What is Labor's ideology?

Labor's failure to raise Jobseeker isn't strategic, it's ideological

We’ve all heard about how bad Jobseeker is. Relied upon by about 1 million of the worst off Australians, it’s woefully inadequate, and inflicts widespread poverty as a consequence.

So why are Labor so hesitant to raise it? Labor won the last election, Labor is in power in every mainland state/territory. Meanwhile, the Liberals are in disarray, polling badly, have future demographics stacked against them, and are also fighting off the teals.

So why don’t they seize the moment?

Only three possible reasons

Conceptually, if a political party chooses not to do something, it must be for one of three reasons.

1. They want to, but rightly believe it will harm them electorally.

2. They want to, but wrongly believe it will harm them electorally.

3. They genuinely don’t want to, because they believe it is actually bad.

Most discussion seems to proceed from 1 (“Labor can’t fix everything in one term”) or 2 (“Labor are too cowardly to do what’s right”), but far less often from 3.

This is very frustrating to me. As I discussed in a previous post, “What stops Labor moving further to the left?”, voter views tend to flow from party views, rather than the other way around. Party ideology thus has far more explanatory power than voter opinions.

What stops Labor moving further to the left?

But what is Labor’s ideology? Aren’t they centre-left? Isn’t raising Jobseeker a left idea?

The limits of the left-right spectrum

While the political spectrum is generally useful in terms of comparing parties to each other, it tells us little about internal motivation. When you ask somebody for their vision of society, they won’t usually say “centrism”, “far rightism” or any particular spectrum position, it’ll usually be a specific vision and principles.

Obviously, different people have a million different visions for society, and even on the same side of the spectrum, these differ widely in terms of policy, principles, and aesthetics.

A “centre-leftist” isn’t just somebody who has the same goals and vision for society as a “hard leftist” - it’s somebody with fundamentally different goals.

Think of Labor’s political and intellectual leadership: Are Albo, Jim Chalmers, Richard Marles, Wayne Swan and Paul Keating socialists, trying to move us leftward to full socialism as fast as they can, only tempered by the whims of voters? No.

Their view of society is fundamentally different from somebody who describes themselves as a socialist.

The three bucket model

Instead of talking about the major parties as centre-left and centre-right, I think it’s much more illuminating to divide the spectrum up into three worldview “buckets” as follows:

• Anti-capitalism (“left”)

• Labour-inclusive capitalism (“centre”)

• Labour-oppositional capitalism (“right”)

These three broad “worldviews” are defined by their attitude towards capitalism.

Capitalism is the ideology of the status quo (we live in a capitalist society and capitalist world) and so these three buckets are defined with reference to this status quo.

What is “labour-inclusive capitalism”?

Capitalism is power based on ownership (of land, company stock, etc).

Instead of thinking of Labor as a party that challenges that power (however mildly), it’s much more accurate to think of Labor as a party that likes (or at least, accepts) capitalism, but wants to bring labour (workers and unions) along for the ride.

This is a different sort of worldview to that of the LNP, who hate unions and see their roles as attacking and fighting unions to keep workers in their place.

Labor-inclusive capitalism is a different worldview, where capital and labour work together instead of fighting. Albo has said this quite directly many times, for instance:

I want to bring the nation together.

Because what guides me is knowing that we have to work together if we are to move forward as one.

I want to unite the country with my vision and plans for a better future.

One in which unions and business work together for the common interest.

Labor doesn’t want to challenge capitalism, it wants to strengthen it. Labor doesn’t support unions because they are battling capitalism, they support unions because they think capitalism does better when workers get a fair go such that they happily participate.

Labour-inclusive capitalism is perhaps best summed up by the slogan Albo repeated many times during the 2022 election campaign:

“No-one held back, no-one left behind”

“No-one held back” is code for “the wealthy folk who run the place will not be restrained”, aka capitalism.

“No-one left behind” is code for “bringing working folk along for the ride” aka, labour inclusion.

Albo laying out the labour-inclusive capitalism vision in May 2022

Labour-inclusive capitalism and welfare

Welfare presents a tricky balancing act for labour-inclusive capitalism.

Consider Jobseeker. With no Jobseeker at all there would be likely be large scale homelessness and unrest. That risks instability (a threat to capitalism) and workers who aren’t just unemployed, but dead from starvation (which threatens labour inclusion).

However, raising it too high means the government would be providing income and stability, rather than employers (also a threat to capitalism) and might make workers less eager to find jobs (threatening labour inclusion).

Seen in this light, Labor’s current indecision on Jobseeker makes total sense. Their indecision is driven not by political cowardice, but the delicate optimization of the stability of labour-inclusive capitalism.

The same balancing act is at play with Labor’s housing policy. Housing affordability, if it gets even worse, could eventually threaten capitalism. So Labor wants to do something. But a big public housing build threatens capitalism (lower house prices, less rent/mortgage slavery, government intervention constraining markets), and so Labor’s housing “future fund” is designed to tackle the problem in the most capital-friendly way possible.

The ultimate labour-inclusive capitalism policy

Finally, think of what Labor often describes as its greatest economic achievement ever: superannuation.

If you’re oppositional to capitalism, superannuation doesn’t make any sense. It’s entirely inferior both from an efficiency and equality perspective to simply paying a higher pension.

So why does Labor love it so much? Because it’s the perfect policy for labour-inclusive capitalism! It doesn’t challenge capitalism, it supports it (by forcing workers to buy shares, and making them reliant on it for their retirements), but does it in a very worker-inclusive way (by forcing workers to have a stake in capitalism themselves).

So why doesn’t Labor say this more clearly?

Because this is a vision of capital and labour working together, Labor sees their job as placating both sides. Labor placates capital by convincing capital that labour inclusion won’t see them “held back”. Maintaining labour inclusion means placating discontent about class and capitalism, by superficially addressing progressive concerns, but in a way that doesn’t upset capitalism.

The myriad of quotes along the lines of “We know people are doing it tough out there, but we’ve got to be responsible about the budget” from people like Jim Chalmers and Katy Gallagher are classic examples: Placate progressive concerns, while also placating capital.

In this way, Labor can play the role rhetorically and aesthetically as a progressive party, while consistently resisting any change in that direction that would be of any threat to capital.

That means many progressively-minded people who keep voting for Labor year after year hoping for policy that meaningfully tackles, reforms or resists capitalism are being continually duped. Not only are Labor not making much progressive change, and not tackling the harms of capitalism, they don’t even want to. It’s time more people understood that.

Labor aren’t cowards, Labor aren’t constantly frustrated socialists. Labor are labour-inclusive capitalists who mostly like Australia the way it already is, and want to bring workers along for the ride to keep it that way.