Waitangi Day discussion: Sina Brown-Davis

Sina Brown-Davis Whenua Fenua Enua Vanua 1) After almost three decades of Treaty of Waitangi settlements, of “biculturalism” and “partnership” between Maori and the Crown, Maori remain at the bottom of all social statistics, such as income, employment and life expectancy. Why is this? And what can be done about it? The settlement regime is a neoliberal extinguishment of land & Treaty rights. Its purpose was twofold, to co-opt & contain & pacify a radical treaty protest/land rights movement within the state’s neoliberal agenda. Secondly, with Maori leadership focused on the settlement of historical grievances with the state, the vast majority of non tribal working class urbanized Maori were easy to be forgotten as the rubbish of structural adjustment. Working class Maori still haven’t recovered from the extremist economic “reforms” of the eighties when an entire generation of Maori & Pacific Island children and youth has suffered under the reforms launched by the Labour government of 1984-90. This is exactly what was intended way back when the treaty settlement process & fiscal envelope were touted and subsequently implemented. Maori have already been kicked in the guts from the recession; disproportionally we have already the highest percentage of recently unemployed. Treaty settlements distracted us from our struggle, when our grassroots whanau were going to the wall. The great majority of our flax roots, our workers, our youth, our gang members and all our whanau at the bottom of the heap struggling to survive. The most dispossessed in Aotearoa will have nothing to loose. The liberation of the great mass of our people will not come with more failed parliamentary reformism. If an economic structural adjustment put & kept our people on the bottom of the heap only a peoples’ structural adjustment (a revolution) will improve the negative social indicators & living standards of Maori. The Maori Party’s cooption within the National government is completely opposed to the interests of the majority of Maori who are working class. It seems foolish to try & enact a pro Maori agenda (albeit a conservative one) within an anti worker & anti environment government. The recent Maori Party endorsement of Nationals ETS [Emissions Trading Scheme], put the interests of the dairy industry and the tribal capitalists of Iwi Corporations, ahead of duty to care for our environment & the survival of Indigenous peoples in the Pacific . What to do? Working class Maori, our beneficiaries, our gang whanau, our youth need to educate themselves about their struggle & organise in their communities & workplaces. We can’t afford to think that any political party will represent our interests. Self Determination can come from below, Tino Rangatiratanga will only be meaningful & lasting if it comes from below. 2) A huge amount of land stolen from Maori is now in private hands, but Treaty settlements only involve Crown land. Despite this, both National and Labour MPs have condemned the on-going occupation of privately owned land by members of Ngati Kahu in Taipa, Northland. What are your views on this protest? Should privately owned land be part of Treaty settlements? The sacred cow, middle-class property rights. Ripe for the picking. Occupations should increase & intensify, not only against privately owned land, but land & resources taken by transnational corporations.

Waitangi Day discussion: Potaua Biasiny-Tule

Potaua Biasiny-Tule Tangatawhenua.com 1) After almost three decades of Treaty of Waitangi settlements, of “biculturalism” and “partnership” between Maori and the Crown, Maori remain at the bottom of all social statistics, such as income, employment and life expectancy. Why is this? And what can be done about it? Why? Because the system of European invasion and colonisation shifted the fundamental way of living for Maori and the continued occupation of Aotearoa by New Zealand means that many Maori will unduly carry the burdens of history at least until the day that some things are made right. Many do see the Settlement process as unfair and my experience within that system says that political expediency, legal over-extension and inter-tribal out-maneuvering errs dangerously on the side of continued grievances but the story must be told, the hurt expressed and some amount of sorrow let out. This is all a part of letting go of the pain and the hurt and then looking back, as a community and as a nation, to assess where things are today. Idiots like Michael Laws aside, there is a genuine want to bring compassion and understanding to the injustices of the past and like those who fell in the World Wars, there is usually a feeling to forgive and in some instance, not to forget. But this shouldn’t stop us from opening the past, today. The Waitangi Tribunal is one of the few places where the many sides do come together to air out our nations dirty laundry – what better place – so that all might help with the clean up. And we must remember – it is not just Maori at the bottom of our society. I have met many Pakeha, Samoan, South African and Indian families who just survive week to week. The cost of things in New Zealand are high, compared to the amount of money many of us earn. One emergency, like a family bout of flu, has the ability to knock everything out – the bills pile up, the red notices arrive, anxiety soars. This is a condition that all live with and everyone should be thinking more about. We are here in this land of plenty, this land of milk and honey, yet poverty still plagues hundreds and thousands of our communities. I don’;t know the answer and look forward to others suggesting what we can do to lift the entire level. As for the the relationship between Maori and the Crown. Many Maori flocked to catch a glimpse of Prince William recently; it seemed ironic that he was here to open the Supreme Court but the Royals still find followers in some Maori households. Hospitality aside, I think it is time for our own statement of autonomy and independence, positioning Aotearoa-New Zealand outside of the Crowns grasp and more responsive to the population who live here. There should be less and less old school, colonial defenses for the NZ Govt to hide behind and more reasons for a local Constitution to determine how we control ourselves and more importantly, how we can control our own Government. It does seem tyrannical to think that successive Governments can ignore their own Commissions and Legal Recommendations. Perhaps the campaign for binding citizens referendum should be picked up again? The Iwi Leaders Forum is attempting to match this National Government, especially on matters pertaining to the ownership of water (here in Rotorua, it is still strange to hear that Te Arawa own the lakes but not the water) but are catching criticism for channeling information arouind the review of the Seabed and Foreshore Act. Wasn’t the SB & FS Hikoi a response by whanau, hapu AND iwi to stop the Government from stealing Maori coastal lands and to ensure legal mechanisms for challenge remained open? I guess this is all a part of the criticism around iwi entities that utilise settlement money’s to control feedback and voice. My 5 cents worth is that Labour were wrong in passing the Act and a full repeal is required - start again rather than trying to fix a shonky ship. The future needs first to agree on language, as this Government/Crown dichotomy is false and perpetuates the framework many of us examine. 2) A huge amount of land stolen from Maori is now in private hands, but Treaty settlements only involve Crown land. Despite this, both National and Labour MPs have condemned the on-going occupation of privately owned land by members of Ngati Kahu in Taipa, Northland. What are your views on this protest? Should privately owned land be part of Treaty settlements? Tautoko. For me, stolen land is stolen land, no matter who lives on there now. This is tough as Maori desperately want to return home, to be reconnected with the land beneath our feet and to feel the sky upon our shoulders. It has been a tough 170 years, and for some, even longer. My people of Tuhoe lament the confiscation of our tribal lands everyday and to us, it does not matter that the Urewera National Park is a national treasure – first and foremost it was our home and was illegally and immorally stolen from our people. We treasure its place as a world heritage site but the world must respect the fact that these lands were dispossessed and it is these lands, not huge sums of money, that must be returned. It might not be comfortable but it is only right. I tautoko Ngati Kahu and all those hapu who are forced to noho whenua in the face of private property issues and historical ignorance. The minute we give up is the second FOR SALE signs go up across all Maori land. Many want us to sell or give up our rights as private property forms the basis of western capitalism. The property crash only highlighted that fact. We have to keep fioghting just to ensure our whanau continue to have a place to stand in this land. My view for Waitangi Day is always mixed – it is a day to celebrate, to openly come together and to show we can live up to the talk of tolerance, inclusiveness and living in this country as one, yet uniquely ourselves. What continues to piss me off is the inability to feel the change that so many of our leaders talk about. I want the past to be addressed and remembered for what it was but also want to imagine what a better tomorrow might look like. As a whanau, we want to be able to find work that is good for us and that we are good at, to earn what our whanau in Oz earn but with all the benefits of staying home in this beautifully clean and fresh land, We want to be able to swim in clean waters, to have access to affordable health care and to be respected when practicing my beliefs (which is about respecting nga atua). I’ve tried to say that this year I will spend more time with my wife and kids and will try to be positive, to keep my head up and remain focused. Sure, it’s a bit ideal but way better than being bitter and spiteful. Besides, we can still smile as we fight the good fight.

Waitangi Day discussion: Hone Harawira

Hone Harawira, Maori Party MP for Tai Tokerau

1) After almost three decades of Treaty of Waitangi settlements, of “biculturalism” and “partnership” between Maori and the Crown, Maori remain at the bottom of all social statistics, such as income, employment and life expectancy. Why is this? And what can be done about it? A few reasons why government(s) continue to triumph in the war against TINO RANGATIRATANGA are (1) they co-opt the phraseology and water it down or (2) they make out like they accept the idea, they include it in their “thinking”, and then they drown it in their bureaucratic cesspit and (3) they co-opt the people. A few reasons why we are losing the battle are (1) because it’s hard to fight a big government when you don’t have genuine unity (2) because Maori have become sooooo educated that we think the pakeha way is the only way and that when the pakeha government says something should be done a certain way we think a victory is when we’ve changed a few of their words and (3) all this IWI business has got too many Maori running around looking after only their own little patch, and forgetting the basic tenet that “no-one is free until everyone is free.” 2) A huge amount of land stolen from Maori is now in private hands, but Treaty settlements only involve Crown land. Despite this, both National and Labour MPs have condemned the on-going occupation of privately owned land by members of Ngati Kahu in Taipa, Northland. What are your views on this protest? Should privately owned land be part of Treaty settlements? I support the protest because justice isn’t served by simply returning one wheel of a stolen car (and to date, settlements are running at about 5% of the value of the claims). Where land was taken improperly and is now in private hands, government(s) should take steps to ensure either that land is returned, or suitable compensation is arranged. See the answers above for why we don’t get justice.

UNITYblog Waitangi Day discussion

Waitangi Day is supposed to celebrate the founding of the nation-state of New Zealand, but whereas Independence Day in the US (and many other former colonies) celebrates the end of colonial rule, Waitangi Day celebrates its beginning. Because the promises made to Maori in the Treaty have not been honoured, and because the Treaty marks the formal beginning not of a partnership between Maori and the Crown, but of the dispossession of Maori by the Crown, Waitangi Day has often been a day of protest. For me Waitangi Day will always be day to celebrate and reflect on Maori resistance to colonisation and the on-going struggle for tino rangatiratanga. With this in mind, UNITYblog asked a number of tino rangatiratanga activists to give their views on these two (or four) questions:

1) After almost three decades of Treaty of Waitangi settlements, of “biculturalism” and “partnership” between Maori and the Crown, Maori remain at the bottom of all social statistics, such as income, employment and life expectancy. Why is this? And what can be done about it? 2) A huge amount of land stolen from Maori is now in private hands, but Treaty settlements only involve Crown land. Despite this, both National and Labour MPs have condemned the on-going occupation of privately owned land by members of Ngati Kahu in Taipa, Northland. What are your views on this protest? Should privately owned land be part of Treaty settlements?

We’ll be posting responses from Saturday morning. If you’d like to contribute something to this discussion, you can either add a comment to this article, to the posts from other people, or email a contribution to the editor.

David UNITYblog editor

Council of Trade Unions turning towards class struggle?

Could a column by Helen Kelly in last Monday's Dominion Post (below) signal a turning point for the union movement?

 

There's no doubt that the opinion piece by the Council of Trade Unions president is significant – both for what it says, and for what it doesn't say.
 

First of all, Helen Kelly's column connects three separate attacks on groups of workers and explains them in terms of wider economic and political forces.
 

Her analysis is correct. Of course the disputes at Telecom, at Open Country Cheese and on the Auckland buses are related.
 

But for decades now, it's been rare to hear union leaders to treat disputes this way.
 

Fundamentally, what Helen Kelly is talking about is a common cause shared by different groups of workers – and a common mindset among employers. She's talking, in other words, about a class struggle.
 

As she acknowledges, this is a shift in perspective from the leaders of the union movement. 
 

And yet, after announcing this shift in bold terms her concluding paragraph seems oddly out of place. It's an appeal for the employers (and the National-led government) to start "working cooperatively" with unions again.
 

The jarring inconsistency is because of what the column does not say. Having explained the forces leading employers to use bully boy tactics – forces which are not about to go away – the CTU president says nothing on what unions are going to do about it.
 

This much has not changed. For many years, the CTU has focused its energies on appeals to the government to solve the union movement's problems, rather than organising independent working class action to achieve the movement's goals through its own collective strength.
 

It might be argued that the business pages of a daily newspaper are not the place to lay out the strategy of the union movement, and that behind the scenes the CTU is doing a lot to organise opposition to bullying employers like Telecom, Open Country and NZ Bus.
 

But you can't rally workers, and the broader public, around a banner that's kept hidden behind the scenes. Class struggle demands mass organisation, which takes place out in the open.
 

Somewhere, sometime soon, union leaders will have to lead. The analysis contained in Helen Kelly's column calls for a strategy of coordinated, mass resistance by the union movement as a whole.

Employers quick to use bully tactics

Helen Kelly

BUSINESS FORUM

INDUSTRIAL relations in New Zealand seem to have taken a turn for the worse in recent months. Bus drivers and dairy workers find themselves locked out by their employers and Telecom engineers have been made redundant en masse and are refusing to buy back their jobs while the network rapidly crumbles.

Until recently the reaction to the global downturn in New Zealand was characterised by a willingness on the part of workers, unions and employers to work together to mitigate the worst effects of the recession.

The jobs summit and the nine day fortnight are examples of that. Is there some reason why it has all gone sour?

Each of these disputes has different origins. Only one is straightforward, about pay and conditions. Another is about every worker's right to bargain collectively, and the last is about an attempt to shift cost and risk on to a workforce at the expense of their job security, livelihoods and bargaining power under the cloak of "contracting out" through a third party.

On the face of it the global crisis has nothing to do with any of these disputes. Significantly, none of the three employers – Telecom, Talley's and NZ Bus – is in any way struggling financially. But there is little doubt that the recession is a factor in the way they are handling the disputes.

Although redundancies are not being forced on any of these employers, there is an implication that workers should feel damned lucky to have a job in the current economic climate and should accept whatever wages and conditions are tossed their way.

There's a recession on, don't you know? Belts must be tightened.

I don't know how many holes Telecom boss Paul Reynolds has on his $5 million belt but I don't see much tightening going on there.

That's not boardroom bonus jealousy. I think it's legitimate to ask why these companies are taking such a hard line against the workers who are delivering their respectable profits in tough times.

The truth is that they are looking at the unemployment figures and thinking that now would be a good time to stamp on wages, hours, and workers' bargaining power. Workers will not put up a fight, they think, while fear of the lengthening dole queues prevails.

Unfortunately, the employers got it wrong. Workers are perfectly capable of understanding the situation of their employer and acting accordingly. Hence the many settlements that have been reached in recent months where unions have acted reasonably and responsibly and employers have offered fair and realistic terms.

Unemployment is a real fear for many New Zealanders. But there are plenty who know that their companies are doing well enough, and they are not about to bow down to employers who throw their toys out of the pram at the first sign of resistance to their plans. Both of the current lockouts are gross over-reactions.

The actions of Talley's-owned Open Country Cheese in particular, where a wholly disproportionate and illegal six-week lockout has been accompanied by intimidation of union members, use of strike breaking outside labour and misinformation, are reminiscent of the bad old days of industrial strife.

All this in response to the employees simply exercising their legal right to union representation and to bargain collectively. Someone is living in the past here, and it is not the Dairy Workers' Union.

The union has worked harmoniously with employers and has not been engaged in any serious industrial action for more than 20 years. It is sad and so unnecessary and you have to wonder why Open Country acted with such unwarranted ferocity.

Could last year's change of government be an influence? The Government wasted little time when it carne into office before forcing through its removal of unfair dismissal rights from new employees in small firms in the first 90 days of their contracts. There was no good economic reason for this move, but it immediately set a tone for its attitude to workers' rights. Cuts to public sector payrolls, moves to make the fourth week of annual leave sellable and other policies that have negative impacts on working people seem to confirm the impression of an administration more behind the cause of the employer than the employee.

None of these moves would have any positive effect on the country's productivity, its ability to pull out of recession or the length of the dole queues.

The Jobs Summit and support for the nine-day fortnight present a different face of the Government, albeit one which has had limited effect. We would all be better off if employers took their lead from this approach. What will be positive is employers dealing honestly and openly with unions and employees, working cooperatively in the best interests of each enterprise and not reaching for the factory keys as a negotiating tool.

Decentralisation and its discontents

by Ondine Green I think that one part of Vaughan Gunson's excellent article "A People's Constitution for Aotearoa?" deserves more looking at. That would be Vaughan's opposition of centralisation (bad) to decentralisation (good). Vaughan writes that his idea of a constitutional alternative for Aotearoa entails:

a state where sovereignty is devolved downwards to the people, to local communities, including indigenous people.

Certainly a new constitution has to be based on people power, on empowerment of the grassroots rather than an authority on high in Wellington (or Washington for that matter) doling out favours and punishment. Is centralised power altogether a bad thing?

Continue

Our most important goal could be ditching monolithic view of power

by Nandor Tanczos

from NZ Herald

1 April 2005

There is no doubt New Zealand is undergoing a process of constitutional change. Unusually, it’s not being forged in the fires of civil war, insurrection or coup d’etat, so we have the luxury of taking a more measured approach than some other nations.

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Changing the game plan: the Foreshore and Seabed Act and constitutional change

by Dr Maria Bargh from New Zealand Journal of Social Sciences Online May 2006 In June 2003, when the Government announced its intention to legislate regarding the foreshore and seabed, two of the Government’s central claims were that they sought to protect the foreshore and seabed for “all New Zealanders” and that they were treating all New Zealanders in a fair and equal manner within the legislation and according to the procedures of parliament. In this article, I will firstly examine a number of events which have occurred since the passing of the Foreshore and Seabed Act 2004 and which I argue bring into question the Government’s claims surrounding the foreshore and seabed legislation.1 Having the Government’s actions characterised as breaching Te Tiriti o Waitangi and national and international human rights laws and standards suggests a level of inadequacy in our constitutional arrangements. It is in respect of this inadequacy that a change in game plan appears now to be required. When players change the game plan in rugby they completely change the tactics of their play. I suggest that given the inadequacies of our current constitutional arrangements, a change is needed to provide for constitutional development and to adequately protect Te Tiriti, human rights law, and subsequently Maori.

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UNITYblog has asked the question: Do we need a new constitution for Aotearoa? If you would like to have your thoughts on this issue posted on UNITYblog send to editor@unityblognz.com

See also:

• Putting to bed the trappings of NZ's colonial past
• A revolutionary constitution based on Tikanga Maori
• A People's Constitution for Aotearoa?
• SOCIALIST WORKER FORUM: A People's Constitution for Aotearoa?

Putting to bed the trappings of NZ's colonial past

by Pete A new constitution would be interesting to contemplate. It would probably go hand-in-hand with New Zealand becoming a republic, but that discussion would involve what we replaced the existing inadequate arrangement with. It's definitely about time that the British Crown was ditched as a controlling influence over Aotearoa/New Zealand. While some may call for the retention of the Treaty of Waitangi - I don't see this as really necessary either. It would be more useful to put to bed such trappings of New Zealand's colonial past. A new constitution might include mandatory state control of vital infrastructure and resources, along with nationalisation of key assets such as ports, communications, transport facilities. State provision of health and education resources and abolition of the user pays mentality should be included, as well as consideration of military training for those not employed or in training. UNITYblog has asked the question: Do we need a new constitution for Aotearoa? If you would like to have your thoughts on this issue posted on UNITYblog send to editor@unityblognz.com See also:

• A revolutionary constitution based on Tikanga Maori
• A People's Constitution for Aotearoa?
• SOCIALIST WORKER FORUM: A People's Constitution for Aotearoa?

A revolutionary constitution based on Tikanga Maori

UNITYblog has asked the question: Do we need a new constitution for Aotearoa? If you would like to have your thoughts on this issue posted on UNITYblog send to editor@unityblognz.com Our first response to the question is from Penehamine Netana-Patuawa. Tena koutou katoa. E mihi ana ahau i te Matua nui i te Rangi. Ko Mahuhu ki te Rangi te waka. Ko Ngati Whatua raua ko Te Roroa nga iwi. Ko Taita raua ko Waikaraka nga marae. Ko Maunganui te maunga. Ko Kaihu te awa. Ko Waipoua te ngahere. Ko Omamari te moana. Ko Raroa toku Papa. Ko Betty toku Mama. Ko Penehamine Netana-Patuawa taku ingoa. No reira tena koutou tena koutou tena no tatou katoa.Any written constitution must be revolutionary in nature. The word revolution can be divided into two parts: Revolve; Evolution. Each part is separate, yet linked. Revolve, to turn completely around. Evolution, to progress and change.

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UNITYblog Question: Do we need a new constitution for Aotearoa?

UNITYblog is going to begin asking regular questions on important political, social and ideological issues. We will be posting the answers we receive up on UNITYblog. The goal is to generate some lively and intelligent debate that will help us understand the world today and what we need to do to make the transition away from the market towards a human centred society. The first UNITYblog question is:

Do we need a new constitution for Aotearoa?

If so, what might a new constitution look like? And how do we go about achieving a new constitution? Your answers can be any length, short or long. Send to editor@unityblognz.com They can be anonymous, or provide a name and how you wish to be identified. All contributions must comply with UNITYblog policy of not posting sectarian, silly or personal content. I look forward to your responses. In solidarity, Vaughan Gunson UNITYblog editor email: editor@unityblognz.com ph/txt: 021-0415 082 See also

• SOCIALIST WORKER FORUM: A People's Constitution for Aotearoa?
• A People's Constitution for Aotearoa?

Latest terms of trade confirms NZ is a wealthy country

NZ’s terms of trade, as reported in the NZ Herald, is the best for 34 years. The terms of trade, which measures export values versus imports, rose 4.1% over the last 3 months, and in the year previous to that 11.3%. The growth is mainly due to soaring prices for dairy products exported overseas, and increasing costs of imports due to rising oil prices.

As the NZ Herald put it “the increased purchasing power of the export dollar makes New Zealand a richer country”. Fundamentally NZ is a wealthy country. In 2007 national income rose 5.1%. There's been sustained economic growth since 2000. The wealth, however, has not been shared around. The rich have been gorging themselves while the relative wealth of middle to low income earners has stagnated or fallen. There are real signs that the economy is heading for problems, as a result of the global economic crisis and the bursting of NZ’s housing market bubble. The wealthy elites now want workers and other grassroots people to tighten their belts and be "realistic" about what the country can afford. This would be injustice heaped on injustice. There should be no poverty in NZ today, and we should be rushing to fund public solutions that will cut greenhouse gas emissions. Finding the $400 million a year needed to make tertiary education free should be no problem at all. That's why the demands being put forward by RAM are simply common sense:

• Remove GST tax from all our food.
• Mobilise for climate security, like public transport funded by road budget.
• 2% interest state loan for a first home.
• Lift minimum wage to $15 per hour & legalise workers’ stolen rights.
• Free tertiary education & student living allowance to stop the ‘brain drain’.

Campaigning to achieve them will be taking it to the rich in this country and will be a step towards shifting the power balance.

Survey of the Political Terrain

Commentary on RAM going nationwide by Eduard Bernstein Any general about to commit his forces must acquire an accurate picture of the ground over which he intends to fight. With elements of the Socialist Worker organisation readying themselves to conduct a nationwide election campaign, it’s important that all the obstacles to its political success be clearly identified. Foremost among these, at least from my perspective, is the rising level of popular dissatisfaction with all kinds of collectivism. After eight relatively prosperous years, New Zealanders appear increasingly anxious to protect, consolidate and, if possible, increase their store of personal wealth. This anxiety may take the form of an obsessive concern about the market value of their family home, or worries about the amount of tax being deducted from their pay packet, but what it adds up to is a growing impatience with all manner of social claims upon the individual citizen’s moral and material reserves. It’s this "I’m all right Jack, keep your hands off of my stack" mood that largely explains the success of John Key and the National Party in the public opinion polls. Key’s personal narrative: the boy who rose from a Christchurch state house to own a flash house in Parnell; matches perfectly the public's mood, and validates their hopes and aspirations for material gain. He is telling the voters: "to become rich is no crime" and promises to apply his personal talent for amassing wealth to the nation as a whole. This is, of course, extremely bad news for the Left. To succeed electorally, left-wing parties require a population which feels that it is being assailed by powerful forces over which individuals and families cannot hope to exert any decisive influence, and that only by joining together with others and acting collectively: in NGOs, trade unions, political parties, and, ultimately, through the agencies of the State itself; will those hostile forces be brought under popular control. The very worst situation the Left can face is one in which the individual feels that all of the entities mentioned above – NGOs, trade unions, political parties, agencies of the State – are conspiring to deny him the success that would, undoubtedly, be his – if only he was given a chance. When the predominant societal drives are to amass personal wealth and elevate one’s social status, the "Rich" are looked upon not as enemies – but as role models. This is true even among the poor – which in the New Zealand context means Maori, Pacific Islanders and recent immigrants without professional or trade qualifications. Acquiring money has always been the primary objective of the poor, and the means employed to get it is of significantly less importance than the fact of its possession. Lacking qualifications, the jobs offered to the poor are almost always highly exploitative and badly paid. Where trade unions are strong, this situation encourages organisation and resistance. But where unions are weak, or non-existent, it simply encourages the individual to view money-making as a necessarily brutal and unforgiving activity. Increasingly, earning a paltry income by legal means comes to be regarded as a mug's game. Unfortunately for all those Leftists who define criminals as essentially social victims and, therefore, potential recruits for the cause of Socialism, crime is a highly individualistic and fundamentally selfish activity. Even admission to collective criminal organisations – gangs – is determined by the individual criminal’s skill, daring and/or ruthlessness. Tender-hearted, weak and ineffectual persons need not apply. This is because the sole purpose of an organised criminal gang is to maximise the opportunities for making money. And the proceeds of criminal activity – far from being shared out equitably – are distributed according to strict hierarchical protocols. It is these profoundly individualistic and reactionary aspects of the criminal sub-culture which has, historically, made gangsters the natural allies of the Right – not the Left. All of which argues strongly against the launch of yet another Pakeha-led, left-wing political party – especially one whose primarily objective is the nationwide mobilisation of the ethnic poor. Such an organisation could not hope to compete for the Maori Vote against the already well-established Maori Party. And, against the deeply entrenched political and religious Pacific Island networks of the Labour Party, a new party would similarly struggle to gain a foothold. Reaching agreed left-wing positions on the social, economic, cultural and, most crucially, religious issues in New Zealand’s polyglot immigrant communities poses political challenges of almost insuperable complexity. There is a world of difference between attracting voter support in the loose political framework of local government elections, and winning electoral recognition at the national level. Partisan allegiances are much stronger in the context of parliamentary elections, and it is much more difficult to win acceptance as a viable political option. While it is certainly true that occasions arise in which a new political party is able to gain immediate political traction: one recalls Bob Jones’s New Zealand Party, Jim Anderton’s NewLabour Party and Winston Peters’ New Zealand First; the most common fate of newly formed political parties is electoral annihilation. And even when considering the above examples of successful party formation, two important caveats should be offered. The first is that in each of the three cases cited, the principal political actor was a nationally known figure with considerable financial resources (either private or public) at his disposal. The second is that the NZ Party, NewLabour and NZ First were all what might be called creatures of the zeitgeist: parties conjured out of long-standing and deep-seated public dissatisfaction with the dominant political ideas and institutions of the day. In 2008, when the zeitgeist is all about protecting what one has got from the clutches of an "unrepresentative" minority of "politically correct" collectivists, such a party is most unlikely to emerge from the Left. The other obvious impediment to taking the Residents Action Movement to the national level is its woeful lack of experience. A limited amount of expertise in the conduct of election campaigns has clearly been acquired by a small core of RAM activists since the group entered electoral politics in 2004. However, compared to the organisational horsepower of the established parties, RAM’s political machine is dangerously under-powered – even in its Auckland base. Outside of Auckland, even this rudimentary machinery is lacking. Unlike both NewLabour and NZ First, most of whose members were drawn from the Labour and National parties respectively, RAM lacks a nationwide cadre of experienced election organisers. And, unlike the NZ Party, it does not have a millionaire founder to hire the professional expertise it lacks – not unless Grant Morgan has secretly won Lotto! Any attempt by RAM to break into the national political scene will, therefore, almost certainly end in failure. Thousands of person hours, and tens-of-thousands of dollars, will be expended for what, when all the votes have been counted, is likely to be a tally well short of one percent of the Party Vote. Not only will this outcome prove profoundly demoralising for those candidates/activists who participated in the election campaign, but it will also constitute a significant opportunity cost for the Left as a whole – and for the Far Left in particular. The history of New Zealand elections is studded with examples of Far-Left groups who put their policies to the democratic test and were aggressively rebuffed by the electorate. The consequences of these repeated rejections have been very damaging in at least two important respects. First: the derisory election results powerfully reinforced the entrenched Centre-Left belief that Far-Left parties have no genuine constituency of any size among the New Zealand population. Centre-Leftists were, therefore, further encouraged to write-off "revolutionary" political aspirants as Quixotic – at best, or dangerous nutcases – at worst. Second: among the revolutionaries themselves, poor election results powerfully reinforced the argument that the "masses" were suffering from "false consciousness". They – the "Genuine Left" – had seen the issues all-too-clearly, but, up against the lies of the news media, the schools and universities, and the "treacherous mis-leaders of the working-class" the "truth" was unable gain a hearing. This self-pitying attitude only served to widen the distance between the Far- and Centre-Left, and the electorate as a whole. What then is to be done? Apart from re-reading Lenin’s formidable primer – written for a party which was also languishing on the wrong side of the zeitgeist – I would strongly recommend The Integration of Theory and Practice: A Program for the New Traditionalist Movement, a 12-page paper written by the conservative activist and Christian fundamentalist, Eric Heubeck, in 2001. (Just type "Eric Heubeck" into Google.) This is a masterly (if somewhat chilling) essay on the politics of influence and ideological mobilisation. The techniques Heubeck advocates are mostly borrowed from Lenin and Gramsci, and IMHO it is high time the Left borrowed them back.

EDITORIAL: Mob-ilisation

In the last week, UNITYblog's election editorial , The Centre Cannot Hold, has upset and provoked an oppressed minority that your humble editor was previously unaware of. That oppressed minority is, of course, the NZ Rich, and comments such as the following have come in hard and fast- "While I agree with much you stand for I find statements like "tax the rich (till they bleed)", not particuarly constructive. Have you consdidered that not everyone with wealth is born into it or exploits others to gain it? Yes there is an uneven distribution of wealth through society but not all who earn a lot money have trodden on others to get there. Some people have come from nothing, had little education and worked long and hard to improve their lives and the provide for their families." However, the most spirited defence of New Zealand's besieged and quivering capitalists has come from media commentator and Labour Party member Chris Trotter, who last November took an unpopular stance defending the Terror Raids on Maori and anarchist activists. Chris now takes the "remnants" of Aotearoa's revolutionary socialist tradition to task for our wanton bloodlust, for suggesting that corporations and the super wealthy be taxed strongly to provide reforms like free education, free public transport, free broadband, a $20ph minimum wage and an emergency housing programme backed up by rent control. So, once work finished on Friday afternoon, up stormed your trusty UNITYblog editor to the fortress of Auckland's Social Democratic Left, Galbraith's Alehouse, to do (metaphorical) war with the evil microbreweaucrats. And instead of eardrums being assaulted (until they bled), he found that, point for point, Doctor Trotter conceded that each one of the five points made economic sense, even from a traditional Labour Party point of view. Young Kiwi workers are fleeing to Sydney, London and Dublin to escape crippling student debts, a nine billion dollar black hole that will never, ever be recouperated. The political class that inflicts this unjust tax on Generation Y benefitted from free tertiary education themselves, yet have the gall to break intergenerational solidarity and claim that such reforms are impossible in the "modern" economic environment. The same goes with housing, wages and the very planet that we live on. UNITYblog would like to ask, just exactly who is being taxed hardest, and who is bleeding most.... The answer is, as it has always been in this rotten system, the poor and the working poor. Free education has been stolen from them. A house in working class Otara now costs over $400,000. Families such as the Muliaga's struggle to pay electricity bills and rent, whilst paying a disproportionate slice of their minimum wage income in tax. This is the blood of South Auckland that is boiling under the shining chrome veneer of the City of Sails. But small cogs move bigger cogs, as the triumphs of Germany's Die Linke party prove. There is no government in the State of Hesse for the last three months, because a principled left wing party refuses business as usual, and instead promises to be "the resistance inside parliament and the resistance in the streets." And there are stirrings in Auckland's student, union, ecological and community movements that the space to the left of Labour and the Greens, once filled by the Alliance party, could yet be filled in this election year. No one is under any illusions that this will be filled rapidly, but the rapid advances of the New Left in other countries such as Greece and Germany suggest that the mood is contagious. Therefore, UNITYblog would like to thank Doctor Trotter for raising it's humble five point programme with the remnants of the Labour "Left", as the only possible antidote to a Phil Goff palace coup. (There is talk already of New Zealand's railways being nationalised. Good. Now nationalise Stagecoach too.) We promise to continue to push ideas that are "20 years ahead of the mainstream", because that is, well, the job of the of the radical Left! As as no other than Rosa Luxemburg herself said, "Revolutionaries are the best fighters for reforms". Being verbally attacked in NZ's second biggest newspaper, the Dominion Post, meant however, our 5 points got across to a wider audience than usual. Scorn about their economic infeasability under capitalism took second place to concern about the revolutionary left's turn of phrase, that would surely end in labour camps and bullets, not ballots. Historically, the Elites of the world have always had a primordial fear of the masses in motion- what the peasants and poor of the French Revolution called the Mobilisation, the ruling class abbreviated to the Mob. UNITYblog assures its readers that our tongue in cheek playfulness and colourful, sometimes passionate language will continue unabated, now that we have earned the ire of NZ's oppressed super-rich. Read any mainstream newspaper, and you will see how the capitalist media demonises Unionists as dinosaurs and militants, youth as apathetic and lazy, Maori as criminal and violent, and you will hear very little in the way of rebuttal from the liberal chattering classes. UNITYblog promises to be on the side of the poor, and bring back a little bit of the vernacular of the class struggle to make some of the unjust and powerful feel the fear for a change. Mobilising the poor and dispossessed of this land against privilege does not scare us.

Chris Trotter on UnityBlog's electoral challenge

Got any better ideas, Labour? Chris Trotter FROM THE LEFT DOWN at the pub last Friday night, I received a good old-fashioned bollocking for suggesting in this column that only a change of leadership could save the Labour-led Government. "Phil Goff's not the bloody answer," muttered a stern union official. And the left-wing university lecturer accused me of "doing National's job for them". "Got a better idea?" I replied. "If so, let's hear it. Because what the polls are telling me, in no uncertain terms, is that the electorate's stopped listening to Helen Clark. In the words of Mike Moore, they've taken the phone off the hook. "And I can't think of anything, apart from rolling her, that will persuade them to pick up the receiver. It's also the only political move dramatic enough to distract the news media from its slow-motion coronation of John Key." My critics stared sullenly into their beer, and we all found other things to talk about. And this, of course, is the Left's dilemma. When you demand, as Lenin did, "What is to be done?", the best you're likely to get by way of reply is a resentful silence. Actually, that's not quite true. There are a handful on the Left still willing to meet Lenin's blunt challenge. Unfortunately, their answers are – how can I put this politely? – just a little bit revolting. Socialist Worker's UNITYblog offers a great example. In the face of what these stalwart revolutionaries describe as the "Coke/ Pepsi" choice between Labour and National, the website's readers are challenged to come up with "some Vision Thing" of their own. To set the ball rolling, they're invited to debate the following five policy ideas: (1) Free public transport throughout New Zealand. Massive investment in rail and free buses - an emergency "system change, not climate change" programme. (2) Free tertiary education for all. Cancel all student debts immediately. (3) A Mickey Joe Savage-style emergency housing programme. Rent control, New York-style. (4) A minimum wage of $20 an hour. Huge tax cuts for the working poor, funded by taxing the rich. A massive extension of union rights and power. (5) Free broadband for all – jack the New Zealand network up to Korean standards. Apparently, this eye-wateringly expensive policy cocktail can be paid for by "taxing the rich (till they bleed!)". You can almost hear the hoots and jeers directed at yet another shuffling procession of bruised and bleeding "rich" people, as all those free buses and trains rattle past them, carrying placard waving hordes of revolutionary unionists to yet another system change rally. No doubt the recipients of this derision, the battered remnants of New Zealand's once all powerful capitalist class, are trudging off to perform forced labour on the bleak building sites of the emergency housing programme. It would have to be forced labour because, after "hugely" cutting the taxes of the poor, writing off student debt, laying on all those free buses and trains and supplying Korean-speed broadband, paying these formerly "rich" emergency housing workers the new minimum wage of $20 an hour would be out of the question. The best abbreviation of the revolutionary socialist project I ever heard came from the pen of a Kiwi screen-writer, whose name I have since, unfortunately, forgotten. "It's bloody simple," he had one of his characters, an old communist, say, "you nationalise everything and shoot the buggers who complain." And that's the problem, isn't it? Democracy is simply not designed to facilitate the impoverishment and oppression of whole classes of the population – only the totalitarianism associated with 20th-century fascism and communism can accomplish that. It astounds and depresses me that the boys and girls at Socialist Worker cannot see (or, even worse, pretend they cannot see) that any serious attempt to implement even one of their five policy ideas would involve the complete derangement of our economic and political relationships – and not in a good way. Like the restored Bourbon dynasty, taking up where they'd been forced to leave off by Robespierre and Napoleon, the revolutionary Left has "learned nothing and forgotten nothing". Their understanding of economics has not progressed beyond the legend of Robin Hood and his Merry Men. And their conception of politics confers legitimacy not upon those who win the most ballots, but upon those who fire the most bullets. Phil Goffs a bloody sight better answer than bloody revolution.

History calls for a broad left party

by VAUGHAN GUNSON and GRANT MORGAN In 2006, the neo-liberal maniacs at the World Bank ranked New Zealand as No.1 in the world for doing business, out of 200 countries surveyed. And a recent government report titled "Wealth Disparities in New Zealand" showed that 95% of New Zealand's net wealth is owned by half the population. The other half is left with the crumbs - a mere 5% of the country's wealth. Two decades of neo-liberal polices have seen a massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, increasing the rage, frustration and alienation at the base of New Zealand society. In recent years Socialist Worker-New Zealand (SW-NZ) has recognised that these discontents are being combined with signs of self-activity amongst grassroots people, which is causing them to be more open to alternative political ideas. The rise of a global social justice movement has been influential. There have been bursts of union militancy, along with mass movements against imperial wars, GE foods and government injustices against Maori. In combination this points towards a political stirring at the grassroots of New Zealand society which socialists must relate to. It's a basic principle of Marxism that the movement of masses of people is needed to change society. The question for socialists, then, is what can we do today to help turn growing dissatisfactions at the grassroots into something far more politically coherent, organised and confident? In seeking to advance the movement we need to recognise and analyse the barriers in the way of greater working class self-activity. Stifling influence of NZ Labour The most important political barrier today is the stifling and lingering influence of the NZ Labour Party. Like other social democratic parties around the world, NZ Labour adapted to corporate globalisation from the early 1980s and is not fighting for any sort of grassroots alternative. The party's top leadership is committed to greasing the wheels of business profit-taking and are unwilling to do anything that seriously risks hostility from the ruling elites. Changes in the internal composition of the party - where the new middle class now dominates - combined with years of partnering the capitalist class has eroded the organic links between the party and the working class that existed in decades past. This combination of factors means it's no longer accurate to describe the Labour Party as "social democratic". Instead, SW-NZ believes an apt description of Labour today is "social liberal". Labour's top leadership maintains a careful balancing act between doing what big business wants (lower corporate tax, free trade agreements, Reserve Bank "independence", harsh restrictions on workers' right to strike, etc) and offering just enough in the way of social policies to keep grassroots people voting for them. Hence the Working For Families package, which now provides substantial tax credits to low and middle income working families. Labour, however, likes its social polices to have a pro-business component. So Working For Families is effectively a wage subsidy for employers who continue to profit massively from paying low wages in New Zealand's high-skill economy. As is clear from any number of government and non-government reports, Labour's limited social policies have not significantly improved the lives of grassroots people. What little social wealth Labour has redirected to the bottom has only been possible because of the sustained period of growth in the New Zealand economy from 1999. Come an economic downturn, such as mainstream economists are now predicting, the Labour leadership will come under enormous pressure from business lobbyists, their media and the global market. In that situation, social policies will inevitably take a back seat to corporate profits. Yet the Labour Party still maintains a certain hold over grassroots people because of its history, its links to the workers' movement managed by top union officials, its ability to give a social spin to neo-liberal governance, and finally, the lack of any believable alternative for the majority of voters. But because Labour can never really deliver, the party's support among workers is fragile and eroding, as opinion polls are showing. At the same time the working class is organisationally and politically weak, the result of Labour's neo-liberal "Rogernomics" blitz (1984-90), National's union bashing (1990-99) and more recently Helen Clark's social-liberal smothering of union independence (1999-2008). Union density is low, particularly in the private sector where only 12% of workers are organised. The leaderships of most major unions and the Council of Trade Unions (CTU) maintain links to the Labour Party. This continued political relationship dampens down the union militancy and independence needed to inspire more workers to join and be active in unions. Breaking the hold that NZ Labour has over the workers' movement will remove a crucial barrier to increasing the self-activity of grassroots people. Labour has vacated the space of social democracy at the same time as there's mass concern at the state of the world. Can this provide the opening and the means to start building a broad political alternative? Marxism's three global responses to social liberalism The factors which have combined to fundamentally change the nature of NZ Labour are not unique to Aotearoa. The world's old social democractic parties are everywhere passing over to social liberalism. This has posed questions for serious grassroots activists on every continent. Globally there have been three main responses by Marxists to the problem posed by social liberalism. They are: (1) a narrow "pure" group, (2) a broad-narrow coalition, or (3) a broad left party. (1) Narrow "pure" group Since there are no truly mass parties of Marxists anywhere in the world, maintaining a "pure" position essentially means keeping going as a narrow Marxist group which stresses the primacy of revolutionary ideology over mass work. This strategy prioritises socialist propaganda and intervening in campaigns with the aim of recruiting new members to the group, rather than giving practical leadership to the struggle. Putting their group's future above the struggles of the wider movement is sectarian, according to Karl Marx's judgement that socialists must have no interests separate from those of workers as a whole, as he wrote in the famous "Communist Manifesto". Although the leaders of any narrow group will never admit to being sectarian, they are faced with a glaring problem: Is it realistic to expect their small and isolated membership to stride to the front of the workers' movement in a period of crisis and lead a revolution? Just asking the question presents the answer. The narrow strategy is a dead-end for outwards-focused Marxists who know that "the masses make history". (2) Broad-narrow coalition A broad-narrow coalition is where a Marxist group forms an alliance with other groups and individuals on the left in a bid to "take control" behind the scenes. This is the substance of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) involvement in the Respect coalition in Britain. The SWP leadership voiced the need to create broad left formations in the space vacated by the old social democratic parties. They described Respect as a "united front of a special type", refusing to accept the label of "party" for the new alliance of forces. This seemingly semantic rejection of one word actually concealed a world of difference. The SWP leadership manoeuvred within Respect to determine all important matters, regardless of the coalition's own nominal democratic processes. In reality, the SWP continued to act as a narrow group within Respect, putting group interests ahead of all else because in their minds only they were the flag-bearers of real political change. Such top-down control by a self-selected group is at odds with building a stable mass party based on the necessary principles of equal rights and open democracy. Since the narrow group was more important than the broad formation, the SWP leadership never prioritised the growth of Respect. So on demonstrations and other public events they promoted SWP publications, while blocking Respect from producing its own mass outreach paper. In an Internal Bulletin prior to the last SWP conference, a statement by the group's central committee revealed their narrow approach: "The building of a revolutionary party is the over-arching priority for any revolutionary Marxist. All other strategic decisions are subordinate to this goal." But this should never be a Marxist's top priority. Marxist organisation exists merely as a means to an end: to unite socialists so they increase their ability to reach outwards and stimulate the organised self-activity of the working class. This is as true in non-revolutionary eras as it is in revolutionary periods. Unsurprisingly the way the SWP worked within Respect angered other socialists and activists committed to building a broad left alternative to the British Labour Party. Hence the inevitable split in the coalition and the formation of Respect Renewal, which includes the majority of the non-SWP leadership of Respect. The "broad-narrow" coalition model is as contradictory as the name suggests, inviting an early fracture between its diverging components, with one side wanting an independent mass party and the other wanting control by a group-within-the-party. The same objections that outwards-focused Marxists have to a narrow "pure" group also apply to the broad-narrow model, which impedes definitive and sustainable moves towards creating a truly broad alternative to social-liberalism. (3) Broad left party There are moves globally to establish broad left parties that fervently oppose neo-liberalism, corporate ecocide and imperial wars. This has a momentum separate from Marxists, since good activists from other traditions also realise there is the mood and the opportunity in many countries for creating a left political alternative to the social liberals. In many countries over recent times, broad left parties are making important gains. The Left Party in Germany, which won 51 MPs and nearly 10% of the national vote, operates on the principle "we are the resistance inside and outside the parliament". In Greece, the Coalition of the Radical Left won over 5% of the vote, entitling it to 14 MPs. And in Venezuela, upwards of five million have joined the United Socialist Party in a broad-based response to president Hugo Chavez's call for a "socialism of the 21st century". Marxists committed to a broad left party do not have the aim of gaining group control over the wider formation, as opposed to those wanting a broad-narrow coalition. The broad left party is respected as a pluralistic and diverse coalition of the left, one in which Marxists and non-Marxists participate as equals in order to build wide support for their common alliance, rather than publicising other groups to which they may also belong. Salma Yaqoob, a leading member of Respect Renewal, says: "The coalition model that Respect was founded upon had its merits. In the future, however, I am convinced that we need to organise much more along traditional party political lines. We need to be clear that we are building a political party, and not making some form of temporary agreement between rival interests for electoral purposes." Some outwards-focused Marxists around the world take the position that a Marxist group should dissolve into the broad left party, perhaps organising as a tendency within it, but not maintaining any independent organisation. Others say that a Marxist group should continue to organise independently at the same time as doing everything possible to build a mass party of the broad left. These are important issues for all Marxists to get to grips with. It's a concrete question for Marxists in New Zealand now that RAM (Residents Action Movement) is working towards becoming a nationwide party officially able to contest the list vote in the 2008 general election, and more importantly, to form the bare bones of a future broad left party. Only such a "popular party" can achieve the critical mass needed to inspire grassroots people seeking a better life and open the way towards a co-operative society geared around the public good and ecological balance. Reform & revolution: tensions & interconnections To further evaluate the political and organisational options for Marxists, it's important to establish the relationship between reform and revolution. A dynamic understanding of this relationship is needed if Marxists are to help build a mass party which is both broad and progressive. The programme of SW-NZ states: "Marxists stand for a revolutionary break with capitalism." For Marxists, there is a principled difference between a socialist revolution and a reformist movement which wins some social gains for the grassroots but stops short of redistributing corporate and state power to everyone in society. These are entirely different goals which leave entirely different sets of people in charge of society. There are two key aspects to reformism as an ideology. The first is broad acceptance of actually existing capitalism, but looking to moderate its negative impacts on the majority of people or achieve some concrete benefit within the system, such as free health care or minimum wage rises. The second aspect is a belief that social change mostly comes through the election of representatives to parliament, rather than via the agency of mass movements which reshape the elite power relationships underpinning the economy, the bureaucracy and the media. The consciousness of today's working class is, in the main, reformist. This ideology emerges from within the imprisoned class, trapped as we are in a capitalist world with its strong economic, legal and ideological powers over us. It's constantly reinforced by reformist trade union officials and "soft left" politicians whose privileges hinge on stopping the growth of a mass revolutionary consciousness and whose position is legitimised in lots of ways by the system. So how can reformist ideas in the minds of workers best be challenged and changed? The most important leadership role of socialists is to encourage the organised self-activity of workers and others at the grassroots. Russian Marxist Vladimir Lenin stressed that it's always a matter of growing the confidence and organisation of the masses in large enough proportions to alter the balance of class forces in their favour. When the masses do this they are expanding their class consciousness and moving towards revolutionary conclusions. It takes a system crisis, where the old rulers cannot keep on ruling in the old ways and the masses refuse to be so ruled any longer, that a majority sentiment for revolution emerges. The other side of the coin, however, is that mass struggles for reforms can open up the path to a new society. This can be seen in Venezuela's revolutionary process. SW-NZ's two international statements in 2007 on Venezuela stressed how the fight for key political and economic reforms has advanced the struggle for grassroots control of society, seen in the explosion of Communal Councils with growing local and regional autonomy. While the initiatives coming from Chavez and his political comrades have not been explicitly revolutionary, they have inspired millions of grassroots Venezuelans to action. As SW-NZ wrote in July 2007: "Many of the initiatives promoted by Chavez since his election in December 1998 have acted as 'bridges' across which the masses have moved from a lower level of struggle to a higher one, often in response to obstacles put up by opposing class forces. Each step of the way has seen the revolutionary consciousness of the masses develop." There is a two-way relationship between reform and revolution. British socialist Andy Newman puts it this way: "Reform and revolution are not counterposed. Revolution is a decisive culmination of a process of uncompromising reform." The unprecedented intensity of corporate and state rivalry in today's globalised world demands a "race to the bottom" for workers everywhere. Winning reforms, therefore, demands mass struggles of the magnitude that invites the questioning of late capitalism and the drawing of revolutionary conclusions. Transitional platform + transitional mechanism Putting forward concrete demands that strike a chord with the grassroots can be crucial in activating mass movements. In 1936, exiled Soviet Marxist Leon Trotsky said it was "necessary to help the masses in the process of daily struggle to find the bridge between present demands and the socialist programme of the revolution". "This bridge", he insisted, "should include a system of transitional demands, stemming from today's conditions and from today's consciousness of wide layers of the working class and unalterably leading to one final conclusion: the conquest of power by the proletariat." Trotsky saw these transitional demands as being put forward by non-Stalinist Marxist groups, which at the time were too small to connect in sustainable ways with the working class. What he didn't theorise was the need for a "transitional mechanism", a larger party uniting a broader range of activists than Marxists alone, thus providing the necessary weight and impetus to a transitional platform. Transitional demands need a transitional mechanism. This unity of politics and organisation can be achieved by a broad left party. Marxists in a broad left party will be working with conscious reformists who want to achieve goals of immediate benefit to the grassroots, such as free public transport to counter climate warming, but who shy away from sharply-drawn revolutionary conclusions. Others who enter a broad left party will not have a sophisticated reformist ideology, particularly young dissenters and new activists. They are simply joining an organisation that offers hope of a more equitable and ecological future. They have not been dumb-trodden by the corporate orthodoxy, in stark contrast to many official leaders of the workers' movement. A reformist consciousness may well be a stop on the road to somewhere else. The key thing is bringing people together in an inclusive party that's constantly campaigning on the side of the victimised, the voiceless and our natural and social habitats. At the same time, a broad left party must also contest elections. Believing that parliament has the power to change things for better or worse, grassroots people in New Zealand turn out to vote in large numbers. So standing candidates in general elections is important in building a broad left party. In Greater Auckland, New Zealand's main population centre with 1.4 million residents, impressive votes have been gained by RAM in the last two council elections. RAM's anti-corporate platform attracted 87,000 votes in the 2004 Auckland Regional Council poll, with one councillor elected, and 100,000 votes in 2007's local body elections. RAM now wants to grow from an Auckland-only council-centred broad left ticket into a nationwide broad left party eligible to stand for the list vote in general elections. That will require RAM to sign up a paid membership of 500. RAM's decision to go nationwide has important implications for outwards-focused Marxists in Aotearoa. While the RAM Executive has no illusions about any easy breakthrough against the Labour-National stranglehold on parliamentary politics, it may be possible for RAM to gather sufficient votes in general elections to boost the party's name recognition and supporter base around the country. Combining parliamentary with community campaigning will establish RAM's reputation as a party that is serious about organising an all-sided, broad-based challenge to corporate domination. RAM's strategic goal, unanimously agreed by the RAM Executive this year, is to become the natural rallying point for mass resistance to attempts by the ruling class to shove the burdens of looming economic and ecological crises onto the backs of grassroots people. When crisis breaks, RAM aims to have built the nationwide structure, the name recognition and the broad credibility to give political leadership to the resistance from below. This would start to undermine the Labour-National duopoly, thereby opening up new horizons for the workers' movement. Marxists inside a broad left party The prospect of Marxists participating alongside activists from other traditions within a broad left party is an exciting one. It opens up an opportunity for common political work that can advance the cause of the grassroots at a time of neo-liberal hegemony and threatening global catastrophes. A Marxist analysis of the class struggle and the need for socialism will continue to inform the political practice of Marxists within RAM. Other activists in RAM will bring their own ideas about what polices should be prioritised and how best to engage a mass audience. This lively and democratic cross-fertilisation of ideas is likely to produce both a set of transitional demands and a type of transitional mechanism most in tune with the grassroots. Marxist ideas brought to a broad left party will, if accepted by the wider membership, be tested in mass practice. Both Marxists and non-Marxists will then be able to gauge their impact on wider society. If the results are bad, then Marxists will have to change their approach. If the results are good, then the possibility arises of non-Marxists reshaping their political horizons, bringing them closer to a Marxist world view. This is a powerful way of attracting people to Marxism, far more so than through "narrow" socialist propaganda alone or a managerial relationship with others in a broad-narrow coalition. A broad left party opens up a broader space for Marxists to operate, while conversely activists from other traditions have a direct influence on how Marxism develops within their country. While this political reciprocity will bring its own tensions, it also has the capacity to add strength, versatility and innovation to the broad left project. This does not mean Marxists dissolving into a broad left party. It remains important for Marxists to debate important questions independently as Marxists and, where appropriate, to reflect those opinions directly into wider society. What it does mean is Marxists working as much as possible as committed members of the broad left party, with the aim of building that party as an independent political force in close alliance with non-Marxist members. SW-NZ produces a quarterly journal titled UNITY which is Aotearoa's premier Marxist publication. We have our own website called UNITYblogNZ.com. We publish a monthly Operational E-Zine for SW-NZ members. We hold branch meetings and national conferences to debate Marxist strategies and tactics, and to elect people to positions of local and national responsibility. We are a Marxist group which can act independently for specific political reasons. Such things will continue in the aftermath of the unanimous decision by the February 2008 SW-NZ national conference to support RAM's plan to go nationwide. Exactly how SW-NZ maintains this independence of thought and action must, of course, be framed by our broad left strategy, along with other happenings in wider society. A priority must be creating an environment of open democracy and mutual trust within RAM which will empower all members, regardless of what political tradition they come from. That requires a high degree of tactical sophistication. Political debates should be as public as possible, so that all members of a broad left party and beyond are witnesses to the exchange of ideas and can contribute their own opinions. A Marxist group cannot impose decisions on a broad left party, or vice versa. Both are independent, though interlinked, organisations. Thus Marxists should not caucus before meetings of the broad left party with the intention of sticking to a pre-decided line, nor should adherents of any other tendency. How could any pre-decided political, tactical or organisational line be open to modification as a consequence of free-flowing debate? Such practices could only result in mistrust and disunity which would imperil the broad left party. Rather, all members of a Marxist group who have agreed to help build a broad left party must retain the maximum tactical flexibility and the right to publicly disagree among themselves about the ever-changing issues thrown up by the actual process of building the broad left party. While open debates among and between Marxists and non-Marxists may be messy, such grassroots democracy can also empower both participants and observers. But is public dissension between Marxists and radical changes in their political organisation in step with the practices of Karl Marx and of Lenin's Bolsheviks? Well, yes. Marx famously advised his political co-workers to question everything, including what he said. And Lenin's attitude to party building evolved according to the demands of history, In the early years he promoted a narrow underground group of "professional revolutionaries" to counter the impacts of extreme secret police oppression. After a grassroots revolt against Russia's Tsar exploded in 1905, Lenin opposed his own "professional revolutionaries" in order to broaden the party to include "every striker" across the country. When the rebellion faltered and imperial reaction set in, he advocated a coalition between the pro-party Bolshevik "hard left" and the Menshevik "soft left". In the years afterwards he advocated a series of other fundamental shifts in party building as the Bolsheviks adapted to changing circumstances. Lenin's dictum was, in short, "the party is dead, long live the party!" All strategies carry consequences, both negative and positive, but not necessarily of the same order of magnitude. So members of a narrow "pure" group retain their homogenous belief in their own sectarian version of Marxism, but at the suffocating cost of near total irrelevance in the struggles of the masses. Marxists who try to face both ways by promoting a broad-narrow coalition may temporarily expand their peripheral influence over other activists, but soon face the discontents flowing from a majority of "outsiders" being bossed around by a self-selected cadre of "insiders". Outwards-focused Marxists committed to a broad left project often suffer a loss of organisational cohesion, yet find their ability to influence a mass audience exponentially expanded. One way or another, there's a price to be paid for every choice. In the opinion of SW-NZ, any organisational negatives we face will be worth it to help create a mass alternative to social liberalism. And we believe that such organisational downsides can be offset by stepping up ideological work around our UNITY journal, UNITY blog, Operational E-Zine, Marxist Forums and other avenues of socialist information and debate. Moving the masses It's often said that effective socialist leadership can only be one step ahead of the masses. This, however, presupposes that we're actually reaching the masses. There is no point in having "correct" ideas that hardly anyone hears. Helping to build a broad left party while retaining our Marxist identity makes us worthy successors of Lenin, that greatest of socialism's tradition-breaking strategists. In the current era, faced with the task of breaking the stranglehold of social liberalism, the broad left party can provide a transitional mechanism that links Marxists and non-Marxists around a transitional programme offering hope to society's majority: the disappointed, the downtrodden and the dispossessed. RAM's impressive votes in two council elections indicates that a sizeable constituency is willing to support an in-your-face pro-grassroots, pro-ecology, pro-democracy challenge to the corporate elites running Greater Auckland. While it will be harder to undermine the Labour-National duopoly in parliamentary elections, RAM going nationwide is a serious bid to build a broad left party that moves the masses. RAM's success or failure will hinge on the degree of buy-in from grassroots activists around New Zealand. But even failure would be only a temporary set-back, since history is crying out for a broad left breakthrough against the ruling elites who ignore our needs and crush our spirit and ruin our habitat. Act on the call of history!

EDITORIAL: Election Year- the Centre cannot hold.

The unofficial 2008 election campaigns have begun. The polls all suggest that the Labour party are going to take a hammering, and that the Maori Party could take all the Maori seats.

For many working people, no matter what Chris Trotter or Matt McCarten say, the small gains and reforms under 9 years of Labour rule are little to write home about – Working for Families is a taxpayer funded subsidy for employers paying low wages, unions still do not have the right to strike outside of very limited circumstances, housing is unaffordable and public transport is a joke.

UnityBlog wants to kick some ass. We're throwing down the gauntlet to our readers to come up with some Vision Thing.

What policies would you guys like to see the left fight for this election? What would your dream left ticket look like? And as the Greens accept only market based mechanisms to climate change, are they a real option for left wing voters anymore?

Here's some ideas to get the debate rolling!  

(1) Free public transport throughout NZ. Massive investment in rail and free busses- an emergency Monbiot style "system change, not climate change" programme.  

(2) Free tertiary education for all. Cancel all student debts immediately.
 
(3) A Micky Joe Savage style emergency housing programme. Rent control, New York style.  

(4) A minimum wage of $20 per hour. Huge tax cuts for the working poor, funded by taxing the rich (until they bleed!). A massive extension of union rights and power.  

(5) Free broadband for all- jack the NZ network up to Korean standards.

There you go. Five juicy demands to form a maximum minimum programme!

The fact is that in factories and offices all over the nation, people are pissed off with the Pepsi/Coke choice they are offered. National now accept most of Labour's tiny reforms, and Labour accepts neoliberalism's poverty wages, controls on union power and free trade agreements.

Many who previously looked to the Greens and who are worried about the train crash approaching via climate change, are deeply saddened that they now accept carbon trading mechanisms. Yet anger at house prices, low wages, arrogant bosses and corrupt politicians is at an all time high...

The centre cannot hold. It's time for a New Left. Tell us what you would like it to be.

unityblog@yahoo.com