The power of the factions is real. It does undermine democracy. It should be confronted. However, the factions have such power because the ALP is not a mass based party. It is very difficult for formally organised factions to dominate a political party in top-down fashion that is both mass based and where policy is developed democratically through the organisational wing from bottom to top.
Such change can only occur when a pro-democracy movement, a Labor Spring, from the grass-roots develops and takes hold not by way of the second coming of a false prophet.
Working class based parties have always mistrusted their parliamentary members. The fear has always been that members of parliament would develop interests that are at variance with the broader movement.
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The same dynamic is at play in the increasingly presidential style elections that we have in Australia.
Elections are dominated by leaders whose persona is packaged by the public relations industry. Elections thereby become what Mark Latham called "Seinfeld" elections, about nothing, where mindless imagery is used to sell elections much as the same firms that construct car advertisements sell us products. Such elections display the form of democracy rather than the substance of democracy.
They also take power away from the people and increase the role of money in elections.
Kevin Rudd's vision was of an ALP where the leader at the top, branded and packaged by the public relations industry, having won a contest of imagery about nothing in particular, what are falsely termed elections, holds court unchallenged and uncontested.
It's a vision the ALP has rejected, and quite rightly so. It's a vision promoted by someone that doesn't understand basic Labor values.
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