aware of this problem. What can we propose? We know that teacher education and qualifications are vital, and that other support schemes such as mentoring and reduced face to face loads early in a career all help. But there are also some immediate conflicts of interest between teachers, parents an students in the system. These are very hard to face up to directly, in an education system that makes parents and students into customers or consumers making market choices rather than citizens concerned for the common good. But it is teacher unions that are best placed to re-shape the relationship by looking for ways to engage parents and students as fellow citizens of the education system, even though this would require teachers collectively to sometimes support students and parents who may have complaints.

Back to public education as a public good - yes Back would be forwards!

The power and wealth of one - $13.39 million a year

Telstra profits, executive pay and charges are all on the up, up, up - http://www.smh.com.au/news/biztech/charges-go-up-for-landlines/2008/08/15/1218911510562.html
"Sharemarket analysts estimate the $12 a year increase in home telephone access charges alone will boost Telstra's annual after-tax profit by about $20 million - based on an average monthly charge of about $27." A couple of days earlier The Australian reported "TELSTRA chief executive Sol Trujillo has increased his annual remuneration by 13.7 per cent to $13.39 million. Mr Trujillo's package totalled $13.39 million in 2007/08, up from $11.78 million in the previous year, statements released by the company today show." http://www.australianit.news.com.au/story/0,24897,24174570-15306,00.html. And at the same time Telstra is reported by the Sydney Morning Herald to have a (no longer) secret plan to bust unions, picking on low union membership areas first. http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/telstra-to-bust-unions/2008/08/13/1218307006697.html.

The Communications Electrical and Plumbing Union is informing members of Telstras plot to break the union - http://cepuconnects.org/telecommunications/telstra-eba-2008/leak-reveals-real-hr-strategy/index.cfm

I'd like to find out more about how the union is drawing these 2 issues together, what it is saying about Telstra's balance sheet, profits and executive pay. And is the union making any connections with Telstra customers?

Surely Telstra workers and customers alike could be united against this rip-off.

Arctic summer sea ice melt

Tipping point is screening on the ABC as I write. The climate change sceptics should watch it.

Flight attendants union working against members?

Shenanigans in which former flight attendant union officials are now running labour hire outfits - http://www.smh.com.au/news/business/ welcome-aboard-flight-to-lower-pay-cheques/2007/04/15/1176575687668.html - illustrate the poison that can easily take hold in union officialdom. Scott Rochfort in the SMH of 21 April digs deeper still in an article in News Review entitled "A case of cabin fever strikes Qantas" - which so far I cannot locate online. On 16 April, the day of the earlier report, I emailed the Rights at Work campaign, and still haven't had a reply.

"Dear Rights at Work,

I am very disturbed to read this story in today's SMH, disgusted to read that Maurice Alexander is a former union official. The article also says that "the [flight attendants's] union shares office space with Mr Alexander's labour hire firm. The union's domestic secretary Jo-Ann Davidson declined to comment."

I hope to hear that there are serious errors in this SMH report, and that whatever connection Alexander may have had with the union movement, they do not continue. I support Rights at Work. Alexander is (according to this story) profiting from running a scheme that attacks rights at work.

Please let me know the ACTU/Rights at Work response to these allegations.

In soldarity"

It's not easy to promote trade unionism if this is what union officials can get away with, undenounced, uncensured.

Rudd makes farce of Rights@Work at ALP Conference

The Rights at Work website is running an email campaign to Federal Labor prior to ALP National conference.

They have a form letter that can be edited. I sent this version in response to Rudd’s pre-emptive announcement the a Labor government will retain major provisions of WorkChoices http://www.smh.com.au/news/opinion/back-to-fair-and-flexible-for-boss-and-worker/2007/04/17/1176696834741.html. It could say a lot more about the right to strike and organise. Someone else might like to write that message.

Dear Mr Rudd, Ms Gillard, and the Labor party team,

The ALP was supposed to be deciding its priorities for the next election at the ALP National Conference this month.

As a Rights at Work supporter, I am writing to express my outrage that you have made pre-emptive annoucements about industrial relations policy.

I am convinced that your policies are going to continue the weakening of the union movement, and thus of the ALP as a party capable of representing workers. Australian Industry Group chief Heather Ridout is quoted in today's SMH "The retention of laws which ban industrial action in pursuit of industry-wide agreements, ban industrial action during the term of agreements and require a secret ballot before industrial action can be taken, appear to be a response to ... industry concerns"

Why give in to "industry concerns" ahead of rank and file ALP concerns, and the considerations that will be brought to ALP Conference? Are you trying to convert the ALP to a US style Democratic Party that requires millions of dollars for campaigning? Are you trying to gut the ALP as a party where working people can organise democratically to express their opinions and have a chance of carrying the day with policies they campaign for? Do you not understand the decay of democracy in general that you are contributing to by flouting the remnants of democratic process inside the ALP in order to behave as the powerful leader who gets his way?

A serious mistake that will demoralise trade unionists and Labor voters.

Working too hard to produce toxic junk

Many of us with jobs spend too many hours at work to maintain what is currently called "work-life balance". Several commentators say we have only ourselves to blame for being greedy consumers (Clive Hamilton, Ross Gittins). Then there is the global warming perspective - too much consumption of energy.
What about putting these 2 issues together and looking at solutions differently? Why should we all be trapped in a way of life based on decisions to produce goods and services, decisions that are made by a minority. Why should production of everything (transport, housing, food, health, entertainment, communication, clothing, everything) be decided by the people who own the means to produce them, being allowed to make guess what the rest of us can be enticed to spend our money on and make them a profit?
So - what if transport facilities were to be decided not by car manufacturers, petrol companies, ad they had no access to lobby governments or departments of main roads? What if the criteria for developing transport services were reducing fuel consumption and environmental impact, reducing gross expenditure on transport, reducing the labour hours involved in providing transport, sharing available hours of work amongst all workers involved in vehicle production and transport services, reducing the time taken to get places? Then we might come up with policies such as - increased public transport routes based on a wider range of vehicles, and free public transport; vehicle manufacture shifting the balance from cars to energy efficient public transport; rail not roads for freight; car depots for occasional personal use; bicycle facilities; free deliveries of groceries. We might find policies to reduce the need to travel, more children at local schools, help people to live near work.
But we don't have a collective basis for making these decisions, because "the market" gets to decide, and government works with what resources it can put together after "the market" has its way. We decide to travel by car, because public transport doesn't go where we want to, when we want to. That's the market. We don't have a "market" mechanism that lets us choose between effective public transport and driving. Who is "the market"? Supposedly us, so we are to blame. But "the market" is what we can all be convinced to consume, to pay for, as individuals. It is the opposite of us being able to make sensible, considered decisions in the common interest.

We need to talk about Kevin (a novel)

Eva Khatchadourian is the mother of a US high school mass murderer. She opens the story of her relationship with her son Kevin when he has been in juvenile detention for about 18 months, during the count of the US Presidential election of 2000. Her reflection takes the form of letters to her husband Franklin, Kevin’s father. She is examining why Kevin killed, looking for the roots of his actions beginning back before he was born, to the decision to have a child, and through his infancy, childhood and teenage years. Is she responsible for Kevin’s murderousness, she is asking.

Lionel Shriver, writing as Eva, probes into many dark moments of mother-child relationships, she identifies many typical childish or teenage behaviours, and imbues them with evil portent, that could arouse parental doubts about even the most loving and co-operative children. She also picks on the potential for a couple to be divided by their children. These are well-observed and fear if not through provoking incidents and patterns. The outing of the possibility that a parent, especially a mother, may not find it easy to love a child is the most discussed aspect of the book. The interview with Lionel Shriver suggests that in this aspect the book is an examination of her own fears of parenthood, which she has never take on.

However, the other aspect of Lionel Shriver’s inspiration seems to have achieved much less attention. High school massacres in the USA are a recent disturbing phenomenon. She is looking for possible explanations for the psyche of the high school mass murdereer as a type, personified by Kevin. Her picture of Kevin as perpetrator of a massacre does not seem to fit the profile shown in Bowling for Columbine - guns and the ready availability of bullets were the common thread there. Kevin does not use a gun. She builds a picture of Kevin as a nihilist. What is the source of Kevin’s nihilism?

A series of possibilities is suggested in the course of the story.

Kevin was born angry. His anger was a cover for sadness, for emptiness, but he refused mother love, certainly mother’s breast. He went on to either lack, or wilfully refuse to show, interest or desire for anything to do with his mother – no food, no toys, no activities. Eva attributed deliberate intent on the part of her baby, to deny her any satisfaction. He ate only when she wasn’t looking. He refused toilet training till the age of 6 when his mother gave violent expression to her anger and frustration. Eva saw Kevin as spiteful and secretive.

Kevin’s father always encouraged Kevin, looked for the best interpretation of his son’s actions, almost never, if ever defined and enforced any limits – typifying a style of parenting, which accepts a boys’ bad behaviour as a legitimate expression of “being a boy”, and so does not socialise them. Kevin actually scorned his father, and went along with Franklin’s rosy view all the better to prepare his crime. Franklin’s lack of comprehension of Kevin actually made Kevin feel more estranged and alienated and angry than his mother’s critical view of him, which at least made him feel partially understood and recognised for who he was and what he really felt. Eva never even asks if Franklin’s fathering of Kevin could have anything to do with Kevin’s criminality. Yet her telling of the story makes this a highy plausible factor. Perhaps the author is trying to illustrate that poor fathering is rarely considered a problem, and that mothers are typically blamed for the misdeeds of their children.

Eva is, or was before the terrible day, a Democrat and liberal (she no longer cares). She had loved travelling overseas, it had been her business. She hated red-necks, US militarism, US suburban life, and Republicanism. Strangely though, Franklin was an ardent Republican. Most strangely Eva gave up work altogether to look after Kevin, and Franklin continued an absolutely full-time job and took no share of domestic duties. This second aspect of her marriage seems highly improbable, if not necessarily in the earliest years, at least as it became apparent that Eva was struggling and did not enjoy Kevin, whereas Franklin thought Kevin was fantastic.

Kevin rejected the hypocrisy of his mother’s liberalism, and her anti-Americanism. He rejected her supposed liberal tolerance, yet her intolerance, constant criticism of US culture (and him). This shows another strange inconsistency. As a political liberal, Eva could be expected to be the parent to excuse childhood misdeeds, and fail to discipline, whereas the Republican father could be expected to be tougher on law and order outside and inside the home. Eva wants to hold Kevin responsibile for his criminality (or in hindsight, his predictive criminal tendencies) whereas it would more typically be the liberal (in US terms) who might seek to explain, if not justify and exonerate social deviance, on the grounds of nurture by a sick society. When Eva reflects on her own nurturing role, or lack thereof, and really can only see that for Kevin it was in his nature to be bad. So, the introduction of Democratic versus Republican into this novel seems off the mark.

Yet, in a way perhaps Democratic versus Republicans illustrates an aspect of Kevin’s nihilism. There is no real substance to that choice, or any other on offer to the comfortable for the well-off, middle-class of the USA. There is only meaningless repetition of meaningless routines. Kevin could not see any point, any purpose, felt no passion. He was actually very perceptive and intelligent, but found no worthwhile application for his capabilities, until he came to plan his crime.

Lack of love is the other possible explanation of Kevin. Eva made rare efforts to show and feel affection for Kevin, and apart from a few days when he was very sick in his later childhood, he always spurned her, as she saw it. Perhaps Kevin was not a very lovable or responsive infant, and we and Eva only have Eva’s recollection to go on. Eva seemed to feel that Franklin was acting out a fatherly role rather than genuinely connecting with Kevin, so there was not real love there either. Small signs emerge as the story matures, that Kevin felt a stronger bond with his mother than she might have realised, and her growing realisation of this bond is at the centre of the resolution of the book. Perhaps it is possible in some way to love your own child, even if he has done something very evil, and perhaps love is a kind of antidote.

I found the book gripping but gruelling. If it's meant to air the unspoken truth that mothers don't always love or like their children, this novel does so in a very scary way. I don't think it would help mothers who do not love their children, to be more prepared to discuss this and expect a supportive reaction. I think it is more likely to inhibit women who are unsure of their feelings about their children, and feel that as mothers they are a source of danger to their children.

Exporting democracy to Iraq: neo culpa

A Vanity Fair article titled Neo Culpa by David Rose reports interviews with Neo Cons who had advocated the invasion of Iraq, now expressing their disappointment and pessimism. There is a little belated expression of the need for Iraqis to be their own liberators, which they think could have been incorporated into the US invasion plan. It would have been better, acording to the NeoCons if Iraqi battalions had liberated Baghdad and toppled the Saddam statue, if reconstruction contracts had been granted to Iraqi companies rather than US multi-nationals, if Iraqis had been sought for intelligence, and if an Iraqi had been selected prior to invasion for immediate appointed as the leader (Chalabi, or Allawi or Pachachi), rather than appointing Paul Bremer to be the governor of Iraq.

Since any of the 3 named would have been a US appointment, and since they've all participated in post invasion government, there is thin reason to believe that the last condition would have helped to bring a sense of self-liberation to Iraq.

What the article does highlight is that democracy cannot be imposed from outside or above.

A most telling point the article makes is that the US expected to find in Iraq the mechanisms of a secular government, ready made to be taken over by a post-Saddam administration. But these mechanisms had all been destroyed during the sanctions, when Saddam had distributed largesse to tribal leaders to bribe support and exchange of goods in the conditions of scarcity. UN sanctions, as demanded by the US, had done more damage to efficient administration than they had to the dictator.

If democracy and national self-determination is self-governance, then that requires local institutions, organisations, forms of co-operation and collective capability.

The Vanity Fair article does not touch on either the Provisional Government's attitude to democratic rights for Iraqi civil society or to communal politics. Democracy could not fbe created by the invasion because the USA undermined democratic possibilities for its own interests. The US appointed governor, Paul Bremer, maintained Saddam's anti-union laws. Even so hamstrung, Iraqi unions opposed privatisation of Iraqi industry and have stood for workers' rights and wages against the US and multi-nationals, Halliburton, etc, that were awarded so-called reconstruciton contracts. With legal rights to organise, the unions could have achieved a great deal more and been a force for democracy that would not have suited US interests or Islamists. The USA through Bremer in Iraq chose to negotiate for an Iraqi government with religious and communal leaders, not secular or Iraqi nationalist interest groups. This also cultivated a sectarian civil war, rather than a secular democracy.

It is Iraqi trade unions above all, along with other secular civil organisations that need international solidarity, just in order to survive, and keep alive the seeds of a future possible democratic secular Iraq.