On National Democracy

On National Democracy

by Jim Saleam
(Revised from a booklet published by Australian National Action in 1990)

Preface

Australian Nationalists have published 'criticism' of the principle and the actual workings of the Australian State.

It is the principle of Nationalism to understand that the Programme of Australian Nationalism cannot be actualised unless power is achieved to carry our this programme. However, we must ask ourselves a question: what sort of 'State' shall succeed the present order? We have, hitherto, only stated generalities of the vaguest or barely ideological sort; now we should be more specific. People are asking the question of us.

Some people try to argue that Nationalists seek to impose a dictatorship over the Australian people. There have also been those calling themselves 'Nationalists' who have said that a dictatorship is indeed their objective. It is one thing to require political power to actualise Nationalist ideology; it is another to desire power for an indefinable purpose, and power of an extreme overbearing variety exercised by one or several 'leaders'.

So, what is the position? This short pamphlet contends that Nationalists will in fact create a new political order far more democratic than capitalist liberal democracy, our current political system; yet, it shall witness a new nation of discipline, direction and order. Can Authority and Popular Power be synthesised? Nationalists say, unreservedly - yes!

I hope National Action will encourage more discussion and debate about Nationalism by this publication. There are many movements in our country today which are, in their own ways, challenging Establishment ideology. Our task is to introduce the fermentation element: a new and revolutionary political faith. The present Constitutional-political-economic order is under real and increasing stress. Our sharpened criticism and action will be decisive in focusing on the faults of this old order and in drawing movements of popular democratic protest towards a Nationalist perspective.

Section One: The C.E.D.A State
I Form and Reality
It is the very first principle of our understanding of the Australian State to differentiate form from reality.

On the surface, at least, Australia is a 'democratic' society where decisions of national and local importance are reached by elected assemblies (parliaments or municipal councils) voting appropriately. All citizens over the age of 18 years exercise the right to vote for candidates to the assemblies.

It is the case also that a number of political parties exist, from the openly establishment parties (Liberals, Nationals, Labor, Democrats) through to minor and 'protest' parties. In theory, "freedom of speech" exists where any point of view may be espoused by any individual in a fair and legal manner. Supposedly, a free and liberal media will report accurately on all these parties and philosophies, allowing the people to make an informed choice amongst them in an election or as a personal faith.

the form of our State is "therefore" completely democratic. In theory, the "policies" of the State, its "ideology", everything, can be changed "legally and therefore - "democratically".

The reality is utterly different from this mythology as drummed into our minds from birth to adulthood.

II The Ideology and Principles of the State
The Australian State, through its "representatives" (i.e. Governor General, Prime Minister, Ministers, State-Premiers, leading politicians), expresses its commitment to an ideology - liberal-democratic capitalism. The kernels of this ideology can be defined as follows:

(i) The social order and political needs of the People are set by economic factors.

(ii) "Consumption" provides social unity and represents the reason for "existence".

(iii) Nations are simply "aspects" of globalism, - irrelevancies.

(iv) Races are "irrelevant" to "consumption" on a global scale.

(v) Economic life is best organised as a corporate financial enterprise.

(vi) All men are essentially "the same" (equal?) : differences are only economic in nature.

The Australian State can translate these ideological concepts into principles of State policy.
Some "beyond dispute" principles of the State would be:

(a) Loyalty to the United States-directed alliance system. No serious challenge to our membership of ANZUS is permissible.
(b) Australia's economic future lies within the Pacific Rim Economic Order.
(c) Australia is, progressively, to become Asianised in population terms.
(d) The present Parliamentary "Democracy" is sacrosanct.

These fundamental principles and policies are regarded as the "base-myths" of the society. A serious challenge to them - a challenge in deeds (i.e. not a challenge in words) - would be regarded as subversion, sabotage, treason (the words of the Commonwealth Crimes Act), or an offence of "incitement to racial hatred" etc.

In this "free" society it is possible, therefore, to challenge anything and change anything other than those things agreed to as fundamental articles of faith for the big parties - and for those who pay them.

Nationalists reason that a serious challenge to those "fundamentals" would, in the end, be answered with violence.

Consequently, pure democracy is a myth, a lie.

III The Big Business Power
In a society where "consumption" is the highest principle, it is not difficult to see that the possession of wealth confers a right on the holder of wealth to manage the political process. The capitalist is not a man of the free enterprise type; rather he is an organiser of wealth, a mobiliser of resources - a monopolist, in fact.

Australia's major parties are machines for the "control" of the political order; they require vast sums of money to operate. A clear nexus exists between the organisations of finance and monopoly capitalism and these parties. All the major political parties are creatures of this system of organisation and manipulation. A vote for any of these machines changes nothing fundamental in the workings of the State.

A few years ago, National Action managed to identify C.E.D.A., the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia, as the personification of the system of fraud-democracy.

The CEDA, an ostensible think-tank-run-advisory-body to business and government, is in fact a central meeting place, a policy making council for representatives of all major political parties. Its membership comprises the directors and managers of nearly two hundred of Australia's largest local monopolies and banks, and many representatives of the multinationals and international banks. It is CEDA which has virtually "created" the Australian State's drive to integrate Australia into the Pacific Rim Economic Order. CEDA has literally written Australia's immigration policy. It has directed the scrapping of Industrial protection, and has formulated policies on matters such as Japanese investment and smashing the trade unions. CEDA could be more correctly dubbed, given its extraordinary work, the political party of Big Business, the "holding company" for all the major parties, the State, in fact, if not in name.

The State power resides, not in Parliament, but in the agencies which control Parliament. No matter how democratic the State says it is, the question for Nationalists is: "Who pays the parliamentary parties?" It is the Nationalist contention that the CEDA corporation and others pay for the facade of democracy. It is also rather obvious that, in a society driven by commercial values, "one man one vote" is a lie;. money has far more votes than persons. Money has "contracts" with the government; it supplies campaign funds for parties; money "promotes" leaders of the parties; it provides "advice" to government and is considered in every decision. The entire system operates by near-osmosis. What money "thinks", government carries out. The voter is an actor in the drama and occasionally a factor, but seldom a prime-mover. He is a passive unit within the regime. He rubber-stamps it all by voting for either of the big machines of party politics in an election. The CEDA State knows it well and governs along its merry way.

Section Two: Westminsterism: a Fraud of Democracy
Westminsterism is the "form" of democracy which Australia inherited form British imperialism. There are many people today who believe that Westminster Democracy is the highest expression of democracy, even if manipulated and discoloured by the activities of a few politicians. These conservatives postulate that Westminsterism derives from Christianity. Supposedly Westminsterism is a perfect blend of Monarchy, Senate and House of Representatives. Rubbish.

Westminsterism grew from the English experience of Civil War. The system was designed to institutionalise Constitutional-tension. This was "resolved" by creating two houses of parliament both ruled over by a "limited" monarchy. Later, the system was modified to make parliament itself the monarchy, albeit, "limited" by the person of the monarch and tradition as represented by an "upper house". In the nineteenth century, when the franchise was broadened to include most adult males, it was held that freely choosing "representatives" in mass votes was the highest principle of the democratic parliament. The system was passed on to Australia in the 19th century.

Westminster parliaments encompass representatives "chosen" from geographical units called "electorates". The electorate includes a set number of voters on a set roll because of their place of residence. Such representation is an abstraction; it "represents" numbers of people, not the People itself. The parliamentary seat-holder is the creature of a party of which only two are the chief actors in the parliamentary drama. He chooses a "side" and speaks for it, and the people are expected (at least in the House of Representatives) to take a "side" - supposedly, by this action, allowing "stable government" to ensue. Yet the People are not represented here.

The fact is, geographical areas are represented, and the two parties are represented. Workers, farmers, small-men, students, old people, etc. are only "represented" insofar as one of the parliamentary parties feigns to so represent them. And, as we have observed, the Westminster system of the two parties must be based upon certain basic principles which cause it to stay intact. Once this is acknowledged the system can be seen to have an interest beyond the ranks of the People. But is the national interest being served? - or the money interests of the few? And if we say - the latter - does the system fairly represent the People? What truly national interest could liars serve?

Westminsterism rewards those who play its games. Parties vie for "office" on the basis of winning a 51% majority of votes. Once in "office", the rewards are handed out. The party machines of Westminsterism have the game suited to them. There is a Government and an Opposition with the Speaker to run the game. Their game is played out in public with the intention being to prove the system is democratic and not a facade of democracy.

The ultimate yardstick is - Truth. In Parliament "truth" is a football of the public party squabble, something lost for the public in the war of words. An issue is distorted (intentionally?) from the People's attention, falsified and tarnished by "debates". Is this like a trial in an English-style judicial system - where it is admitted the aim is "not to find the truth but weigh the evidence"? Where went the truth? Lost in the evidence! (1) Parliament is like a court: (Government = Prosecution) (Opposition = Defence) (Speaker = Judge) (Voters = Jury), and its decisions, without truth, must be false. All is lost in the game. Can it be said that Westminsterism is "good" for anybody - except those who pay its bills?

The possession of a seat in a parliament does not, for a Nationalist, imply the possession of any real power at all. Even the possession of all the seats would not mean power unless once had dominance over those who operate Parliament. And if one did acquire power would one still want to operate the game?

Westminsterism encourages the growth of a permanent class of politicians, not statesmen, not leaders of the Nation and people (seldom do they emerge, though many are "created" by propaganda), but career-servers, corrupt play actors. No wonder in Australia it is a Crimes Act Crime to bring this system into "contempt"! Is it a lie to say that a politician wants to "serve his masters" and "feed himself" at the public pig trough? It is a sick game played out too often at the public expense.

Westminsterism is now to be challenged and criticised by many Australians. Parliament no longer has the "moral" authority it once seemed to exercise. All this is positive if we are to get rid of the fraud of democracy and struggle for popular power.

Section Three: Democracy and authority: Background to National Democracy: Redefining the Terms
It was the original principle of liberal-democracy that "all men are equal", and this philosophical idea was translated into "one man, one vote". Democracy was perceived as the great equaliser, and its expression became a ballot-box majority - behind all parliamentary assemblies. The two principles of Democracy and Authority have existed uneasily within European societies since the French Revolution

The old democratic theory proclaimed not only equality, but that civil government was a sort of "contact" whereby the "consent" of the majority was given for the institution of governments among men This "consent" could be arbitrarily withdrawn if the social contract was broken. This fine theory managed to disintegrate the community of Europe with its abstract logic. (note 2) In truth, Nations have governments based as much upon traditions and a certain idea of that nationality expressed in cultural life, as they do upon the mere "contracting" of people for that government. Let alone reaffirming that "contract" in "elections" every few years.

It is true in a narrow sense that there is a contract in government. A state has as its duty the preservation of the Nationality, its Culture, and to work for its general well-being. If this natural contract is broken, it is the duty of the people to rebel and "abolish" that government. But such a matter - as written in those words in the American Constitution - has little to do with a State denying people "the pursuit of happiness" - the fundamental liberal "idea" of human "wants'. The "denial of happiness" is scant reason to overthrow a State.

Natural institutions The process of electioneering has undermined the natural institutions of society. Man does not live in his "party" in its "legislative majority" in a parliament, neither is he made "happy" by regular elections. Human society has its natural organic institutions, organisation of labour, of family, of locality, of social purpose and cultural expression. These institutions have usually been at war with formal "democracy", and have become victims of class warfare [ It was a product of the Age of Capitalism that the family would be assailed as out of date, that Labour would be oppressed by the rich and agitated to revolution by the Left, that culture and identity would be assailed by the Left as lies of the wealthy and by the bourgeoisie as threats to free trade]. For Nationalists, true democracy cannot even be said to exist if it is not exercised by the whole Nation through its organic institutions.

Those institutions belie formal "equality". Equality implies sameness and levelling. It often implies an endless demand for rights without a recognition of resposibilities. The natural institutions of society differentiate between people in terms of occupation, interest and talent. There is nothing truly anti-democratic or "authoritarian" in that, but there is most definitely a respect for those values and structures which guarantee order and direction in society.

The Nationalist State will come into being, not amidst stability and good times, but amidst disorder and crisis. It will find that the economic-social ravages of the free-enterprise liberal order will have hacked into the Australian social structure to destroy family life, labour structures and the traditional values of the Nation. We can see that already. The liberal ideology has set the search for wealth on a new level: the whole Nation is seen by liberals as simply an aspect of greater agencies of economic growth. Anything "inconvenient" to the new order (be it labour structures, traditional families, cultural pride) is to be mobilised against and, if necessary, legislated against - and finally suppressed by violence or threats of force. The perfect, free individual is to get rich in the new order of Pacific capitalism.

The alternative Nationalist State will first be a power, secondly the expression of the National Heritage and only thirdly the means of constructing the organic institutions of the People. Why? Because it will have power in its hands, because it will be power exercised for the preservation of the National Idea, and because the natural order may scarcely exist; and, where it does exist, it may be polluted by liberal ethics and thinking. In Nationalist opinion, the State may have to create the climate for the evolution of the social order, not in the sense of the failed social engineering ideals of the old-liberalism or antiquated Marxism, but inasmuch as only by the removal of old anti-national pressures may the State experience the regrowth of natural (i.e. organic) structures.

The Nationalist State therefore would not want to create the centralisation of all power within itself (totalitarianism). Certainly that part of political power relating to the national interest needs to be centralised in the State, but power is not simply a commodity. The Nationalist State should therefore be limited as to its power over the private world of the individual in his day-to-day life and existence. Power should in these matters lie in the Family, the Council, the factory Council, etc. Over-regulation - particularly in Australia - would be, not an expression of strength, but of weakness.

For the Nationalist, the principles of Democracy and Authority need to be redefined, then welded together in a National Democracy. We are going to forge a State empowered with the Authority to direct and secure the Nation. We desire a people which governs its own social life and which, through the organic power structures, empowers and structures its State. There can be no Democracy without the Nationalist State, and no Nationalist State without a National Democratic order.

Section Four: the Revolutionary Party and the State
There have certainly been many revolutions in history, positive and negatives revolutions. But common to all is the twisted relationship necessarily existent between the methods by which revolutionary organisations defeat the old-state power and the goals which that party supposedly promises: ideals for society and a better way of living for the people.

Consider Marxism: In theory at least, Marxism promises the poorer classes of society wealth supposedly denied to them by the politics of class exploitation. The struggle for the Marxist vision must necessarily be waged by a party of the Leninist type. The mechanics of a Leninist party, historically, have automatically led to ruthless dictatorship. The "workers and peasants' government" rules against its "own" constituency. The barbarities of Stalinist practice are well-known as the highest expression of Leninism. After nearly a century of such Marxist revolutionary action, we are entitled to ask the question: is the dictatorship in question related to the organisational forms adopted by the party in its struggle for power? I would suggest the answer is - yes. Insofar as the "vision" of Marxism is even worth considering as an alternative to liberal democracy, the reality of Marxism contrasts sharply with its promises. Somewhere the promises get lost.

Consider pre-war Germany: The German National Socialists promised a folkish-state, a state of the whole people, a people's community based upon "Germanic democracy". Very early in the history of that movement, a leader-idea was grafted upon it. Dictatorship replaced the idea of party comrades forging a classless Nation; the party stagnated in government, becoming simply another agency of bureaucratic control and a machine for personal advancement.

But our story is a general one. Will our Australian upheaval be truly different? And I ask the question regardless of the differences in time, place and ideology which separate us from these examples.

In conditions of repression, censorship, violence, negativity, cultural nihilism or social disorder, a revolutionary organisation struggling for power necessarily needs internal order, discipline, stability, ideological cohesiveness. It replicates the ethos and agencies of the State. It may have its own internal police, its propaganda organs, its courts of honour, its ruffians and its own methods of raising funds. Each action or each department of the opposing state is faithfully reproduced. And, once power is gained, the revolutionary party is faced with the task of suppressing the ideology and organisations of the previous state. An "Extraordinary Commission for the Suppression of Counter-revolution..." (Cheka) in Russia was the forerunner to the NKVD/KGB: first it suppressed followers of the Tsar; later it enslaved the Russian people in the Gulag-state.

Australia's "time of troubles" will, of course, be unique. The conditions of the Nationalist Struggle will be likewise. But there is little doubt in the mind of this writer that the increasingly totalitarian anti-Australian methods of the liberal-capitalist state will call forth its nemesis: a truly revolutionary-Nationalism, harsh, intolerant, desirous of the energetic rescue of the Nation from its Pacific "destiny". The first objective of the Nationalist party will be power, power to suppress the ideology of liberal-capitalism and the organisations of the old-state.

However, there is a key point of Programme involved in the Nationalist philosophy of the State which clearly limits the "aims" of the party machine. The party does not aim to suppress the free expression of interests within the Nation. It aims to play a role, indeed the key role, in the creation of the new Constitution of the Australian National State. But it does not aim to abrogate the very point of its existence: to place the Australian Nation in control of the Australian State through the means of those institutions and conventions established by the Australian Revolution. Exaggerated authoritarianism is not part of the Australian character or cultural tradition.

It is the case also that state-worship is culturally delimited by the fact that the "state" against which we are in revolt (endowed as it is with its liberal-monarchist mythology) was and is the captive master of the true Australian culture-Nation; the revolution against this "State" is a liberating one. History has placed this revolution within its context: its aim is to restore the potential of a developing Australian national culture and ethos. It can hardly destroy the old-state only to fall in worship of state power; the true Australian character is suspicious indeed of authoritarian antics.

It is this Australian spirit which will run throughout Nationalist ranks in the struggle for political power. In power, the Nationalist party must see to creation of the new institutions of the state. Having defeated the old state-power, the party would be charged with the creation of the new Nationalist order. As the combat party or struggle, the party would transform itself into a vanguard of organisers for the new state organs of administration and political education. That is its clear constitutional role. How the party develops in power is irrelevant here; what its future would be does not concern us. Our objective can only be the National good as delineated in the Constitution of the National State and the growth of the new institutions of popular-power. The new state will be the State of the whole Nation; its interests necessarily overshadow the limited purposes of any political party, including our own party machine.

Section Five: Popular Power: National Democracy
It is a general feeling in today's Australia that people, the ordinary citizens, are powerless to change things which govern their lives. Recently, this realisation has caused many people across the country to propose Citizens-Initiated Referenda, a proposal whereby voters can directly place measures before the whole people for a mass vote. National Action, it should be noted, has had this sensible suggestion in its programme since 1983. Such a campaign is a positive thing and would be an aspect of the National Democracy which Nationalists desire for Australia. But it is not good enough in itself; it is no panacea for social and political ills, either. The protagonists of C.I.R. are often Westminsterites. Nationalists reason that the unfortunate state of the Nation is related to its political forms. To see our goal as "power" within a parliamentary system is to leave intact one of the causes of the lack of national independence.

The Westminster parliament is the legislative organ of the old-state and cannot be separated from it. The National Revolution will shatter the old state in the process of its actualisation; to re-establish the political forms of the old-state, albeit with Nationalists "in charge", is to leave open the danger of a gradual restoration of the conditions of the former system. It must be a cardinal principle of Nationalism that it leave the forms of the old-state to the history books, that it shatter the old-order to fragments.

But what can take its place?

When one grows up under a particular political system it can be difficult indeed to formulate a real alternative to its "forms". But Nationalists can visualise an alternative: the creation from the local level of organs of popular authority and control, rising through a National Assembly and organs of power which reflect the social and economic units of the Nation.

The Nationalist concept of society is often called the organic idea. Nationalists cannot accept that a society is simply a collection of sovereign individuals contracted together for the purposes of economic production. It is this inorganic concept of society which lies at the basis of both liberalism and its mirror "opposite", Marxism. For the Nationalist, the Nation is an organic bonding of a people. Its "classes" are not economic units alone (though there are such units with such purposes) but spiritual and cultural "units" also. There are also units with no economic functions at all. The Nationalist does not see society only as "workers", "farmers", "small-businessmen" and white-collar/managerial officers; the Nationalist notes the existence of soldiers, families, localities, creative artists/authors, youth, the aged as other "units" of the Nation - and there are much more such "units"!

In our analysis of Westminsterism we noted the essential fraud of bourgeois liberal parliamentary "representation". For Nationalists, the system of "representation" for the new state has to be less of an abstraction and far wider in scope. It has to encompass the whole Nation. Let us speculate on possibilities:

I. Local Power: the Popular Authority in Action
Nationalists envisage the ordinary citizen becoming directly responsible for the maintenance of his local political-social environment and administration. Municipal power should be the first unit in the edifice of the Nationalist State. The local Council should not only exercise the "normal" powers of municipal government but should also be an agency for the in the actual life of the citizen. It could also be responsible for community policing, for the registration of the opinions and demands of the ordinary citizen, a unit for the improving of the quality of life of the Australian people.

"Representation" for such a council needs to arise from the lowest level of social inter-action - from organised labour, farmers councils, youth organisations, aged citizens' bodies, industrial- commercial bodies, etc. All deputies to such a council should be responsible to those who choose them and to a code of conduct; they should all hold revocable mandates.

The notion of municipal government being elected for long, fixed terms is a mechanism for ossification and corruption. A mayor may certainly be elected for several years - but a Council?

From the units of popular power, responsibility moves 'upward" towards state and national government.

II State Government: the Popular Aspect
Nationalists are of the view that the number of states should be increased to favour national development and decentralisation of power and population. The state governments will not be "sovereign" as per the inherited colonial forms of the old "states" with their pretentious claims vis-à-vis the Federal Government. But they certainly will be units which express the popular will, and the professional opinion, of their needs and potential.

Such state governments need the leadership of their executive organs endorsed and regulated by the state assemblies. Those assemblies should be larger than existing parliaments and based on families, unions, local council representatives, specialised scientific-professional organisations, cultural bodies, planning agencies. The assemblies could meet in commissions to settle legislative proposals when the assembly meets and before it meets.

III National Government: the Popular Aspect
The "National Assembly" would be a far larger unit than the current parliaments. Its representational procedures would be similar to the state assemblies reflecting both geographical occupational and other forms of representation - including representatives of the state governments and local councils themselves.

The National Assembly would include soldiers, unions and workers, farmers and rural organisations, municipal and state representatives, youth, aged people's representatives professional representatives and particular groups. The aim of such an assembly, "philosophically" speaking, would be to preach the common unity over sectional interest. By bringing all sections together to realise what can and should be done, the assembly of the Nation would bind the Nation to a common programme of action; it would bring government closer to the people. We are not utopians, nor do we have any difficulties in such a system of representation in formulating legislation and even avoiding some of the grossness of the old-state, but we are bound to work towards a system of truly National Democracy. We cannot see, today how, precisely, it will work; but we can see that popular representation is the only alternative to a system which rests on its "democratic" credentials but gives, as dictatorship of money over the people, a system of chosen politicians and not representatives of the organic units of the Nation.

IV The Armed People
It is the liberal-state's dream to disarm the whole Nation, leaving only its police and its army equipped with fire-arms. Nationalists do not take this view. Nationalists believe the whole military-age adult citizenry, by households, should be armed, not only as a measure of defence (as in Switzerland) but as an expression of a fact. The Nationalist State does not fear its citizens, and that power in the State in not only an act of the executive government, but a function of the entire people. The Armed Nation is the firmest guarantee that the State is not a mechanism of some totalitarian clique of leaders; the Armed People ensures National Democracy.

Originally in the racial history of the Indo-Europeans, authority rested in military assemblies. In early England, for example, the Moot was such an assembly. It was the mark of a free man to keep and bear arms and his badge of admission to the assembly of his area. The citizen, trained responsibly in civic duty, armed, was the rock of a society of the European-type. It follows that such a people did not need special squads of professional men to suppress certain criminals or localised enemies. The authority of the local council was recognised.

Australia is a modern late-20th century society; nevertheless, for Nationalists, the principle remains. This does not mean that Nationalists seek to replace trained police and soldiers with popular militia - on the contrary. However, authority exercised by the state in its specialised areas is one thing; the right of a free people to administer itself - another. For Nationalists, it will be age-old but firm principles, codes of behaviour, which will replace the liberal state with its arbitrariness and its bureaucracy.

The National Democratic state must mould together Authority with Popular Power at every level.

Section Six: The Australian Constitution of the Future
The present Australian Constitution, an Act of the British Parliament, is the paper document which sets out the working-rules of the present State. Needless to say, this piece of paper means little in the world of facts; the Constitution makes no mention of our national "obligations" to ANZUS, the International Monetary Fund, various imperialism’s, etc. The victory of the Nationalist political struggle necessarily will see the abolition of the current constitutional order.

The working-rules of the old-State cannot serve the Nationalist State. The 20th. century has been a history of dependence for Australia; the 21st. century will be the century of Australian independence. A new Constitution will be necessary.

National State, One and Indivisible
The Nationalists will proclaim Australia a National State, one and indivisible. The former hotch potch constitutional network of states, federal powers, conflicting interests - all dependent on imperialism - should be forced into history's dustbin. The Monarchy and the Constitution of 1901 could only be in stark contrast to the intentions of the Nationalists. The National State is not even a "choice" but a necessity which will be forced on the Nation by history. Only a National State can complete the evolution of Australian nationhood. The National State would be proclaimed a reality of law, history, tradition and biology. The Nationalist State would be sovereign; its "states" would not possess the sovereign power.

A New Tradition
The Nationalist State, by the Programme of National Action, would summon a [real] Constitutional Convention to draft the new Constitution. This act would call to end the old constitutional-legal conditions and reaffirm the Nation on the basis of its true heritage, while initiating a new national tradition for Australia. The Nationalist order would proceed on the basis that no Constitution is perfect, nor permanent beyond the needs of Tradition, heritage and order. But it will certainly have to regulate (i) the powers of the key institutions and structures of the new state, (ii) the rights and duties of citizens, (iii) state the principles upon which the new state will be based.

The Nationalist party will have the moral right, born of its Revolution, to play a role in constructing this new constitution.

For Nationalists, their struggle is one of principles; their political victory would be a victory of those principles over liberal ideology. If that liberal ideology had led the Nation towards dissolution, Nationalists would have as their political objective the higher security and interests of the Nation. Those principles of national life are something without which, suggest Nationalists, the Nation cannot exist. Once such principles are adopted by the whole Nation, the party interest of the Nationalists assumes a second place.

Authority and Popular Power
The Constitution of the National State must express in law the relationship between the executive power and popular initiative and control. In this case: the relationship between the Presidential Government and the National Assembly, the Governors of the States and the State Assemblies, the municipal executive and popular councils, and the relationship of those tiers of government with each other.

The Programme of National Action suggests that ministers in a government need no longer sit in Parliament but should each be expert to their task. This demolishes one of the talent-destroying "principles" of Westminsterism, which forces members of cabinet to be self-serving parliamentary cretins. The Programme implies that the presidential authority shall have its rights vis-à-vis the organs of popular power, just as those structures have their function and rights which they can legally enforce. [The idea of a President to Nationalists implies not only a ceremonial head of state but a President with defined interventionist powers in the state: the right to conduct government in his cabinet, to command the armed forces of the Nation, to veto certain legislation, to propose legislation, to carry the right of presidential pardon, to be the first diplomat of the Nation etc. The President's powers would be those established by law; we do not consider dictatorial government wise nor desirable for Australia]

It is not for us here to build a Utopia on paper, but merely to illustrate the far-reaching scope of our constitutional revolution; not only a revolution against archaic colonialist legalism, but of the enshrinement of national sovereignty and the principles by which the Australian People can live.

Section Seven: National Democracy in the Social Republic

The Nationalist State would be the first Australian State to be guided by a clear ideological impulse. Hitherto, Australian statecraft has been guided by the expedients of the liberal Establishment. The old-State has been anti-national, an enemy of national development. The Nationalist State has, as one of its duties, the encouragement and enactment of measures for the social improvement of the Nation. We have used the old term from our past, "Social Republic", as our description of a Nation of Social Justice. For Nationalists, the winning of national independence and cultural freedom for Australia would be meaningless without a social revolution. Our objective: the abolition of consumer ethos - a chief contributing factor to the current national malaise. In our opinion, the "alteration" of the social order is a guarantee against the return of liberal ideology to the command of the State.

Liberal-democracy can only exist in a particular environment. In a liberal-democracy the people must be reduced to a collection of "individuals", competing in an economic market, to produce and consume the most "products". Social order - indeed, the global political order - must, according to the liberal democrats, reflect the economic "realities". Nationalists, by working for an organic social order, would see economics reduced in status, economic production subordinated to the Nation. The Nation, as a welding of all classes, would therefore suppress the capitalist-consumer "ideal". The Nation would be responsible, as a whole, for production and consumption. The Social Republic would see all classes in balance, not as "competitors" for resources, etc. by the normal rules of capitalist economics, but rather as mutually co-operative agents in the raising of production for development and consumption.

This fundamental re-ordering of the social-economic structure would guarantee the Nation against rule by its dregs - the capitalists. It is this small coterie of super-rich, allied with international money, which we have denounced previously as being those in command of the State. Such wealth could never again be permitted to accumulate; their social principles would also need repudiation. The economy, re-ordered - with its private sector, state sector, its co-operative sector (municipal intervention) - would be an economy out of the control of the mega-rich through their monopolies and banks. It is clear that the Social Republic would be one of genuine "development", far removed from the parasitic structure which today destroys the wealth of the Nation - for "trade'.

The National State would therefore be based upon the productive classes of the Nation. Such classes are part of an organic social order.

National Democracy, by establishing new organs of political representation, would ensure the control of economics by politics. The councils of farmers, workers, small businessmen, etc., in conjunction with their unions or associations, would be primary organs for the planning and control of economic life by the Nation.

The New Australia will have little time for the antics of those who perceive the national wealth as a domain for rape and exploitation.

This voluntary upsurge by the whole Nation to assert itself over the few who own the State, would be one of the grandest periods of the coming Australian Revolution.

Conclusion

Political Debate in Australia has been limited by its enforced confinement to discussion of variants of liberalism. Only two other forces - conservatism and Marxism - have existed at any time outside of the Establishment consensus, and often their doctrines have seen movements constituted on their principles, yet co-opted by the State. New Guardism (conservatism) in the 1930s and Marxists in the 1990s are two examples of Establishment usage of other ideological formations for particular ends. The New Guard assailed Lang's radical Nationalism; radical Marxists today make the best "anti-racists". Liberalism remains the dominant doctrine.

Today we are seeing an embryonic Nationalist movement raising a challenge to Establishment liberalism. A new aspect of political debate has raised its voice, much to the chagrin of the Establishment.

Our doctrine is like no other. It calls for the return of the Nation to the principles which first gave Australia her statement of Nationhood and a national struggle towards Independence and Social Justice.

That Nationalism is the only revolutionary doctrine in Australia today is obvious, but Nationalism is not a utopian creed. It promises no dreamland, no utopia. However, it promises a Nation, independent and free, a state of the whole Nation, a state of direction and leadership, one of justice and popular power. If the Australian Revolution can deliver these promises it will have been worth the sacrifices it called for.

Notes to the pamphlet.
1. It is a legal textbook truth that trials under British "Justice" are exercises in proving or disproving whether the prosecution has a "case". Judges and prominent commentators recognise that the truth may never be found. This "CANT" which lies at the basis of British Justice is ridiculed in Europe.

2. By this is meant the excesses of the French Revolution and the collapse of the traditional foci of popular loyalty and authority. The search for "freedom" was a result of this period; it is debatable whether freedom resulted or tyrannies emerged.

Homepage