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May 20, 2007
Noel Pearson has an op-ed in The Australian on Rudd's critique of neo-liberalism that spells out his reservations with this crique for indigenous people. It is an edited extract from Noel Pearson's essay 'White Guilt, Victimhood and the Quest for a Radical Centre' in Griffith Review 16: Unintended Consequences
Pearson interprets Rudd's critique by starting with Rudd's description of the neo-liberal fundamentalism of the Howard Government. Rudd, Pearson says, states that:
"Modern Labor argues that human beings are both self-regarding and other-regarding. By contrast, modern Liberals argue that human beings are almost exclusively self-regarding." Rudd concedes that the self-regarding values of security, liberty and property are necessary for economic growth. He argues that the other-regarding values of equity, solidarity and sustainability must be added in order to make the market economy function effectively, and in order to protect human values such as family life from being crushed by market forces.
Pearson says:
My reservation about this analysis is that it is mainly concerned with those who are not deeply disadvantaged in a cultural and intergenerational way.....Rudd's ideological manifesto is concerned with the effects of neo-liberal policies on people who may have less bargaining power than the most sought-after professionals, but who are nonetheless firmly integrated into the real economy, not only because they have jobs but because they are culturally and socially committed to a life of responsibility and work.
Pearson says that he welcomes the debate Rudd sought to revitalise about the long-term effects on most working people of neo-liberal policies: what will the effects be on family life, on people's sense of security and purpose, on social cohesion? How great is the risk that families among the lower strata of the real economy will descend into the underclass?
Pearson goes on to say that these are real issues, but the important question from an African-American or Aboriginal Australian perspective is: What is the correct analysis of self-regard and other-regard in the context for those already disengaged from the real economy? Disengagement is the problem in Cape York Peninsula and in dysfunctional African-American communities. He adds:
The moderate Left, as represented by Rudd, would probably argue that neo-liberal dominance increases the number of disengaged people and the difficulties of returning them to the working mainstream. This may well be true. However, disadvantage can develop and become self-perpetuating even without neo-liberal government policy. In Australia, Aboriginal disadvantage became entrenched during decades when social democrats, small-l liberals and conservatives influenced policy; many policies for indigenous Australians have been liberal and progressive.
He says that the insight that informs our work in Cape York Peninsula is that disengagement and disadvantage have self-perpetuating and cultural qualities: problems not covered by Rudd's analysis. These are the problems of the underclass, people who are psychologically and culturally disadvantaged.
Rudd does not spend time thinking about the underclass. In the scramble for the political middle, who does? His is an analysis of the prospects of the upper 80 or 90 or 95 per cent of society: how it will fare under social democratic or neo-liberal regimes. If Rudd's analysis was extended to the truly disengaged, his model would probably be interpreted like this: some people are successful and, as well as being self-regarding, they should be other-regarding. And then there are the disadvantaged.
The problem is that it is assumed that the life chances of the disadvantaged depend on the other-regard of the successful: either a precarious dependency in the absence of state institutions or an institutionalised dependency which my people have come to know as passive welfare. In reality, what is needed is an increase of self-regard among the disadvantaged, rather than strengthening their belief that the foundation for their uplift is the welfare state and the other-regard of the successful..
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