Books by two Labor giants offer a way out of stuck politics — but also reveal progressivism’s deep contradictions and seemingly impossible mission.
What Is to Be Done: Political Engagement And Saving The Planet. Barry Jones, Scribe, 2020
Of Labour and Liberty. Race Mathews, Monash University Press, 2017
Barry Jones, trim, crisp, salt ‘n’ pepper grey, in his eighties but looking decades younger, greets you from the cover of his new book What Is to Be Done: Political Engagement And Saving The Planet (Scribe, 2020)– the title invoking Lenin’s pamphlet calling for a party of professional revolutionaries, which itself invoked an 1860s Russian novel which had called the privileged young to put themselves in service to the people.
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