|
|
|
TOM'S
TAKE...
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Should the Aboriginal people embrace capitalism?
With the greatest of respect to my mate Cliff Baxter I'm not sure that I agree with him completely in his rejection of Joseph Elu's call for the Aboriginal people to embrace capitalism. [For the background to this article you really need to read Cliff Baxter's arguments first. They can be found HERE.] I don't want to mount some full frontal attack on Cliff's arguments though because there is in fact much good in what he wrote. I do agree that there is much that we can learn from the indigenous people's about "the common good". What I am taking issue with Cliff about is an implication carried in his argument that capitalism, per se, is evil or is rapaciously and exclusively only interested in the exploitation of others for its own profit. Both Cliff and myself have moved a long way from the political roots that characterised the homes we were borne into. His was a communist household and somehow Cliff made that long journey to becoming a convert to Catholicism. I suppose my Irish Catholic family's politics was left wing and socialist also but very much coloured by the Labor split of the 1950s. My own father and late mother-in-law both stood for seats in Parliament representing the Democratic Labor Party. And a couple of other members of my wider family also stood for the DLP. My own politics for many years were intimately connected with the Liberal Party of Australia at as intense a level as that which characterises my commitment today to the Church or to this Catholica Australia endeavour. My own commitment to Liberal Party and conservative politics did not actually grow from some sense of self-interest in the sense that I had a sense that my own membership would advance my place in the world – or in business. I had come to my own position of commitment through long reflection on what I believed as "best" in the sense of what I believed most effectively "advanced" the interests of people in general and my community and family in particular. Even though in recent decades I have moved away from any intense commitment to the Liberal Party – or, indeed, of politics in general as the principal means of social advancement – I do continue to believe that if one lays out, side-by-side, the philosophies that underpin socialism (or fabianism/political collectivism), and capitalism (or conservatism/political individualism), on the balance of all arguments capitalism has been more successful in advancing our collective economic well-being. And it has been our economic well-being in the Western world that has been the single most significant generator of our well-being in so many other facets of our lives and, most particularly, in the freedoms that our society and way of life extends to each individual. I do not believe in "unrestrained capitalism" or "unrestrainted self-interest" as a political or social philosophy though. Unrestrained capitalism and self-interest are rapacious and do not advance that "common good" that, both Cliff and I argue, we might learn much about from the indigenous peoples of this nation. At the same time I have mellowed over the years and I no longer see socialists as "the enemy" or as some kind of "dangerous aliens" who might inhibit the social or economic advance of society.
Curiously enough, when I look back over my own life the single most important factor that has grandually changed my own political views and philosophy has been the impact of Catholic social thinking and teaching. I'm not speaking here of the "right wing" politics of fundamentalist Christians and Catholics but that quiet, discerning, and measured voice of reason that one picks up through quietly reflecting on the best Catholic thinkers and writers of the past one hundred years since Pope Leo XIII's landmark encyclical Rerum Novarum (On the Rights and Duties of Capital and Labor 1891). Consistently the Church, at its intellectual and thinking best, has mounted excellent criticisms of both socialism and capitalism. She does not profer herself though as some "middle" or "third" "political" alternative to the two dominant political sides that demarcate modern society. The Church, rightly in my view, stands above politics. She encourages all of us to reason through for ourselves what our own political philosophies are. She also respects "the political process" as being largely an enormous force for good in society and for the social advancement of peoples without seeking to take sides on either side of the divide. Her warnings or cautions over the years, at the official or magisterial level at least, have without exception always been directed to condemnation of political extremism. It is unrestrained socialism – unrestrained collectivism – that is as great an enemy to humankind as is unrestrained capitalism – or unrestrained individualism.
Even though we have been largely free of political revolutions in Australia, to me there has been a remarkable but unbloody revolution that has occurred in Australian politics in the last quarter century. That "revolution", I argue, was largely orchestrated by two of the most "eye-for-the-main-chance" individuals who have ever risen to leadership positions in the Australian Labor Party, Messrs Bob Hawke and his Treasurer, and later Prime Minister in his own right, Paul Keating. I don't think the broad membership of the Labor Party itself has yet woken up to the fact that Hawke and Keating between them effectively reversed the underlying economic and political philosophy of the Labor Party when they embraced economic rationalism in the 1980s. Our nation, politically, has not been the same since. Between the pair of them, figuratively "single handedly", they ripped the Australian Labor Party away from its socialist philosophy and roots and embraced "middle-of-the-road" or "balanced" capitalism and privatisation.
Philosophically today the Australia Labor Party is virtually indistinguishable from its main rival, the Liberal Party of Australia. They are both effectively political parties committed to the beliefs of John Stewart Mill and Adam Smith that it is when the individual citizen is provided with the greatest freedom to pursue his or her own "best interest" that the collective "best interest" of all in society is most effectively advanced. To bring this to a conclusion then: I don't read what Joseph Elu is arguing as being some call for the Aboriginal people to embrace "rapacious" or "unrestrained" capitalism. He is arguing for a measured embrace of self-interest. Surely, it can be argued, that much of the disgraceful and embarrassing behaviours we've seen broadcast in our national media in recent weeks concerning the behaviours of some aborginals abusing women and children in outback communities stems from an anarchistic philosophy where social organisation breaks down and "self-interest" becomes the only Law or Lore? Whether, at heart, we are political collectivists or political individualists,
none of us would support that kind of "self-interest" as some
sort of alternative to the rapacious pursuit of self-interest that intelligent
people are, rightly, cautious about encouraging in capitalism. Links:
What are your thoughts on this commentary? You can contribute to the discussion in our forum. Tom Scott can be contracted at: |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 |
|
Email
this article to a friend
Post
your feedback in our forum
