• GothWhitlam [he/him]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Asked if he could follow Labor Ben Chifley’s 1949 precedent of breaking up a coal strike with troops, Morrison replied: “I’m not going to pre-empt any of those sorts of things.”

    Fuck Chifley, fuck Scomo. Lab or Lib, this country has always been fucked for unions. We pretend to be a working class country, but we shaft every real attempt at union organising ever.

      • GothWhitlam [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        The more I learn about the history of the Labor party, the more I feel like it's just one long fucking grift or purposeful opsec.

        • KiaKaha [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Literally every one of them.

          Out of all the Labour parties worldwide, how did they all end up dogshit?

          Workers’ parties? Cool. Socialist parties? Usually ok ish. Communist parties? Dope. Labour parties? Fuck.

          • crispyhexagon [none/use name]
            ·
            edit-2
            4 years ago

            potential theory:

            they base their political platform around the working class actively working. when the working class ceases to work, for any reason whatsoever, their platform is unable to stand.

            labour parties do not care about labourers only that the labour is being done.

        • CenkUygurCamp [none/use name]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Most labor parties had labor union backing at some point in the past. Did the Australian one even have that?

          • GothWhitlam [he/him]
            ·
            4 years ago

            It kinda grew out of state Labor parties after we federated, so I imagine so, but it has never really been very pro worker over capital.

              • GothWhitlam [he/him]
                ·
                4 years ago

                Yup, just a slightly lighter version of the liberal party, and even then they keep trying to flank the libs from the right.

                  • GothWhitlam [he/him]
                    ·
                    4 years ago

                    Nah, anyone good would have fled to the green party, right before promptly being purged from the green party for being too left wing

                    Australian politics is a fucking neoliberal hellscape. They're just too ass backwards and stupid to do any real evil, leaving that to corporations.

        • Cowboyitis69 [he/him]
          ·
          4 years ago

          Yeah but he wrote that literally a century ago. Has nothing changed since then?

          • ned_kelly [he/him]
            hexagon
            ·
            4 years ago

            He was wrong about it only being a "short time".

          • Mardoniush [she/her]
            ·
            4 years ago

            Not really, and while he's not totally wrong about the process of primitive accumulation helping reduce class tensions, his material analysis is flawed because he wasn't actually on the ground there. The Labor Party was born in the fires of the Shearer's War, and there were in the early days plenty of Socialists proper in it.

      • aLittleSurplusValue [he/him]
        ·
        4 years ago

        Life of a Labor politician:

        • Go to private school
        • Study law at uni
        • Join the young Labor club
        • Get a job as an ACTU bureaucrat
        • Get a seat in parliament
        • Lose seat in parliament because you're so out of touch with the working class
        • Go back to working at the ACTU or maybe as a lobbyist