Labour Day provides an opportunity (which is rarely taken up) for a discussion about the values that should guide political governance when based on Labourism/Socialism in the interest of workers.
Even the word "workers" now calls for reservations since - so it is asked - who are the workers really? Isn't everybody a worker? Again and again, the political discourse focusses almost all the time on the so-called middle class, with the hidden or explicit claim that almost everyone is a member of it. Or would like to become. Which condemns discourse about workers as necessarily anachronic or irrelevant.
The general feeling is promoted that given the way by which societies have developed in liberal systems, social justice especially in the field of labour relations is being implementeed in the best way possible. From this, the whole of the middle class including workers if they still exist, have been benefitting. For Socialism-Labourism, the fundamental principle now should now be that this state of affairs is not put under threat.
There's a fact that justifies one's reservations about such a judgement. Over the last decades, social inequalities have continued to spread while the creation and possession of wealth have become increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few.
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ELECTIONS IN AUSTRALIA
Every three years, federal elections are held in Australia. I always thought this was too frequent but it doesn't seem to bother the Australian people. And now they're in the final lap of another election, with the Labour government of Tony Albanese contested by an opposition made of a coalition between the Liberal and National parties led by Peter Dutton.
The two formations are running neck and neck. At times, they've found it difficult to propose policies that can show them as being so different from each other. The topics that have arisen resemble a lot those which arose or are arising in other elections (like in Germany or Canada where another federal election of the same kind as in Australia is being held today, the 28 April). Top of the list feature inflation, housing for "ordinary" people (to buy or to let), and wage levels. The confusion that President Trump has been sowing from the US lately doesn't seem to have affected voters in Australia so much... as of now.
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TRUST
No matter what you think about how the US government has been running the show these last months, whether you agree or disagree, it is difficult to see how even if it gets everything right in all it's aiming for, it wouldn't have also injected among all countries of the world a loss of trust in the US.
Countries and governments, like individuals or coporations, need to have trust in their counterparts.
When governments say something to set out their position, they need to be believed. If they change what they say from day to day as if nothing happened, for what they next have to commit, they will encounter little trust. If they have an alliance with some other country and overnight start to open fire against it, one can foresee that the rest of their allies will no longer trust the alliances they have with them.
Possibly the United States are today calculating they are so strong that such considerations do not hold for them. It's a very risky approach.