above: a photo of Eric Aarons at work on a sculpture - art being another of Eric's passions
In the following article Richard Archer provides a deep assessment of the social philosophy of Eric Aarons: one of the most important figures in the history of Australian communism. But as Archer explains, these days Eric prefers the mantle of an ethical, environmentalist and humanist social democracy. Broadly agreeing with Aarons, Archer nonetheless insists on basing our social enquiries on actually-existing social tendencies and class forces - including the process of class struggle which continues to emerge in diverse forms in today's capitalist world. What emerges is a picture of Aarons thought arisng from a lifetime of experience and thought - well-worth engaging with in the search for a framework for Left thinking in the 21st Century.
Nb: There is a public meeting coming in NSW on April 14th to celebrate Eric's life and work.
The details are as follows:
The Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre is hosting an event to honour Eric’s wide-ranging contributions to art, politics and political philosophy.
2:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Featuring Guest Speakers
Meredith Burgmann
– ALP and progressive left activist, and former President of the NSW Legislative Council
Professor Steve Keen – author of Debunking Economics
Drew Hutton – President of the “Lock the Gate Alliance” fighting irresponsible mining, longtime environmental campaigner, and a co-founder of the Australian Greens
Margaret West – artist, poet and essayist
Join us – and Eric – for an afternoon of discussion and celebration.
Refreshments provided.
nb also: The publisher of this blog, Tristan Ewins, has also written an extensive commentary on one of Eric's more recent works 'Hayek versus Marx - and Today's Challenges' - and that can be found here: http://hayekversusmarx.blogspot.com.au/2011/07/responding-to-eric-aarons-hayek-versus.html
Debate welcome!!!
Article By Richard Archer
Eric Aarons, born 1919 in Sydney and now retired to Minto
NSW, was a prominent activist in the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) and for
a time its National Secretary. He was also its leading theoretician producing party
documents that tackled the wide range of issues challenging not only the
working class but its industrial and political organisations.
Later in life, he wrote a number of books covering
philosophy, socialism, the environment and neo-liberalism, in particular, the
conservative thinker and economist, Friedrich Hayek.
Eric’s
mature philosophy is best captured in his last three books:
What’s Right (2003) [WR],
Market versus Nature: the Social Philosophy of
Friedrich Hayek (2008) [MVN] and
Hayek
versus Marx and today’s challenges (2009) [HVM].
Philosophy
for an Exploding World: Today’s Values Revolution (1973) [PEW] is an early
book where values are first discussed.
What’s
Left (1993) [WL] is largely an autobiography.
While these books have attracted a degree of favourable notice
in Australia, they have not received the attention deserved by academics and
activists or, indeed, a much wider audience. This essay attempts to correct
this and stimulate the discussion he and others have tried to promote – a post-socialist,
post-neo-liberal understanding of what needs to be done to achieve a fair and
sustainable future for all.
Recognising values
To begin with a general overview: Aarons’s life reflects a gradual
move from Stalinism to a more open Marxism and finally, as the CPA itself
gradually declined and came to an end in 1991, an abandonment of revolutionary
Marxism – class-struggle and historical materialism – for social democracy and
humanism.
This trajectory is marked by his commitment to investigating
the truth wherever it may lead and regardless of whom it may offend. The non-dogmatic
approach was derived in part from his training in science – he received a first
class honours degree from the University of Sydney – but was also supported by
the CPA’s own independent stance towards Moscow and Beijing. The party was one
of the first of the very few communist parties to condemn the Soviet Union’s
invasion of Czechoslovakia at the time.
The other aspect of this journey – and the one focussed on
here - was the growing recognition of the critical role human values play in
affecting the way we think and act, the key lesson being if we are to change
the world our values must change as well.
Reflecting on his ‘discovery’ of values, Aarons writes
“I then began to understand that
unless we articulated those values and incorporated them in our everyday
activity and ideological struggles, any victories we pursued would never be
achieved.” (MVN, 85)
To take a central concern of his, the environmental crisis,
we need to value the natural environment not as something to be exploited with
little consideration for present and future generations but as something to be
respected, nurtured and enjoyed on that basis.
Just as much as our practices must change to
meet this and other social challenges, so must our values undergo reform and
development.
As opposed to those who would concentrate narrowly on
analysis, strategy and organisation to bring about change, Aarons points to the
role values play and the need to focus on ensuring the appropriate ones are
there. For example, moral and ethical codes or principles must be adapted to
handle the environment in a sustainable fashion. In recent years, the rights
and wrongs of treating animals, managing land and dealing with waste have
developed in response to the effects of neglect. As one indicator, where
previously companies did not report on their environmental impact, nowadays many
feel obliged – though not to full effect.
While some would grant the role of values as obvious, Aarons
sees changing values as a project in itself, requiring not only real change to
the institutions and practices that express them but, especially given the
magnitude of the current crisis, a broad philosophical alternative grounding
the new set of values. There must be a larger theoretical framework that would
draw on our experience of socialism and neo-liberalism but replace them to host
the values leading us forward. On top of the social revolution, then, there needs
to be a values revolution which a new philosophy brings together. Indeed it is
impossible to have a successful social revolution without a values revolution
and no values revolution without a revolution in philosophy.
The primacy of
politics
All of this is in direct contrast to those who would see
history moving on a course all of its own either in a pre-determined or
spontaneous manner. An example of the former would be Marxists such as Engels
and Kautsky, and, some would say, Marx himself, where the productive forces of
the economy are seen as the primary drivers of history leading us ultimately to
a world of plenty.
“Just as Darwin discovered the
law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development
of human history.”
- Friedrich Engels, Speech at the
Graveside of Karl Marx.
An example of the spontaneity theory would be represented in
the neo-liberal thought of Friedrich Hayek. Here historical development is seen
as a product of the ‘natural’, spontaneous activity of individuals. Attempts by
governments to impose direction on the free market can only pervert this
process of growth and prosperity, leading to disaster. Essentially, the only
good government is a small one.
Neither of these options passes close examination, but more worryingly
they would lead us down a course of destruction with their blithe message of
‘it will be alright on the night’ as long as we play along with the forces and
not resist them. However what guarantee is there we won’t end up in a dead
planet? There is no evidence given to show that either option corrects itself
before it is all too late, just faith and a hope for the best.
Instead Aarons sees humanity capable of taking such active
control through deliberate political action. It is politics rather than
economics that is primary. All of which means for careful deliberation about
our options and a real chance of turning things around we need a “new Social
Philosophy” (MVN, 119) that would integrate key disciplines such as philosophy,
history, economics, sociology, psychology and biology. In addition to an understanding
of what is practically possible, a democratic organisation and a skilled leadership
we need the theoretical perspective and values to steer our ship by.
Aarons concedes the task of constructing that philosophy is
beyond him as it is probably beyond the ability of any other individual. On the
other hand, it is certainly not beyond ongoing public dialogue and reflection.
This dialogue occurs in many locales, within many organisations
and across a range of forums – on-line, print and face-to-face, here and
overseas. Debates over privatisation, commodification, discrimination,
inequality, steady-state economies, to mention a few, are not hard to find. However,
to provide momentum for a positive alternative and the ability to set a
visionary agenda, the process needs continuous consolidation.
In general, what would the new philosophy contain? Aarons provides
a number of suggestions in his later writings and books. The following is a
summary of a few key elements. Where required, some of Aarons’ points have been
expanded on.
Social democracy, not
socialism
To begin with, it is not socialism, defined commonly as the
social ownership and control of the means of production and with it a command
economy. While sharing the values of socialism such as freedom, egalitarianism,
democracy, prosperity and unity, Aarons points to the proven inability of
socialist societies to realise those values. This is not to neglect the many proud
achievements of socialists but instead to say the socialist project itself has
failed and appears unlikely to succeed by its own standards.
Aarons sees two basic reasons for the breakdown, both of
them endemic to socialism. The first is the absence of competitive marketplaces
and the consequent inability to gather information on supply and demand transmitted
by market prices. Without the instantaneous information about supply and demand
for goods set in the markets and provided in prices, central planning is
blindfolded.
To try and overcome this, an immense task is set before
planners. Estimates of supply and demand must be made to decide what is to be
produced - how much, of what quality, where, when and for whom - if the entire
range of
politically agreed
individual and social needs are to be satisfied, and then for the entire stock
to be priced administratively for exchange and accountancy purposes.
Information must be collected of future demand by consumers for
final goods and services together with their quantity, quality, timing and site
of delivery. Consumers include not only households but schools, hospitals,
defence forces and other public institutions. Information must be gathered from
producers of what current stocks they have and future requirements for the energy,
material, technology, processes and labour of all forms to provide the final
goods and services for consumers. Then there are the needs of distributors for
the necessary transport, warehousing, outlets and labour. The list goes on.
Moreover, that immense amount of information however good at
the time of collection rapidly becomes out of date as the supply and demand
situation changes over the period of the annual plan. As Aarons puts it, “[the]
labour involved in such an exercise would then be largely wasted, while in
contrast market-established prices are spontaneously generated and are more or
less instantly available at negligible cost.” (HVM, 24-5)
In addition, socialist planners encountered another
difficulty – the quality of the data collected. Subordinates in a centrally
planned economy with bureaucratically administered state firms were tempted not
to transmit the information up the line or more often distort it for various
self-interested or defensive purposes, such as avoiding blame for production
failures. As a result, unreliability was the over-whelming experience of data
collection in socialist economies.
The results were inefficiencies, poor quality and shortages on
a grand scale with attempts by planners and managers to cover up the
difficulties and shift blame for failing to meet targets. Both producers and
consumers in socialist economies found that with central planning and
administrative pricing “… neither the quantity nor quality of available goods
met their requirements or needs.” (HVM, 25)
Furthermore, things did not improve with attempts to reform under
Khrushchev, Kosygin and Gorbachev. Nor did they improve with experiments such
as market socialism and self-management as in Kadar’s Hungary and Tito’s
Yugoslavia. None of these efforts could escape the shadow of the very system
they were attempting to change. The contradictions remained in a different form
with the standard of living in decline. The collapse when it came there and
everywhere else provided the final judgement on the socialist economic model.
The people were fed up with the entire system as were the many endeavouring to
operate it.
The social and the
individual
Secondly, socialism, as the term itself denotes, emphasises
the social above the individual. As Aarons puts it, “[socialism] sought to
promote, almost exclusively the socially-oriented side in human nature.” (MVN,
87)
In an obvious sense this ranking has merit. Individuals
would not survive let alone develop without a society and so individuals should
not threaten the very basis of their existence. Likewise if external or
internal threats to society are to be tackled, social cooperation – unity – is
a must. Altruism and self-sacrifice are to be valued in this respect.
However, the primacy given to the social also leads to a suspicion
of individualism as anti-social. Individualism in this sense is associated with
private property and profit-seeking or more generally with anarchy. Whereas the
public or communal sphere is good, the private sphere is suspect. Consequently,
individualism lives in an uneasy relationship with socialism, at best to be
tolerated and at other times to be attacked.
While there are good grounds
under capital’s rule to suspect anything smacking of the
profit-motive, the effect is a bias towards the social and a broader inability
to accept and, more importantly,
value
the natural tendency of all of us to be both self and other-oriented to one
degree or another. This meant that policy, particularly economic policy as demonstrated
in socialist countries, ruled out or marginalised private property and markets with
disastrous social and economic consequences. More generally, individual
expression itself was restricted. In the course of which core socialist values were
scuttled.
On these two scores, socialism sets itself up for failure,
leading to bureaucratic and despotic rule before inefficiency, shortages and
corruption trigger its eventual collapse. Aarons presents the fall of the USSR,
European socialist bloc countries and the rise of China’s red capitalism as
evidence of these basic flaws leading to socialism’s demise. Other explanations
such as under-development, lack of a democratic tradition, ‘mistakes’,
personality cults, whatever, may have contributed but the two root causes for
its collapse remain systemic to socialism.
Economic planning and
markets
Instead of socialism, Aarons recommends a political
settlement which would see markets restricted to defined areas of the economy
and regulated for the common good, in other words, a mixed economy under social
democratic rule. Markets - when truly competitive – can generate real-time price
information and efficient production, stimulate innovation and harness the business
spirit. The resulting cheaper goods and services together with the ability to
choose amongst them can benefit everyone.
Acceptance of markets does not mean being naïve about
companies or industries acting to rig the system, particularly big ones.
Instead it recognises markets as social and historical creations and as such
can be made to serve interests broader than those of the market-players
themselves.
To avoid human and environmental exploitation, companies –
incorporated bodies of any sort, big and small - must be made accountable as
corporate citizens to workers, owners and the communities they affect as terms
of the settlement. One small step in this direction would be to make the
governing bodies, boards, composed of all stakeholders not just shareholders.
Democratic government in turn would be accountable for the design
and implementation of market processes, provide the necessary infrastructure,
governance and ensure outcomes met social values. Public measures such as full employment,
progressive taxation and national savings programs would build prosperity and
equality, iron out business cycles while directing investment towards a
sustainable future. The best, though certainly not perfect, examples of this balance
of market and planning being the Scandinavian societies.
“… [Human] consciousness and
planning will be necessary now to an increasing extent. Or, as is sometimes
said, a central task today is to ‘get the balance right’ between planning and
the use of markets.” (MVN, 73)
Aarons goes some of the way towards setting out that balance
by dividing up the economy according to the degree to which government
involvement is needed to ensure the common good and where markets should be
allowed to operate.
In terms
of a scale, at one end of the formal economy you have (‘fast-moving’) consumer
goods and services produced for the mass market, being subject primarily to
supply and demand and which in large part should be left to the market to
organise. Similarly the sector producing capital goods and services for the
consumer goods industries – resources, industrials, materials, for example - should
be able to use the marketplace.
At the other end, you have social infrastructure which
includes not only hardware such as utilities, housing, roads, ports but software
items such as education and health that need direct government involvement or
assistance of one kind or the other, for example, day-care.
In between these two poles you have industries like information
technology, telecommunications, media, finance, entertainment where a mix is
needed of direct and indirect state intervention.
However you cut it, a broad set of principles is required from
public debate to define the common good and determine how light or heavy
government involvement should be and of what kind. Those principles structure
the settlement between labour, capital and the community.
Social justice
As standards on which to base such a settlement, Aarons makes
a number of proposals about social justice in
Market versus Nature which I briefly summarise below:
·
Mutual respect
·
No discrimination based on identity (e.g. race,
gender, age) or disability
·
Sufficient minimum wage and social insurance
·
Equal access to the law, health care, education,
communication
·
Proper support and training for those
disadvantaged by business cycles
·
Full employment
·
Minimum inequality in wealth and income
·
Quality of work and life
·
Intergenerational justice, e.g. the environment
to be left in as good as shape or better for the next generation (MVN, 60ff)
All of these deserve support and ought to be found in a Bill
of Rights together with others like fair elections, access to fresh water, air,
a clean environment and the right to control one’s reproductive capacities – contraception
and safe abortion.
According to Aarons, such principles, rules or standards
express more general human values which found his social philosophy – care, integrity,
honour, hope, love, fairness, compassion to name a few. Beneath the hard, prescriptive language of
rights, justice and morality, lies the softer tones of human values. Being general,
values provide a common ground for interpersonal relations, political
solidarity and direction and the basis for cooperation with a global reach. This insight leads Aarons to explore human values
further.
Values
To return to Aarons’ re-discovery of values: it is ironic
that holding the core socialist values of freedom, egalitarianism, democracy,
prosperity and unity, referred to earlier, compels him to drop socialism. Yet this is what Aarons and others like him have
done. Indeed, it was a revelation that
he refers to in his books.
“I concluded … that values,
particularly as they were raised to the level of a more consciously held social
philosophy, were a sounder basis than simply class for developing forms of
unity. Values, in principle, embraced within themselves the class consciousness
on which we had put previously put all the emphasis.” (WL, 190)
Values as he describes them in his earliest formation
“involve the whole person”, combining “thought and emotions”, “are involved in
what people actually do, not just what they say”, “are not necessarily held in
some consciously articulated form, but may be adhered to unconsciously or
perhaps subconsciously” and finally, values “refer to the most generalised
attitudes as distinct from more particular reactions”. (PEW, 30)
Our personal
values develop from the instincts inherited as infants to be shaped by our
experience of the particular settings we live in and where pre-existing social values are encountered. But as Aarons
stresses, values in turn dispose us to think and act in certain ways to realise
them in the world. By motivating us to fashion the world as we would prefer it
to be, values – quite literally - make life worthwhile.
As noted earlier, all of this is in direct contrast to a
Marxism that relegates values to consciousness as a more or less passive player
in the scheme of things. Instead Aarons sees values as bases from which
understanding can lead us to think and act in one way or the other. In his case,
he says his values didn’t change when confronted by the contradictions of
socialism overseas and changes to Australian society but his understanding did
as the Marxist world-view made less sense. The passion remained despite the
theoretical misgivings.
While this values-perspective of Aarons’ philosophy provides
a distinctive approach to politics it also raises questions and points to areas
needing development. A few key points are touched on here.
Human nature
Aarons’ concern with human nature derives from his
experience of many socialists presuming that human beings could be fashioned
and perfected into new socialist men and women as we are basically
communitarian at heart. The social potential is there under capitalism. All
that is needed is the revolution to realise our essential nature under
communism. Here is Maxim Gorky in his novel
Mother.
“They will walk with open hearts,
and the heart of each will be pure of envy and greed, and therefore all mankind
will be without malice, and there will be nothing to divorce the heart from
reason.”
Opposed to this conception of human nature is the pre-social
egoist of neo-liberalist ideology, the abstract individual beloved by
free-marketeers who sees the world in terms of self-interest alone. Capitalism is
the natural economic order, the perfect home for economic man. Ayn Rand, author
of
The Fountainhead and
Atlas Shrugged, was a popular evangelist of one of the many versions of
radical individualism.
Amongst her quotes include:
“If any civilization is to
survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.”
“Civilization is the progress
toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by
the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.”
Just as worrying is the use to which racists, sexists and
homophobes use their versions of human nature to justify discriminatory
practices and elitism of all sorts. In
this case there are different types of human natures and a supposed natural social
order to correspond. Social Darwinism is another variation of this theme where
society is seen as a type of evolutionary outcome in which the naturally
superior rise to rule over those who are weaker in nature.
While it is easy to see the pitfalls of appealing to an
abstraction reducing us all - or particular groups - to some simple type, the
term ‘human nature’ nevertheless plays a persistent role in our everyday
attempt to understand human similarity and difference as well as helping us to
gauge expected behaviour. ‘Human nature’ is a concept that refuses to die
however much criticised as un-scientific and ideological.
Here, Aarons’ approach is more than useful. Look at human
nature not as a simple type be it self-centred or social or pleasure-seeking or
rational or irrational or power-thirsty, whatever, but as a system of different
and often conflicting tendencies that we all share. That is, humanity has no
single common disposition that dominates and trumps all the rest but as
individuals we share a common set of tendencies pulling us one direction or the
other. As discussed earlier we are neither self-directed nor other-directed but
both. Collectively, we are neither the sociopaths of neo-liberalism nor the
saints of socialism.
Having said that, the question remains to what extent are
humans capable of radical change as suggested by some socialists? Is our nature
fixed in certain key respects or are we completely malleable? Are we cricket
balls or pieces of dough? Again the answer is both.
In terms of needs, we all need safety and security. We have elementary
physical needs – food, warmth, water, sex, rest - as well as a set of basic psychological
and social needs such as respect, self-esteem, autonomy and love. In this sense
our nature is fixed. On the other hand how we meet those needs takes many
forms. The ways in which people satisfy their needs, the various types of
objects and activities, appears limitless. In this sense our nature is
adaptable.
So human nature is fixed and fluid as well – but only to a certain extent. There are
limits not only in terms of things available, food, clothing and shelter, for
example, but the manner and degree to which our needs can be satisfied at any
one time and over a period of time. In our daily lives, most of us recognise
such limits without unnecessarily frustrating ourselves or risking our health
and future, ‘doing the best we can with the sense we have’.
Undermining this, however, is the unsustainable level of
environmental exploitation and pollution being driven on by consumerism, capital
accumulation and population growth. Meeting the limits to growth requires
reviewing not only production and consumption but distributing the burdens and
benefits equitably on a global scale. It is these environmental limits and the
social challenges they present that will test the limits of our human nature.
Aarons’ social philosophy then does not assume an
ideological platform of what our true nature is nor its ideal habitat but
alerts us to contending human needs and values that must be managed in
ever-changing, complex situations. Needless to say no one theory of society or
history is going to do the trick of understanding and solving problems all along
the way. Instead a culture of listening or openness is required to develop and
maintain effective, enjoyable social systems – at work, at home, in the arts,
at play, in the community.
The ghost of Marx
To be expected, Aarons’ social philosophy represents his
considerable experience of Marxism in addressing local and international
developments and in particular the role of class-struggle as an explanation or the explanation of social and historical
change. As Australia became more prosperous after WWII, it appeared that
class-struggle had lost its sting and while inequalities remained they became
bearable with an improved standard of living. The many changes in daily life
such as television, consumerism and suburbanisation as well as the move towards
a service-sector economy changed not only the composition of those who ‘sold
their labour-power’ but their consciousness as well. The rise of social
movements added to the cast of political agents, complicating matters while
overseas, socialism became more and more an acquired taste. Put simply, when it
came to buying Marx, you weren’t getting what it said on the tin.
At the same time, we are currently seeing the world economy
stumbling over the contradictions of debt-funded capitalism (why not provide everyone a decent income instead?), a
North-South divide that Dickens or Balzac would have easily recognised (for
“third-world city”, read “slum”), a suite of global crises – water, food, oil,
environment – that has doomsday science-fiction writers playing catch-up, the
‘dark’ factories of robotised manufacturing spreading everywhere, the extension
of precarious employment in all its forms, and to top it off, each year, a global
concentration of unimaginable wealth and power earnestly mounts the stage to
preach gospel at Davos.
If the march of history set down in historical materialism
appears obscure, class-struggle in its many shapes and sizes doesn’t.
Exploitation by the owners of capital whether it is found in the details of the
labour theory of value or not remains the reality if not the language of the
great majority in the world today. More recently, by focusing on income
inequality, the Occupy Movement brought attention to classes and exploitation
on a global scale.
In Aarons’ case, class-analysis or some such similar
understanding of social forces is by and large left to others, while he focuses
on the environmental and spiritual crisis brought on by the market and its
ideological companion, neo-liberalism. There is a weakness here which is
exposed when we try to identify the forces and strategy for change. Where are
the troops? Who is to lead the charge, how and where?
According to a values-approach, we must look to the
subjective-side of the coin for the answer, those who are aware and concerned about
the direction of history, who share core
values. As values are certainly necessary to prompt action, this is
unexceptionable and marks a start. However values are generalised attitudes,
preferences; they need to be informed by analysis, understanding. Moreover,
progressive values need to be developed in the general population. Values must
have the required quality or intensity, and those holding them need to be
organised, resourced and led skilfully.
All of this Aarons and others like him would agree with, yet
there is little indication of where we find the tools for this job particularly
when class - or something similar - is absent from the discussion. In this
sense the ghost of Marx returns to remind us neither philosophy nor morality
can replace social analysis. In the rush away from Marx, important instruments have
been left behind.
For example, it was one of the strengths of the communist
movement that a discussion of strategy was preceded by an identification and assessment
of the social forces at play – classes, movements, organisations, technological
developments, and the like – to lead to what business planners term “scenario
development”. While the algorithms of
traditional Marxism may not be suitable, some such assessment must be put in
its place for a political vehicle or vehicles to drive the analysis and
strategy.
Critically, such analysis must face the need for the world
to be run on a steady-state economy. What would it look like? What would be the
rules for the market and the market-players? What form would capital
accumulation take, if any? What type of growth would be allowed and what should
be encouraged?
While the mixed economy in steady-state terms could not be
called socialist it would represent the best of socialist values. It would be
different from anything we have experienced before, requiring distinctive
social and political systems underpinned by a changed set of values. These
questions are not new but were foreseen with some interest by John Stuart Mill
many years ago.
“...[A] stationary condition of capital and population implies no
stationary state of human improvement. There would be as much scope as ever for
all kinds of mental culture, and moral and social progress; as much room for
improving the art of living, and much more likelihood of it being improved,
when minds ceased to be engrossed by the art of getting on."
- Of the Stationary State, Book IV, Chapter VI in Principles of
Political Economy: With Some of Their Applications to Social Philosophy.
How we transition to this and the low carbon economy of the
future necessitates a clear social analysis of the type mentioned for a ‘battle
plan’ to be prepared, perhaps one centring on a nation-wide project involving
capital, labour and government similar in grand vision to the Snowy Mountains
Hydro-Electric Scheme. In this respect, Labor’s ‘Clean Energy Future’ is a small
but important step in the direction of such a deeper and wider transformation
of society.
Any such analysis would also have to consider other basic
concerns such as jobs and general standard of living and build from there.
Environmental issues while applying to all of us form only part of the panoply
of matters that are found in the world today. More immediate for the great mass
of humanity are the core everyday concerns of work, pay, food, housing, health,
education and family. Focussing principally on dangers to the environment runs
the danger of not being to able to mobilise effectively. To build an effective
unity, the links must be drawn between the traditional concerns of labour and
broader social, environmental matters. Aarons’ new social philosophy is to be
expressed here.
In conclusion, only certain aspects of Aarons’ work have
been considered but in the hope that they will stimulate further reading, discussion
and activity. His writings provide a human scale to social and political reform
that is engaging and practical, devoid of the windy metaphysics and turgid
argot of others. They certainly deserve more attention in these uncertain
times.
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