Is the ALP a Socialist party?

Joined
Jul 9, 2013
Posts
4,496
Likes
4,351
AFL Club
Geelong
Thread starter #1
In a recent speech Tony Abbott said "Let's be under no illusions the carbon tax was Socialism masquerading as environmentalism". It comes not long after David Cameron condemned Ed Miliband's '1970s-style Socialism'. Regardless of the merit of those statements, I think both Abbott and Cameron understand Labor's touchiness about being labelled as Socialists.

I checked the ALP website, and could not find one reference to Socialism. Yet nearly all leading Labor figures are members of the Fabian Society, whose goal is 'the promotion of socialist and progressive thought throughout society'. And one of the major factions of the ALP is the Socialist Left which includes Albanese, Wong, Carr, Cameron, Perrett, Butler and Pilbersek.

There was a couple of responses in the other thread about Abbott's comments.


Yeh that and the " carbon tax is more about socialism than environmentalism" _ someone should tell him the Soviet Union has been dead for a while now.

Don't you remember when Wayne Swan nationalised all the means of production?
But I think they represent an outdated view of Socialism. For example, the Party of European Socialists issued its Declaration of principles. No mention of the Soviet Union or nationalising the means of production, it's more about 'progressive' values.

So, a few questions. What is modern Socialism? Is it still relevant? And, is the ALP a Socialist Party?
 

(Log in to remove this ad.)

Joined
Sep 13, 2000
Posts
66,367
Likes
26,076
Location
Melbourne cricket ground. Australia
AFL Club
Hawthorn
Other Teams
Horks
#10
Its hard to imagine, but the russians are more fooked under the capitalism that reagan gave them than under communism. Except the few hundred who control 30% of the wealth that is

But its hardly surprising, much of America is fooked after the reagan revolution too

We live in the commonwealth of australia, im surprised posters here can live with being under a socialist title
 

(Log in to remove this ad.)

Contra Mundum

Brownlow Medallist
Joined
Aug 1, 2002
Posts
21,910
Likes
8,700
Location
North Melbourne
AFL Club
North Melbourne
Other Teams
NMFC
#14
In a recent speech Tony Abbott said "Let's be under no illusions the carbon tax was Socialism masquerading as environmentalism". It comes not long after David Cameron condemned Ed Miliband's '1970s-style Socialism'. Regardless of the merit of those statements, I think both Abbott and Cameron understand Labor's touchiness about being labelled as Socialists.

I checked the ALP website, and could not find one reference to Socialism. Yet nearly all leading Labor figures are members of the Fabian Society, whose goal is 'the promotion of socialist and progressive thought throughout society'. And one of the major factions of the ALP is the Socialist Left which includes Albanese, Wong, Carr, Cameron, Perrett, Butler and Pilbersek.

There was a couple of responses in the other thread about Abbott's comments.







But I think they represent an outdated view of Socialism. For example, the Party of European Socialists issued its Declaration of principles. No mention of the Soviet Union or nationalising the means of production, it's more about 'progressive' values.

So, a few questions. What is modern Socialism? Is it still relevant? And, is the ALP a Socialist Party?
Fabians! What Bullshit

The Fabians these days are like a wet Liberal think tank. Come along way from GBS.

Lenin says they are not a socialist party in 1913
Lenin did not think they were socialist in 1913 - when you would think the claim that it was socialist was at its height:

A general election recently took place in Australia. The Labour Party, which had a majority in the Lower House 44 seats out of 75 was defeated. It now has only 36 seats out of 75. The majority has passed to the Liberals, but this majority is a very unstable one, because 30 of the 36 seats in the Upper House are held by Labour.
What sort of peculiar capitalist country is this, in which the workers’ representatives, predominate in the Upper house and, till recently, did so in the Lower House as well, and yet the capitalist system is in no danger?
The Australian Labour Party does not even call itself a socialist party. Actually it is a liberal-bourgeois party, while the so-called Liberals in Australia are really Conservatives.​
This strange and incorrect use of terms in naming parties is not unique. In America, for example, the slave-owners of yesterday are called Democrats, and in France, enemies of socialism, petty bourgeois, are called Radical Socialists! In order to understand the real significance of parties, one must examine not their signboards but their class character and the historical conditions of each individual country.​
The leaders of the Australian Labour Party are trade union officials, everywhere the most moderate and capital serving element, and in Australia, altogether peaceable, purely liberal.
(emphasis added from The Collected Works)​
The Socialist Objective in the Platform
For once Wiki is good on this:​
In the aftermath of World War I and the Russian Revolution of 1917, support for socialism grew in trade union ranks, and at the 1921 All-Australian Trades Union Congress a resolution was passed calling for "the socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange." As a result, Labor's Federal Conference in 1922 adopted a similarly worded "socialist objective," which remained official policy for many years. The resolution was immediately qualified, however, by the "Blackburn amendment," which said that "socialisation" was desirable only when was necessary to "eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features."[8] In practice the socialist objective was a dead letter. Only once has a federal Labor government attempted to nationalise any industry (Ben Chifley's bank nationalisation of 1947), and that was held by the High Court to be unconstitutional. The commitment to nationalisation was dropped by Gough Whitlam, and Bob Hawke's government carried out many free market reforms including the floating of the dollar and privatisation of state enterprises such as Qantas airways and the Commonwealth Bank.
Conclusion
The Labor Party is not now, nor has it ever been a socialist party. Anybody with any understanding of the history of socialist parties and of the ALP would say the same​
 

clogged

Brownlow Medallist
Joined
Apr 4, 2013
Posts
13,672
Likes
16,616
AFL Club
Fremantle
#16
I hope we aren't going to into this American style phase of calling everything socialism, when its clearly not.
It's becoming a bit of an empty pejorative to accuse anything as being socialist. By definition, any tax should be considered socialist, as it shifts wealth from one part of society to another.
 

Contra Mundum

Brownlow Medallist
Joined
Aug 1, 2002
Posts
21,910
Likes
8,700
Location
North Melbourne
AFL Club
North Melbourne
Other Teams
NMFC
#17
It's becoming a bit of an empty pejorative to accuse anything as being socialist. By definition, any tax should be considered socialist, as it shifts wealth from one part of society to another.
Progressive taxation and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme are equivalent to the Great Leap Forward
 

hcd199

Club Legend
Joined
Apr 29, 2009
Posts
2,006
Likes
1,087
Location
Hobart
AFL Club
North Melbourne
Other Teams
Waterford GAA, Glenorchy, Hob (BBL)
#20
If ever they were a socialist party - and a case could be made either way on that - they certainly haven't been for the last 30 years, probably the last 45. Taxing a business (e.g., carbon tax) is not socialism; in just a month and a half, Abbott and his government have already proven their willingness to distort facts and meaning to suit their own agenda (e.g., the blatant straw-manning in regards to the link between bushfire frequency and schemes to reduce carbon emissions).
 

noddy

Brownlow Medallist
Joined
Mar 21, 2002
Posts
17,745
Likes
3,168
Location
Land of the Big Red Cloud
AFL Club
Adelaide
Other Teams
/The Bays/Man U
#25
I never thought of the ALP as a socialist party even though in the past there were a couple of Trade Unions that could be classed as such, these days the ALP & the Liberals are both close to the center, imo.
 
Top Bottom