Mark Latham's fantasies of a middle-class 'utopia'

Phil Shannon reviews Mark Latham's fantasies of a middle-class 'utopia'.

The centrepiece of Latham’s alternative, “minimalist” politics is government by experts. Expert bodies would take charge of fiscal policy, climate change policy and other areas of government dereliction.

Such old-hat technocratic solutions, however, would only further blow out what Latham justly deplores as Australia’s “democratic deficit”. Experts are not ideology-free and would themselves be elite members of the Bubble — only minus any democratic accountability.

Latham is right to say the current system is broken but it is the capitalist form of democracy — economic rule by the rich, political rule by their class buddies — that is the problem.

The ideologues of Capitalism are facing a crisis of legitimacy. They are smart enough to realise that people seeing that Capitalism is not working for them. The ideologues want us to believe that this is not real Capitalism, the political system is corrupted by money, etc.

But no Capitalist will go as far to admit that Capitalism has run its historic course and must be replaced by something better.