How Labour Built Neoliberalism: Australia’s Accord, the Labour Movement and the Neoliberal Project

281 Pages·2019·3.951 MB·English

by  Elizabeth Humphrys

How Labour Built Neoliberalism
<<UUNN>>
Studies in
Critical Social Sciences
Series Editor
David Fasenfest (Wayne State University)
Editorial Board
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (Duke University)
Chris Chase-Dunn (University of California-Riverside)
William Carroll (University of Victoria)
Raewyn Connell (University of Sydney)
Kimberle W. Crenshaw (University of California, la, and
Columbia University)
Raju Das (York University)
Heidi Gottfried (Wayne State University)
Karin Gottschall (University of Bremen)
Alfredo Saad-Filho (University of London)
Chizuko Ueno (University of Tokyo)
Sylvia Walby (Lancaster University)
volume 126
The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/scss
<UN>
How Labour Built Neoliberalism
Australia’s Accord, the Labour Movement
and the Neoliberal Project
By
Elizabeth Humphrys
leiden | boston
<UN>
Cover illustration: Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher --
at 10 Downing Street, London in 1986. With kind permission of Fox Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Humphrys, Elizabeth, author.
Title: How labour built neoliberalism : Australia’s accord, the labour
movement and the neoliberal project / by Elizabeth Humphrys.
Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2019. | Series: Studies in critical
social sciences, ISSN 1573-4234 ; volume 126 | “This book draws on my
Ph.D., which I completed in the Department of Political Economy at the
University of Sydney”-- Author’s acknowledgments. | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018038577 (print) | LCCN 2018044459 (ebook) | ISBN
9789004383463 (E-Book) | ISBN 9789004349001 (hardback)
Subjects: LCSH: Australia--Economic conditions--1945- | Labor
movement--Australia. | Neoliberalism--Australia. | Australian Labor Party.
| Australian Council of Trade Unions. | Australia--Politics and
government--1945-
Classification: LCC HC605 (ebook) | LCC HC605 .H775 2019 (print) | DDC
320.51/30994--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018038577
Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface.
ISSN 1573-4234
ISBN 978-90-04-34900-1 (hardback)
ISBN 978-90-04-38346-3 (e-book)
Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi,
Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without prior written permission from the publisher.
Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided
that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite
910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change.
This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.
<UN>
Contents
Acknowledgements  IX
List of Illustrations  X
List of Abbreviations  XI
1 Introduction  1
1 The ALP & ACTU Accord  3
2 The Social Contract’s Gala Dinner  6
3 Neoliberalism’s Corporatist Origins  8
4 A Hegemonic Political Project  10
5 Corporatist ‘involucro’  12
6 A Note on Method  13
7 Structure of the Book  16
2 Theorising the State–Civil Society Relationship  19
1 Introduction  19
1.1 Some Preliminary Comments  20
2 Marx’s Critique of Hegel  22
3 From Critique of Politics to Critique of Political Economy  27
4 From Marx to Gramsci  28
4.1 Lo stato integrale  29
5 Gramsci contra Marx? The Limits of Integration  32
6 Conclusion  34
3 Corporatism in Australia  36
1 Introduction  36
2 Understanding Corporatism  37
3 Panitch’s Approach  38
4 Corporatism and the Accord  41
5 The Context of Arbitration  45
6 Conclusion  50
4 Destabilising the Dominant Narrative  52
1 Introduction  52
1.1 Conceptual Diversity  53
2 The Dominant Narrative  54
2.1 Harvey: A Brief History of Neoliberalism  55
2.2 Klein: The Shock Doctrine  58
<UN>
vi Contents
2.3 Peck, Theodore, Tickell and Brenner: ‘Neoliberalisation’  59
2.4 Destabilising the Dominant Narrative  62
3 A Class Approach to Neoliberalism  64
3.1 Harvey: ‘The Restoration of Class Power’  66
3.2 Davidson: ‘An Entirely New Political Regime’  68
3.3 A Hegemonic Political Project  70
4 Conclusion  72
5 Periodising Neoliberalism  74
1 Introduction  74
2 Periodising Neoliberalism in Australia  75
3 Proto-neoliberal stage: 1973–1983  77
3.1 The Economic Crisis  77
3.2 The Whitlam Government  81
3.3 The Fraser Government  88
4 Vanguard Neoliberal Stage: 1983–1993  93
4.1 The Impasse of the 1970s  93
4.2 Developing the Accord  97
5 Piecemeal Neoliberalisation Stage: 1993–2008  101
5.1 Howard’s Piecemeal Neoliberalism  104
6 Crisis stage: 2008 Onwards  106
7 Conclusion  107
6 The Disorganisation of Labour  109
1 Introduction  109
2 The Accord Agreement  110
3 Wages and the Accord  113
3.1 The First Accord (1983)  114
3.2 Accord Mark II (1985–1987)  116
3.3 Accord Mark III (1986–1987)  118
3.4 Accord Mark IV (1988–1989), V (1989–1990) & VI
(1990–1993)  119
3.5 Accord Mark VII (1993) & VIII (Draft Only)  122
4 Wage Suppression  124
4.1 Labour Disorganisation  127
5 Conclusion  129
7 An Integral State  132
1 Introduction  132
2 Accord Divergences  133
<UN>
Contents vii
2.1 The National Economic Summit and Communiqué  133
2.2 Prices  138
2.3 ‘Big Bang’ and Other Neoliberal Reforms  140
2.4 Trade Liberalisation  142
3 Privatisation  143
4 Social Wage and Contested Understandings  145
4.1 Medicare  147
4.2 Superannuation  148
4.3 Worth the Cost?  152
5 The Concord of Neoliberalism and the Accord  153
5.1 A Brace against Neoliberalism?  154
5.2 Theorising the Corporatism–neoliberalism
Connection  159
5.3 An ‘Informal Accord’?  161
5.4 The Accord as Involucro  163
6 Conclusion  166
8 How Labour Made Neoliberalism  167
1 Introduction  167
2 From Worker Agency to State Agency  168
2.1 The Shift to Support the Accord  169
2.2 Planning as a Solution to Crisis?  173
2.3 Consultation on, and Support for, the Accord  174
2.4 Sticking with the Accord  176
2.5 Industry Policy and Australia Reconstructed  179
3 Managing Dissent and Disorganising Labour  185
3.1 Civil Legal Action against Labour Disputes  185
3.2 Deregistration of the Builders Labourers’
Federation  189
3.3 Pilots’ Dispute  191
4 Enterprise Bargaining and the Antinomies of the Accord  195
4.1 Hegemony Unravelling  199
5 Conclusion  205
9 A Return to the International  207
1 Introduction  207
2 A Brief Detour in the Antipodes  209
3 The British Social Contract (1974–1979)  211
4 The Carter Administration (1977–1981) and Prior  214
5 New York City Council Fiscal Crisis (1975–1981)  217
<UN>
viii Contents
6 Contemporary Finland  220
7 Conclusion  221
10 Conclusion: Neoliberalism at Dusk  224
1 Internal Relations  224
2 Antinomies and Residues  226
3 Neoliberalism at Dusk  228
Appendices  231
Appendix A: List of Australian Governments  231
Appendix B: Timeline of Predecessors to the AMWU  231
References  233
Index  262
<UN>
Acknowledgements
I acknowledge the assistance of the Noel Butlin Archives at the Australian Na-
tional University, and the University of Melbourne Archives. For permission to
access collections, I thank the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), the
Victorian Trades Hall Council (VTHC) and the National and Victorian Branches
of the Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union (AMWU). For access to oth-
er materials, I thank the Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Library, the National
Archives of Australia, the University of Sydney Library, Frank Stilwell, Paul Fri-
jters and Robert Gregory. In 2013, I received the University of Sydney & WZB
Fellowship at the Berlin Social Science Research Centre and I thank John Ke-
ane. I thank Dieter Plehwe for his support and friendship while I was in Berlin,
and in the years following. I am also grateful to the Varuna National Writers’
House for two residencies. Thank you to Lisa Adkins and the participants in the
Neoliberalism’s Complexities workshop at the University of Newcastle (Sydney
Campus) in December 2017, as their presentations and feedback on my paper
provided excellent motivation for revisions on the final chapter of this book.
Thank you to Peter Thomas, Colin Barker, Jenny Haines, Humphrey McQueen
and, more sadly, Frans Timmerman (1947–2014) and John Kaye (1955–2016) for
advice during my research. I acknowledge the assistance of Kieran Latty in cre-
ating Figure 6.2, Margie Tubbs for proofreading and Amy Thomas for the index.
My colleagues at the University of Technology Sydney have provided incred-
ible support while I was writing this book: thank you to Chris Ho, Liz Giuffre,
Sarah Attfield, Lucy Fiske, Ben Abraham, Devleena Ghosh and Maryanne
Dever. This book draws on my Ph.D., which I completed in the Department
of Political Economy at the University of Sydney. I thank Gareth Bryant and
Adam Morton in particular. My Ph.D. supervisor, Damien Cahill, and associate
supervisor, Bill Dunn, were unfailingly generous. I am particularly indebted to
Damien for his guidance, astuteness and for our friendship over many years.
This book also benefitted from the thoughtful feedback provided by my Ph.D.
examiners, and I thank Alfredo Saad-Filho, Andreas Bieler and Carol John-
son. Thank you to David Fasenfest, Jennifer Obdam and Judy Pereira for their
thoughtful guidance and the opportunity to publish in this series.
Finally, thank you to my friends and family for their support. Thank you
to Tadeusz Tietze for everything he did that made the Ph.D., which this book
draws on, possible. Thank you to Frank Humphrys, Susan Humphrys, Fiona
Collison, Luke Humphrys, Rachael Humphrys, Katerina Kraenzel-Paneras,
Martin Kraenzel, Clinton Hill, Claire Parfitt, Eve Vincent, Jessica Whyte, Ihab
Shalbek, Inger Mewburn, Tom Barnes, Rory Dufficy, Elena Gomez, Zoe Bow-
man, Frances Lockie and Devina Potter.
<UN>