Our media is in a spin about the One Nation victory in the Farrer by-election recently, following hot on the heels of the big gains made by Reform (and also the Greens) in recent UK local government elections. It seems to me that political journalists are flailing about, trying to explain what is going on. The predominant narrative is that this is about punishment, and that voters are blaming the major parties for the fact that they are struggling to pay the bills. The far-right parties, with their outspoken leaders and taboo-smashing statements, seem to offer an alternative.
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| David Farley is the first One Nation member of the lower house. |
So does this mean the voters of Farrer, and half of the UK, are stupid? I would suggest not. The voters know something that our major party politicians, and most of our political journalists, haven't yet come to grips with: Centrism is dead. It might take a little while to remove the out-sized corpse, but the life has definitely gone.
What is Centrism?
For decades now, conventional political wisdom here in Australia and around the Western world has been that elections are won from 'the centre'. Occasional candidates with more radical views, whether on the Left or the Right, may buck the trend and win a seat here and there, but the majority of voters and seats will go with candidates who favour only modest, gradual changes to the status quo. These may be 'centre left' (Labor in Australia and the UK, Democrats in the US) or 'centre right' (Liberals/Nationals, Conservatives, Republicans).
Centrism was the way liberal capitalism survived after the shocks of two world wars and the Great Depression. The political and business establishments of the wealthy democratic states were worried about their survival, mainly perceiving the threat as coming from a newly-empowered Soviet Union but also with one eye at fascism in the rearview mirror. The solution that they reached was what used to be referred to as the 'mixed economy'. Private capitalists would continue to control most economic activity - banking, manufacturing, agriculture and so forth. Governments would provide key services - health, education, transport and so on - and provide a welfare safety net to ensure nobody became destitute. They would also manage the economy to ensure full employment and stable rates of inflation, and regulate wages.
This strategy became the consensus among centrist parties - Social Democrats and Christian Democrats, Labor and Conservative, Democrat and Republican all stuck more or less to this template. Capitalism survived. Businesses continued to make profits. The revolutionary zeal of the working class was blunted by good wages and secure employment. There was good luck too - the long boom of the 1950s and 1960s saw sustained economic growth. The Centrist parties were rewarded with a mortgage on government.
So what went wrong?
Some date the beginning of the unravelling to the oil shocks of the 1970s, which triggered both high inflation and unemployment. The standard tools of Keynesian economics - demand management through the expansion and contraction of government spending and taxation, searching for the sweet spot between unemployment and inflation - proved unequal to the task.
This crisis revealed that the 'post-war consensus' was essentially a compromise. Billionaires had agreed to curb their profits in order to ensure their survival. As they became more secure, they became more restless. They complained that all this tax and regulation was 'inefficient' and 'undermined incentive', making everyone poorer by depressing economic activity. They were partly right. It was making them poorer.
Over the next quarter of a century, under pressure from business, governments gradually unpicked parts of the compromise. They removed or reduced wealth taxes and reduced the top tax rates. They wound back the generosity of the welfare state. They privatised government assets and services, starting with those that could make a profit - airlines, telecommunications, electricity networks - and then moving on to those they would have to pay for - aged care, child care, employment services, disability care. They restricted union bargaining power and deregistered radical unions. They relaxed media ownership controls, allowing our major media outlets to end up in the hands of a few wealthy oligarchs.
Billionaires became wealthier and more powerful. Everyone else became gradually poorer and less secure. The 'post-war consensus' was replaced by the 'neo-liberal consensus' which focused on minimal regulation, small government and balanced budgets, an ideological preference for private over public provision. Part of this was rhetoric - the billionaire backers of neo-liberalism were happy for government to spend money on them, just not on poor people or public services.
Because they change occurred gradually, the parties that brought it about (both centre-left and centre-right') still looked superficially like the gradual reformers of the old 'sensible centre'. However, by gradually dismantling the protections of the post-war consensus the Centrist parties were steadily undermining their own legitimacy.
Where are we now?
Centrist parties didn't just suddenly lose popularity - it's been happening for a long time. Over the past two decades, the vote share of centrist parties has gradually fallen. Electoral systems have masked this to some extent. Both first-past-the-post and single member preferential contests have continued to return mostly Centrist candidates, even as their overall vote share has fallen. No single smaller party has been able to capture enough votes to consistently defeat them.
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| Anthony Albanese is trying hard to be a Centrist, not realising Centrism is dead. |
The Centrist parties have responded to this in different ways. On the right, parties have cautiously abandoned their centrism, embracing the elements of right-wing populism that have been working for the likes of Pauline Hanson. In countries like Australia and the UK with centrally controlled, disciplined parties, this has represented an attempt to push out the parties to their right by becoming more like them. In the US, where the parties are more open to outside influence, the far-right has taken over the Republican party itself.
On the left, the Centrist parties have largely doubled down on their centrism. They have tried to appease business and keep on with the general process of neoliberal governance while making some modest reforms towards greater equality.
This has created an unstable Centrist dynamic. Centre-right parties will get elected promising to scale back government, drastically cut immigration and make everything cheaper. Once they are in government, they may disappoint their followers by not going far enough or, if they really do what they suggest they will, the resulting chaos is scary and prices keep rising.
When this happens, Centre-left parties promise to be the sensible adults taking the place of the wreckers. When they get elected they clean up some (but not all) of the mess, then try to get back to 'government as usual'. Their more progressive supporters become rapidly disillusioned, ordinary people find their problems are as bad as ever, and the cycle repeats. With each cycle, the disillusionment with Centrism grows and more people look around for an alternative.
The progressives' dilemma.
As you know, I'm a progressive person and the last thing I want to see is a resurgent far Right. I'd love to see genuinely progressive forces triumph - parties that will govern for justice and the preservation of the planet, not parties that want to maintain the systems that favour the very rich. If we want this to happen there's a lot of work to do.
So far, right-wing parties (One Nation, Reform, the MAGA wing of the Republicans) have been more successful at seizing the moment. They have been able to point the finger of blame at immigrants, Indigenous people and 'elites' which, pointedly, includes more progressive politicians and intellectuals but not the billionaires who fund them. They are highly skilled at channeling people's anger. And because they're not a threat to very rich people, our commercial media (owned by very rich people) is happy to give them coverage and credibility. In some ways they are not 'politics as usual' because the veil of politeness and decency is ripped away. But in most ways it's the same old same old - billionaires win, poor people and the planet lose.
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| Adam Bandt's 2010 victory didn't prompt hysterical headlines. |
What explains this difference? One reason is that they get the kind of push-back that the right-wing parties never get. Certainly, Pauline Hanson has Centrists and media personalities criticising her offensive language, but they also talk her up as a genuine contender. She gets a regular spot on breakfast television, features in 'Dancing with the Stars' and her very utterance is reported. The Greens don't get this kind of celebrity treatment. A lot of the time they get the 'silent treatment' - they only feature in media sporadically. When they do, as often as not they are characterised as 'extreme' - a label rarely applied to One Nation.
The other side of it is somewhat paradoxical. In Australia, One Nation talks tough about how 'woke' and sold out the Liberal and National Parties are, but in practice they almost always vote with them. Their rhetoric differs, but their practical programs are virtually the same. Voters are looking for an alternative to the 'centrism' that is failing them without realising that this centrism is now so far the the right that there's not much left to do bar donning the black shirts and firing up the pogroms. Pauline Hanson likes to boast that the Liberals, who initially booted her from the party in 1996, have gradually adopted almost all of her positions in the years since. In the US, the Republicans have become the extremists and the black shirts are already out.
The Greens, by contrast, have genuine and stark policy differences with Labor. Two stand out. On climate change, the Greens want us to stop digging up and burning coal and gas, while Labor insists we can keep on doing that forever. On housing, the Greens want to see rent controls and a massive build of public housing, while Labor remains focused on private sector supply as the solution to all problems. On both issues, Labor is on the side of the billionaires, the Greens are not.
This presents the Greens and other genuine progressives with a dilemma and they have yet to really get to terms with how to manage it. At times, they are genuinely opposed to what the Labor Party wants to do in government, or see it as woefully inadequate. Do they block it and hold out for better? Or do they pass it on the basis that it's a small improvement on the status quo? There are risks either way. if they block they risk being portrayed by Labor as 'obstructionist', 'naive', as 'letting the perfect be the enemy of the good'. If they pass they risk alienating their supporters by being seen to have 'sold out' and not really standing for anything. Both of these limit their support. What is the way forward?
Four Strategies for Progressive Politics
I'm not necessarily a great political strategist, but for what it's worth I have ideas. My ideas are not new, and people are already doing many of them. Here they are.
1. Think long-term
So much of the political cycle is focused on the 'now', and we often forget that significant change takes time. We need to ensure that we keep our eyes focused on where we want to be in 10 years, or 20 years, both in terms of our vision for the world and in terms of our political strategy.
I would note that centre-left parties sometimes say the same thing. The problem is that for them, the time is never right for radical reform, and over time they don't become bolder, they become more timid. This is because they don't really want radical reform, they want to enjoy the trappings of power right now. Progressive politics needs to keep the radical agenda front and centre, while accepting that it may sometimes lose particular short-term battles.
2. Focus on the grass roots
Part of this long-term thinking is to focus on building grass-roots support. Progressive parties and movements will never get sympathetic coverage in mainstream media outlets. To counter this, we need to build legitimacy through strong relationships at local level. This includes seeding and supporting local initiatives, building local networks of support, engaging positively with local community initiatives and breaking down walls of distrust. Such networks can serve as counterweight to increasing toxicity in both mainstream and social media platforms.
3. Resist fracturing
Progressive movements involve many different strands of activism, and people who are passionate about different things. One of the big dangers is that these movements can turn on one another - feminists vs trans activists, mainstream environmental groups vs radical proponents of direct action, Indigenous sovereignty campaigners vs advocates for the Uluru Statement, and so forth.
To be successful, progressive politics need to be able to bring together and accommodate unlikely bedfellows, uniting around what we share while accepting and respecting difference. if we don't respect diversity among ourselves, how can we build a society that does so at a broader level? This doesn't mean that everyone should agree all the time - this is unrealistic - but simply that we agree to work together for our common causes and keep talking civilly about our differences.
4. Don't be afraid to love
A big part of the success of far-right politics comes from provoking and exploiting anger and hatred. Politics as it is done now is a brutal business and its practitioners do not hesitate to tear one another down. It is tempting for progressive movements to follow suit but direct the hate differently - after all, billionaires have a lot to answer for. Hate and anger are powerful emotions, but they are also dangerous and unpredictable and we exploit them at our peril.
20th Century thinkers and activists like Tolstoy, Gandhi and Martin Luther-King pointed their movements in a different direction, and their example is worth remembering. They advocated for love as a force of resistance - not a passive attitude that accepts everything or a sentimental emotion, but an active force that refuses to yield or return hate for hate, violence for violence. It focuses on what we love and support - equal treatment of all persons, the preservation of the natural environment, peaceful resolution of conflict - over what we hate and reject.
This lesson is easy to say, but hard to do in the face of violent repression. Both Gandhi and King were assassinated. Those who oppose us will not play fair. However, Gandhi pointed out that means and ends could not be separated - that in order to build peace you had to act peacefully, that in order to build a just society you had to enact justice yourself. 'Be the change you want to see in the world'.
Of Course It's Not Easy
If radical change was easy we would have done it by now. There is a lot of hard work to be done and no guarantee of success. But the alternative is to accept things the way they are, and that is a one way street to environmental destruction, war and increased poverty and suffering. If you want better than that, don't fall for the dead promises of Centrism, put your shoulder to the wheel of genuine transformation.
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