This is a quick little pamphlet that I decided to write this morning, to take my mind off a few other things. I am calling it “Lessons for today”.
In part one I mercilessly punish the naughty, naughty neoliberal Hawke, Keating, and Howard. I make them write out lines from Marx. The naughty boys have told lies, and they had better start behaving.
In part two I make Howard write out a lot of lines. Imagine naming yourself after Lazarus in the bible! How dare you! Naughty boy!
Author: Blair Vidak.
This man is one of the world’s greatest war criminals, and for some reason, he is remembered fondly in this land.
I remember someone remarking to me in the car, once: “Yair, but things were pretty good under Howard”.
The Howard Years (1996-2007) frequently loom large in my mind. Dutton—who I maintain is an out-and-out fascist—is similarly entertained in public, as is Howard. What a sad time. How did this man get away with it? But, really, hasn’t the icy breath of John Howard’s ideology come to stiffen the corpse of the Liberal—National Coalition lately?
From the high watermark of those years, is not the Coalition certainly now suffering? How’s the Voice, Herr Kipfler?
You know, John Howard, the mass killer, stole everything he ever sold. And the only reason he didn’t get neoliberalism started is because Bob Hawke beat him to it. He would have loved to have sold off as much of the state as Keating. And you know what—so the story goes—Howard presided over huge economic profits for bosses in Australia during his years. But it was Keating, Keating who really knew how to sell off public property.
And now there is very little left to sell. In fact, if you see what Chalmers reckons, we need to slow down a bit on selling everything off.
The secret of neoliberalism is very simple. You sell off—i.e. privatise—public property. That is all there is economically to the story.
We will now punish the naughty neoliberals for their trickery by reciting Marx:
But as to profits, there exists no law which determines their minimum. We cannot say what is the ultimate limit of their decrease. And why cannot we fix that limit? Because, although we can fix the minimum of wages, we cannot fix their maximum.
We can only say that, the limits of the working day being given, the maximum of profit corresponds to the physical minimum of wages; and that wages being given, the maximum of profit corresponds to such a prolongation of the working day as is compatible with the physical forces of the labourer. The maximum of profit is therefore limited by the physical minimum of wages and the physical maximum of the working day. It is evident that between the two limits of the maximum rate of profit an immense scale of variations is possible. The fixation of its actual degree is only settled by the continuous struggle between capital and labour, the capitalist constantly tending to reduce wages to their physical minimum, and to extend the working day to its physical maximum, while the working man constantly presses in the opposite direction.
Therefore, there is an inverse relationship between wages and profits. If wages increase, profits will necessarily decrease. If the share to the capitalist increases, wages will necessarily fall.
The values of commodities are therefore completely independent of the share of the value of the sale of commodities that goes to either workers or capitalists. There is no relationship between the value of a commodity, and how much profit is made, or how high wages are.
And, further, as we are taught by Marx, the law that governs the values of commodities is solely the total amount of labour worked up into those commodities. The labour theory of value.
Do we dare tangle in the jungle? Can someone say it first—I’ll take a good mea culpa from Keating. If he reckon’s he’s “Left Wing”, I will permit him to be a comrade if he disallows profits to go any higher, and permits wages to increase. That is the faustian pact that I offer Keating.
“I am the resurrection and the life.”
Howard! How dare you model yourself after this bible story. People seem to forget that it is wrong to take god’s name in vain. Most attribute the meaning of the second commandment to be an injunction against using god’s name as an expletive.
But the real meaning is deeper. John Howard’s actual track record in parliament was that he was clinging on for dear life until 2005. Whereupon, miraculously, he wins both houses of parliament. Ironically, his fate is consummated thus: WorkChoices leads inevitably to his downfall.
The main problem with everyone today is that we’re always too late to catch on to the deeper meaning within things. I say “within” rather than “behind”.
On the surface, yes, John 11 certainly tells you a story about Jesus rocking up to Bethany and resurrecting some dude named Lazarus. That is perfectly true.
However when you actually read John 11, you see a deeper meaning. And the deeper meaning behind the story is that by going to Bethany, which is in Judea, he is practically sealing his own fate. His own death.
And people tell him this. And people also complain at him for not having come sooner, and, perhaps preventing the death of Lazarus. And you know how Jesus responds? He just sighs and gets on with it. These people are making it harder.
And the point is not to go Full Catholic Grandma and take the shallow meaning again: Why won’t anyone listen to Jesus? He’s the son of god!
The point is this: Jesus loved Lazarus. He loved his whole family. Remember one of Lazarus’s sisters annointed Jesus. These people were really tight with each other. Jesus was sticking his neck out for Lazarus.
This is the deeper lesson: stick your neck out for your family. Your tribe.
Naughty schoolboy Howard! This isn’t a story about you! You’re dead for most of it!
1 A man named Lazarus, who lived in Bethany, became sick. Bethany was the town where Mary and her sister Martha lived. ( 2 This Mary was the one who poured the perfume on the Lord's feet and wiped them with her hair; it was her brother Lazarus who was sick.) 3The sisters sent Jesus a message: “Lord, your dear friend is sick.”
4When Jesus heard it, he said, “The final result of this sickness will not be the death of Lazarus; this has happened in order to bring glory to God, and it will be the means by which the Son of God will receive glory.”
5Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. 6Yet when he received the news that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was for two more days. 7Then he said to the disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.”
8“Teacher,” the disciples answered, “just a short time ago the people there wanted to stone you; and are you planning to go back?”
9Jesus said, “A day has twelve hours, doesn't it? So those who walk in broad daylight do not stumble, for they see the light of this world. 10But if they walk during the night they stumble, because they have no light.” 11Jesus said this and then added, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I will go and wake him up.”
12The disciples answered, “If he is asleep, Lord, he will get well.”
13Jesus meant that Lazarus had died, but they thought he meant natural sleep. 14So Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead, 15but for your sake I am glad that I was not with him, so that you will believe. Let us go to him.”
16Thomas (called the Twin) said to his fellow disciples, “Let us all go along with the Teacher, so that we may die with him!”
17When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had been buried four days before. 18Bethany was less than two miles from Jerusalem, 19and many Judeans had come to see Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother's death.
20When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed in the house. 21Martha said to Jesus, “If you had been here, Lord, my brother would not have died! 22But I know that even now God will give you whatever you ask him for.”
23“Your brother will rise to life,” Jesus told her.
24 “I know,” she replied, “that he will rise to life on the last day.”
25Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me will live, even though they die; 26and those who live and believe in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
27“Yes, Lord!” she answered. “I do believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who was to come into the world.”
28After Martha said this, she went back and called her sister Mary privately. “The Teacher is here,” she told her, “and is asking for you.” 29When Mary heard this, she got up and hurried out to meet him. ( 30Jesus had not yet arrived in the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him.) 31The people who were in the house with Mary comforting her followed her when they saw her get up and hurry out. They thought that she was going to the grave to weep there.
32Mary arrived where Jesus was, and as soon as she saw him, she fell at his feet. “Lord,” she said, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died!”
33Jesus saw her weeping, and he saw how the people with her were weeping also; his heart was touched, and he was deeply moved. 34“Where have you buried him?” he asked them.
“Come and see, Lord,” they answered.
35Jesus wept. 36“See how much he loved him!” the people said.
37But some of them said, “He gave sight to the blind man, didn't he? Could he not have kept Lazarus from dying?”
38Deeply moved once more, Jesus went to the tomb, which was a cave with a stone placed at the entrance. 39“Take the stone away!” Jesus ordered.
Martha, the dead man's sister, answered, “There will be a bad smell, Lord. He has been buried four days!”
40Jesus said to her, “Didn't I tell you that you would see God's glory if you believed?” 41They took the stone away. Jesus looked up and said, “I thank you, Father, that you listen to me. 42I know that you always listen to me, but I say this for the sake of the people here, so that they will believe that you sent me.” 43After he had said this, he called out in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” 44He came out, his hands and feet wrapped in grave cloths, and with a cloth around his face. “Untie him,” Jesus told them, “and let him go.”