Australian coal seam gas protests - support or not?

Tripped out when I first saw Alan Jones speaking out against CSG; was like he was almost managing to sound recognisably human. Guess that's what happens when class war gets so intense that the interests of different sectors of the ruling class start to diverge.

I find I'm in total agreement with just about everyone I talk to about CSG; all agree it's extremely damaging and problematic, just as all agree that something needs to be done. We have the same problem we do with socialists though, although not only socialists but social democrats and even some conservatives like Jones are along for the ride. If we're going to compromise with them to come up with a common solution then we're going to be the ones who do all the compromising.

So we need to approach it from an anarchist or left communist perspective. CSG needs to be understood as one of the characteristic irrationalities of a mode of production that prioritises the enrichment of a few over the needs of the many and as another of the myriad ways in which neoliberal captialism privatises benefits while socialising costs, and it needs to be connected to other forms of oppression that stem from the same paradigm to demonstrate that it can't be treated through reforms and in isolation from the larger social and environmental crisis we as Australian workers and world citizens are facing.

We also need to articulate responses that are meaningful to the extent that they don't reproduce the problem by working within its paradigm, principally where the question of neoliberal capitalism and the state are concerned, and refer to the anarchist and left communist tradition in support of these. My feeling is that the harder we work to distance ourselves from the paradigm in which the problem of CSG and climate change more generally manifest the more effective we can be in the long run.

I think all of this is only shocking and surprising if confined and restricted by the mental straitjacket of imagining that anarchism is part of the left. Do not the terms 'left wing' and 'right wing' originate as political descriptors based on where they sat in the Chamber of Deputies after the French Revolution?

I see the racism of the right is mentioned, but what of the left? Whereas the right despise the indigenous, the left will worship them. Have a look at the Facebook eruption in the wake of Kieran Bennett's article on his disappointment at Robbie Thorpe's speech at the 'Anarchist' (sic) Bookfair last August (white people denouncing other white people as racist). While your at it, check out Gary Foley's Koori History website for 'The Power of Whiteness' or if you have even more time, have a read of Aileen Moreton-Robinson's 'Talkin' Up To The White Woman'.

Anarchism is a working-class movement that is not part of the Left. It never was part of the Left nor will it ever be part of the Left. As anarchists in Spain like to say " Neither Left nor Right but Straight Ahead to Revolution!"

Anarchists may not oppose reforms (regardless of which side of politics initiates them) but they do not live by them because anarchists are revolutionary, not reformist.

Those 'anarchists' that mistakenly accept the premise that anarchism is part of the left will attempt to locate each issue's exact position on the political spectrum. But wait a minute! Alan Jones is speaking out against CSG! Fuck man, I'm having a bad trip! Advice; get off the anarchy-is-part-of-the-left heavy drugs.

The Left/Right mental straight-jacket is an impediment to revolutionary action as well, on occasion, reformist action. A CSG-free capitalism can accomodate both left and right (Drew Hutton/Alan Jones). But no capitalism means no state means straight ahead (no deviations) to anarchist revolution.

For more on 'Left Unity' check out:

http://libcom.org/blog/%E2%80%9C-real-enemy%E2%80%9D-why-we-should-rejec...

That's obviously what's drawing the likes of Alan Jones on board. If it was only affecting single mothers in outer Western Sydney he'd be accusing them of getting in the way of economic growth on their way to Centrelink to defraud the welfare system. Clearly the lack of respect for the land and lack of respect for indigenous people go hand in hand, just as they both go hand in hand with lack of respect for the autonomy of workers more generally.

While this is clearly a sticking point not only for conservatives but also social democrats of the ALP ilk it's probably also a good opportunity for those of us further to the libertarian collectivist end of the political compass to make those links and weaken the influence of the conservatives.

Only 3 paras on page 5? Challenging moderate groups sounds like a good idea. Climate change is an issue where anyone who supports working within the paradigm that created the problem has no leg to stand on, which vindicates us. The question for us is I guess whether we're willing and able to make the effort to effectively assert that fact.

Dead in the water: O'Farrell buries coal seam gas plans http://www.smh.com.au/environment/dead-in-the-water-ofarrell-buries-coal-seam-gas-plans-20130218-2eniw.html

Maybe they're starting to wake up to that fact.

Lock the Gate is a pretty innovative campaign, and I believe one of those situations where the interests of the petit-bourgeoisie overlap with those of the proletariat; ie. having a planet without a chaotic climate, and with unpolluted agricultural land.

I'd also recommend ASEN's 'Lock the Campus' campaign, which will aim to rat out vice verse investment between universities and mining companies(not just coal, but starting there), and aiming to lock out mining companies from Uni's, and making Uni's divest their financial investments from mining.

I am unsure of the use of the term 'petit-bourgeoisie' as this seems to imply that people own a small amount of capital. Small businesses in Australia cities seem to borrow capital from banks ( repositories of society's capital) and thus function as self-employed managers of other people's money, often then using the assets that they have borrowed to buy as collateral for funding their lifestyles. Is this the same in rural Australia, or are farmers inheritors of the squatocracy and own their land? Do we need to be more precise and work out the lines and tensions within the farming population? As a city ( well suburban really) person this always seemed very complex to me. I remember as a kid having a friend whose dad owned a sheep farm whilst her brothers were involved in forming that break away shearers union in the mid90s (remember that?).....
cheers
Dave

That would seem to be the case. Maybe to the extent that people on the land are looking to fund their lifestyles as opposed to perpetuating the economic and social privileges of the squatocracy and these are classes with potentially conflicting interests, there's room to engage constructively with groups like Lock the Gates.

Large multinationals are no less of a threat to their freedom and it would be well within the realms of plausibility to develop a revolutionary critique of CSG that spoke to the chaos and insanity of neoliberal capitalism and the need to bring the means of farming under farm workers' control.