Reverse Army of the Unemployed
To the extent that it fosters capitalism, Australia will continue to be plagued with a relative surplus population and the problem – economic, moral – of what to do with it. Proposed solutions must be increasingly reactionary – never radical – if an Australian political party is to gain electoral traction.
Witness Rudd’s “PNG Solution” to the problem of asylum-seekers and refugees (the state outsourcing its human rights obligations at international law; a tendency inherited from the Howard regime). The ALP’s proposed boot camps for unemployed youth are no less reactionary. To discipline and punish the socially and economically disadvantaged, it would seem (at least to ALP pundits), is the only conceivable course of action. Capitalism, of course, concurs: the reserve army of labour must be kept in a condition serviceable to the interests of the state – even if it means discrimination based on age or employment status (wealth discriminates, by definition) and the revocation of individual freedoms (but only among the underclass).
Radical alternatives to capitalism and/or the state – the re-organization of society on principles other than economic individualism – will be hard pressed to survive mandatory detention, mandatory boot camp. The end product of all such “processing” of human individuals will be nothing if not consistent, homogeneous, uniform: docile and submissive. Or so the brains behind this election-winning stratagem must hope.
But another call of duty may be heard, as allegiances of resistance naturally form.
Reserve army of the unemployed: Let fly your loose cannons! Wear your poverty with pride! And from the sovereign state of Australia, prepare to go AWOL.
Remember: it’s a jungle out there.
Witness Rudd’s “PNG Solution” to the problem of asylum-seekers and refugees (the state outsourcing its human rights obligations at international law; a tendency inherited from the Howard regime). The ALP’s proposed boot camps for unemployed youth are no less reactionary. To discipline and punish the socially and economically disadvantaged, it would seem (at least to ALP pundits), is the only conceivable course of action. Capitalism, of course, concurs: the reserve army of labour must be kept in a condition serviceable to the interests of the state – even if it means discrimination based on age or employment status (wealth discriminates, by definition) and the revocation of individual freedoms (but only among the underclass).
Radical alternatives to capitalism and/or the state – the re-organization of society on principles other than economic individualism – will be hard pressed to survive mandatory detention, mandatory boot camp. The end product of all such “processing” of human individuals will be nothing if not consistent, homogeneous, uniform: docile and submissive. Or so the brains behind this election-winning stratagem must hope.
But another call of duty may be heard, as allegiances of resistance naturally form.
Reserve army of the unemployed: Let fly your loose cannons! Wear your poverty with pride! And from the sovereign state of Australia, prepare to go AWOL.
Remember: it’s a jungle out there.