The Importance of Class: Points of Tension Between Arena and Overland (Discussion) (Critical Essay‪)‬

This debate grew out of the 1998 MUA wharf dispute and in particular an Arena Magazine article by John Hinkson that criticized the treatment of the dispute by Stuart Macintyre in Overland. (1) I replied to that article in a letter printed in the August-September edition of Arena Magazine alongside a reply from Hinkson. (2) Later I made some more general criticisms of Arena in an Overland review of small magazines. (3) This in turn elicited a response from Geoff Sharp who, on behalf of the Arena collective, proposed this debate or discussion. (4) Macintyre's article was a historical piece that made connections between this latest attempt and the two major previous attempts by capital and government to openly attack and destroy waterside workers' unions. Hinkson argued that in making these connections with the 1890s and the 1920s, Macintyre misrepresented the nature of present struggles between capital and labour, which must be understood in terms of structural rather than cyclical historical change. Hinkson suggested that a historical approach to social analysis needs to be accompanied by 'larger critical analysis of contemporary circumstances'. (5) Due to the historically unique nature of our present condition, the past is no longer as useful to us as it used to be. Built into Hinkson's argument was the assumption that 'worker solidarity' will not make a 'triumphant return' (6) and I suppose the choice of 'class' as the topic for discussion here, rather than 'future directions', for example, arises from the feeling that this assumption needs to be further explained or discussed before productive dialogue can take place. Argument about whether postmodernity is a novel historical phenomenon or an older phenomenon in a new form seems in many ways a semantic one: it is possible to argue either case. (7) The question is, rather, why a person or group would choose to emphasize one or the other interpretation.