A
welcome openness to experience
Morag Fraser
Left Right Left, Political Essays 1977–2005, Robert Manne. Black Inc, 2005. ISBN 1 863 95142 3, RRP $34.95
In the last ten years Australia has experienced a creeping conservative counter-revolution in public sensibility.'
That is Robert Manne, in the introduction to Do Not Disturb (Black Inc, 2005), a disturbing and timely selection of essays on the current state of the Australian media by authors with whom readers will be familiar—Jack Waterford and Margaret Simons among them.
Eight years ago, even after his resignation, in fraught circumstances, as editor of Quadrant, one would not readily have attributed the sentence, or the sentiments, to Robert Manne. After all, Manne was the public intellectual who was routinely invited to provide the conservative heft, or right-wing 'balance' (as the ABC and print media would have it), in print or in public discussion. I don't think anyone ever descended to the banality of labelling him 'the right-wing Phillip Adams', but, by his own say-so, Manne belonged to the tribe of the right rather than to the tribe of the left.
The pigeonholing, even when self-inflicted, has always been reductive. The young man I remember from Melbourne University in the 1960s was far too intellectually engaged to be so easily categorised. The academic teacher in him has always been a liberal inquirer, never an ideologue. The mature author of the 500 or so pages that comprise his selected political essays is still a work in progress—the reflective introductory essay to Left Right Left indicates as much. And if there is a recurrent note of surprise in the interrogation to which he subjects himself and his 'political trajectory', then that's a token more of intellectual integrity than naivety. Which doesn't mean that the reader is not prompted sometimes to ask why it took so long for Robert Manne to change his mind about some issues ('political correctness', for example), or why he had to identify so fully with a tribe—and all its baggage—in the first place.
Most of the answers, admirably honest, come from Manne himself. About the fundamentals, he has never been in doubt:
My political identity is grounded in one simple, overwhelming fact—the decision taken by the Nazi state to wipe the Jews from the face of the earth. My grandparents were murdered by the Nazis. My parents found refuge in Australia. It was under the shadow of the Holocaust that I grew up.
But if the 'origin of my political identity', as he puts it, was tragically simple, 'its elaborations over time may be very complex indeed'.
The virtue of a collection like Left Right Left, with its almost three decades of essays unedited except to eliminate repetition, is that one can read in it the 'elaborations over time'. 'There are one or two sentences in this book that make me wince,' Manne confesses in his introduction. There are whole sections, indeed whole essays, in this book that will make many readers, whether members of the left or right tribes or not, wince. Early on, Manne describes himself as having a taste for archival research and the temperament of a political activist. Any reader will also recognise in him the reflexes of a moralist. The style which expresses that combination is lucid and elegantly straightforward. It is also often combative. Manne is a gifted and determined polemicist, and he does not always take prisoners. The 1985 Quadrant essay on Wilfred Burchett ('He chose Stalin') is a case in point. One wonders also if Manne were to write the essay 'On the Manning Clark Affair' now, whether he would be so initially sparing of indignation about Clark's scandalous treatment at the hands of the Courier-Mail while so scathing about what he describes as 'the bloody muddle at the centre of his thought'. The 'muddle' Manne goes on to ascribe to the left as a whole: '... a muddle he shared with an entire generation of the left and one which provides a clue to the present collapse of the left in Australia and the West.'
It is this categorical dismissal of the Australian left and the implicit assumptions about the left's motives and intellectual affiliations, indeed intellectual integrity, that have long infuriated so many of Robert Manne's readers on the left. Whether one came out of an Australian Catholic social-action tradition or a trade-union background, it was impossible not to feel misrepresented by Manne's critical judgments. The Australian left was so much more motley, so much less predictable and less culpable, than—in his anti-communist fervour—he seemed to allow.
In his 2003–4 essay on George Orwell, Manne praises Orwell's 'untheorised openness to experience'. That is the characteristic that one has often wanted from Robert Manne in polemical mode—more openness to experience, a less systematising, categorising, perhaps even less 'political' way of interpreting events. In his essay on Helen Garner's controversial book The First Stone, he remarks that Garner's account of the affair is 'non-political'. I can remember agreeing with him at the time but also wishing that he would himself sometimes adopt the habits of the novelist, that 'untheorised openness' that allows for contingency, for surprise, for growth.
So it is a considerable pleasure, not even an astringent one, to see the young Robert Manne's distrust of ideologically driven politics turn into an older man's increasing openness to experience. In the Orwell essay he uses another phrase for what I mean: 'unburdened by interpretation'. It comes as part of an eloquent account of what is so memorable, and valuable, in Orwell:
Because of his untheorised openness to experience, Orwell is, too, always capable of surprise. In 'Looking back on the Spanish War', he discussed very briefly a situation in which he found himself incapable of shooting at an enemy soldier, whom he had in his sights, but who was holding onto his trousers (which were falling down) and who was, at that moment, transformed from a fascist into a fellow human being. Orwell does not draw from the experience any trite anti-war sentiment. It did not cause him to doubt the justice of fighting on the anti-Franco side. Indeed, when he asked himself what the experience had meant, he answered not very much. Yet precisely because it is unburdened by interpretation, the passage manages somehow to go deep.
Left Right Left includes Manne's recent long and critical pieces on the Aboriginal 'stolen generations' and on Australia's treatment of asylum seekers. There are also some very late samples of journalism on the Iraq war and the American neoconseratives. His essay in Do Not Disturb is unrelenting in its castigation of the global influence of the Murdoch press. You can see the investigator, the archive digger in his story about the Hobart Mercury's sudden shift of position on the Iraq war; it's a neat demolition job on the myth that Murdoch editors are all independent and suffer no interference from their boss. None of these pieces would have been written by Robert Manne in the 1980s, perhaps because his attention was elsewhere, perhaps because he was locked into other affiliations or loyalties. But that is the book's point: to trace the trajectory. Manne himself describes that long passage as a homecoming. One can only reply, welcome.
Morag Fraser is an adjunct professor at La Trobe University.
Adrift in a spendthrift society
Tania Andrusiak
Affluenza, Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss. Allen & Unwin, 2005. ISBN 1 741 14671 2, RRP $24.95
This
book reflects the image of contemporary Australian society: a culture
obsessed with over-consumption. It depicts a deeply unfulfilled population
addicted to credit and aspiring to lifestyles of the 'monied classes'.
With the longest working hours in the developed world, Australians' personal
relationships are deteriorating and 'self-medication' with legal and illegal
drugs is prevalent.
Affluenza aims to deconstruct the psychology of consumerism. It is sharply critical of tactics used by advertisers and marketers to manipulate purchasing behaviour. In this book, the Australia Institute's Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss examine the economic 'growth fetish', the politics of middle-class welfare, and the social costs of ever-increasing working hours. The thrust of their discussion, however, is downshifting—the challenge to regain control over our spending behaviours and our lives.
Hamilton and Denniss assert that Australia's best-paid psychologists work in marketing, carefully constructing language that manipulates us into believing that everything we desire, we deserve. Further distorting this manipulation is the issue of our self-image, and our desire to bring our actual self into accord with our ideal self. Advertisers exploit our fear that the 'real us' is inadequate, so we consume objects of identity and status to reflect the image we want others to see. The authors assert that almost all consumption today 'is to some degree an attempt to create or renew a concept of self'.
However, according to the authors, broader discontent with our over-consumption is evident in the downshifting phenomenon, which they argue is the antidote to affluenza.
Indeed, the overarching theme of the Australia Institute's research is to demonstrate that most of us feel Australian society has become too materialistic. However, the challenge to address our behaviour is complicated by confusion over what constitutes a need or a want, and how we measure up against others' spending habits and incomes.
Through Affluenza, Hamilton and Denniss explore discrepancies over our personal wealth perceptions: nearly two-thirds of Australians believe they can't afford to buy everything they really need, and most of us believe we're doing it tough. Yet statistics illustrate that Australians' personal wealth is three times the 1950s average.
It's not hard to see why dissatisfaction and disappointment are the perpetual experience for participants in the consumer society. Retail transactions serve as therapy to fill the void created by affluenza, but our actions prove as superficial as they are meaningless. And so the cycle continues.
However, beyond the authors' astute observations, many questions still remain. Certainly, most of us experience comfortable levels of affluence, and we need a reality check on what constitutes the good life. Without doubt, advertisers must take more responsibility for their questionable tactics—most notably their growing penchant for exploiting children's vulnerability through the process of brand-imprinting which aims to own the consumer from a very young age. But children aside, these tactics only work on those who depend on consumption for acceptance, belonging and meaning.
What the authors don't do, besides offering up the option of downshifting, is explore the complexity of possible solutions. At the core of Affluenza is the idea that we search for meaning, a sense of belonging and identity through increased material wealth and consumption. So, instead of simply asking how we can downshift, we need other ways of belonging.
If we don't depend on consumption to construct our identity, we must
find it elsewhere. As a culture, we need to reflect on where previous
generations found their sense of belonging: in stable employment,
extended families, and communities of faith and place. If these traditional
support structures have eroded, we need to create new ones, or re-instil
value in those that remain.
Hamilton and Denniss note that downshifting often frees up time for community activities. Yet, downshifting is an individual response, not a direct solution to affluenza. If affluenza represents our drive to replace the void left by the worth and meaning we once found in our communities, then the cure is to rebuild them.
Downshifting, as the authors describe it, relies on a new understanding of our roles in community. We are people, not consumers, and people do not thrive when their worth depends on superficiality. Human beings depend on meaningful interaction with other human beings. When we become obsessed with acquisition, we no longer find the time to nurture our relationships. We forget our sense of responsibility to others in our communities. If acceptance in our culture is dependent upon consumption, we marginalise those truly living in poverty.
It is the role of the community to give us our sense of belonging, participation, self-worth and meaning. No one should feel the need to buy self-esteem and acceptance. Where we foster supportive, invigorated communities, our desire to consume should naturally fall. Where we find meaning and belonging in our community, our ever-increasing need for money would be curtailed.
In this way, Affluenza is a launching pad. It offers a detailed analysis of the problem, but not enough by way of solutions. This culmination of the last five years of the Australia Institute's research should help us to start finding ways to take back responsibility for our neglected communities, and reinvigorate the creation of a society where everybody can belong.
Tania Andrusiak is a freelance writer and editor.
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