A common cause for grassroots visionaries

A common cause for grassroots visionaries by GRANT MORGAN Recently a number of requests have come my way to write down the history of RAM, as the Residents Action Movement is popularly known. Two factors are prompting such requests. The first is the successes of RAM as a broad left campaigning and electioneering movement in Greater Auckland. The second factor is RAM¹s recent decision to go nationwide. This article is a modest start to meeting these requests. My aim is to summarise main facts and conclusions in a sober way. Mass revolt & political mobilisation The dawn of a new millennium saw no resolution of an old problem. For longer than most of us cared to recall, any serious progressive voice in Greater Auckland had been sidelined as wealthy elites shaped the agendas of the regional council, the four city councils and the three district councils. Regardless of whether a council was run by National-backed Citizens & Ratepayers or Labour-backed City Vision or a more informal coalition, corporate Auckland came out ahead of the grassroots majority. Feeling excluded, the majority abstained from voting in ever larger numbers. Protests rumbled away over inequitable water charges, council housing sales, the Eastern Highway, local body commercialisation and the democratic deficit. In mid-2003 a tipping point was reached. Without warning, Auckland Regional Council (ARC) jacked up the rates of struggling homeowners and downsized the bills being sent to big business. Thousands of homeowners faced ARC rate rises above 400%, many thousands above 300%, and tens of thousands above 200%. Meanwhile corporate Auckland basked in a "rates holiday". They no longer had to pay a business differential which had been levied to compensate for companies benefiting from the lion¹s share of council services. The ARC was ruled by a coalition of corporate politicians who relied on low voter turnouts and "free market" propaganda to retain local body power. Only three of the 13 elected members consistently opposed the ARC¹s extremist rating policy. As rates bills reached the letterboxes of homeowners, grassroots rage spilled over into what became known as the Rates Revolt. At its peak, possibly 100,000 homeowners ­ one quarter of the region¹s ratepayers ­ were supporting a "rates strike". No recognised group called this revolt into being. It just exploded in the combustible atmosphere of general contempt for council politicians. In the chaos and challenges of the Rates Revolt, RAM gradually took shape around socialists and other activists who were pursuing a dual strategy: helping the "rates strikers" get organised while showing how a political alternative was also necessary to overturn the ARC¹s corporate agenda. The combined pressure of the Rates Revolt and the rise of RAM in election year scared enough of the corporate politicians to push the ARC into a partial retreat. By a one-vote margin, a watered-down business differential was restored in mid-2004 which gave some relief to hard-pressed homeowners. This demonstration of "people power" provided the backdrop to RAM¹s entry into the ARC election in October 2004. Although by this time the heat had gone out of the Rates Revolt, RAM¹s 600 innovative "message" billboards still struck a popular chord. Reports came in of workers on the job discussing our call to "RAM the ARC" for rates justice, public transport, open democracy and "people before money". RAM candidates stood for eight of the 13 ARC seats. In a spectacular upset, RAM¹s Robyn Hughes unseated ARC chair Gwen Bull in Manukau City. We came close in several other seats, giving RAM a total of 87,000 ARC votes. Not one mainstream political commentator had expected a ticket described as "far left" and "socialist" by the NZ Herald and other media to do so damn well. This remarkable result showed how a broad left movement, given the right conditions and following a believable strategy, can make gains against establishment political elites. Free buses & unfree racism: RAM¹s community campaigning After the 2004 election, RAM embarked on high-profile community campaigns to promote the public good and redefine what grassroots people could win. Here RAM drew on the services of our regional councillor Robyn Hughes to reinforce the credibility of our initiatives. Greater Auckland is choked by car chaos. This imposes big expenses on individual commuters and staggering burdens on the public purse, all the while pumping out more of the greenhouse gases which could cost global humanity our liveable habitat. RAM¹s cut-through solution was to launch a campaign for free and frequent buses running in their own dedicated traffic lanes, and fully funded by a major shift of government cash away from motorway mania. At present, the Labour-led government is seriously looking at wasting upwards of $8 billion on three motorway tunnels in Central Auckland which will merely grow more cars and congestion. This amount of money could instead buy several thousand electric buses and run them fare-free across Greater Auckland for quarter of a century while also expanding electric rail across Waitakere, Auckland and Manukau cities. RAM¹s call for free and frequent public transport was endorsed by over two hundred prominent citizens, while our petition was signed by many thousands of Aucklanders. Our campaign got varying degrees of support from groups as diverse as Cycle Action Auckland, Mangere Community Board, Tramways Union, Auckland Regional Council, Green Party and Poverty Action Coalition. Former Manukau mayor Sir Barry Curtis offered three of his city¹s suburbs for a large-scale free buses trial if the Auckland Regional Transport Authority would climb aboard. As we expected, however, most council politicians and bureaucrats did little to implement RAM¹s boldly realistic vision of a free public transport network. Yet our idea has begun to spread, with a variety of other groups and individuals now advocating free and frequent public transport. This has helped to brand RAM as a "think big" battler for the welfare of the public and our planet. RAM also took an important stand against Islamophobia, a particularly virulent strain of racism being spread by the falsely named "war on terror", that imperial crusade of the US state to impose its will on the world by force of arms. In early 2007 a sudden rise of organised Islamophobia began to threaten New Zealand Muslims, none of whom had ever been charged with any act of "terrorism", let alone convicted. Yet extreme right Christian fundamentalists were organising stridently anti-Muslim conferences entitled "Mosques and Miracles" in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch. The keynote speakers were professional Islamophobes from Australia, who spread lies about "all mosques" being "centres of war" and Muslims all round the world preparing to "kill", "rape" and "enslave" non-Muslims. With help from other groups, RAM brought radical left British MP George Galloway to Auckland to rally public support for our peaceful Muslim sisters and brothers. 1,500 Aucklanders packed our "Voices of Peace" meetings to hear Galloway, a world-famous peace and justice activist noted for his electrifying imagery, link Islamophobic racism with Washington¹s "war on terror" and Israel¹s occupation of Palestine. At the main meeting, hundreds had to be turned away because the hall was full. By any measure, our "Voices of Peace" initiative was a success. There was extensive and nationwide coverage by the mainstream media. Local Muslims gained a sense of confidence and belonging, instead of feeling isolated and victimised. And as the extreme right fundamentalists saw our campaign for social inclusiveness gaining majority sympathy, most quietly dropped the nastiest elements of their Muslim bashing. The spleen vented at RAM across the spectrum of extreme right publications and websites was a back-handed tribute to the effectiveness of our campaign. Growing out of this important victory, RAM has promoted a slogan and ethos that unites migrant and NZ-born communities alike: "We All Belong Here". RAM has also worked alongside many other groups to mobilise opposition to the US war in Iraq, the Israeli re-invasion of Lebanon and the police "terror" raids on Tuhoe and left-wingers. Holding the line: RAM in the 2007 election The October 2007 council elections across Greater Auckland saw a swing to the right. In the Auckland City Council and, to a lesser degree, the Auckland Regional Council, the balance of power has shifted towards right-wing players like Citizens & Ratepayers and Independents for Manukau. The worst hit taken by RAM was when Robyn Hughes lost her Manukau seat on the regional council. Yet Robyn¹s 2007 vote was close to what she gained in 2004, so the problem wasn¹t any big collapse in support. The main cause was conservative voters in affluent East Manukau uniting behind the Independents for Manukau ticket, whereas in 2004 they had split their votes between an array of competing right-wing candidates. In the rest of Manukau City, RAM, Labour, City Vision and environmental candidates were competing for the grassroots vote. Across the board, RAM held the line against the swing to the right. That¹s clearly seen in the regional council election where RAM increased its average vote per candidate, even if only slightly. In the 2004 ARC election, the average vote per RAM candidate was 10,871, which in 2007 rose marginally to 10,899. (A similar comparison cannot be done for Auckland City Council elections which were not contested by RAM in 2004.) In 2007, RAM¹s 19 candidates in the regional council and Auckland City Council elections gathered a total of over 100,000 votes. The top RAM candidate gained 75% of the winner¹s vote, and no RAM candidate fell below 25%, so our results ranged from credible to close. Yet there was not a single "big name" on the RAM ticket, nor could we match the advertising spend of big budget tickets. 100,000 votes in Auckland council elections is easily the best result for a broad left ticket since the glory days of Jim Anderton¹s Alliance in the early 1990s. Before that, you would probably have to go back to the 1930s to see anything similar. Going by RAM¹s remarkably stable votes over the last two council elections, it would seem that in Greater Auckland a sizeable constituency supports our political challenge to corporate control of the region. That constituency was rallied in 2007 by RAM¹s 800 large "message" billboards across Western, Central and Southern suburbs which promoted free public transport, social inclusiveness and cutting home rates by making the corporates pay. All our 800 billboards were carried on people¹s fences. That meant knocking on many hundreds of doors to ask house occupiers for permission. Getting their okay meant in most cases an endorsement of RAM¹s platform, further evidence that we were in tune with a strong popular mood. Knocking on that number of doors and erecting that number of billboards was a huge job. It was only made possible by an influx of new activists into RAM. The diversity of RAM¹s activist base was reflected in the makeup of our candidates: a good gender balance, Pakeha, Maori, Pasifika and Asian, workers, professionals, small business and students, Christian, Muslim and non-believer, socialists, community activists and former adherents of the Labour, Green and National parties. Coming out of the 2007 council elections, RAM is seen as a serious player in Greater Auckland in terms of our activist base, name recognition and political brand. RAM is going nationwide Now RAM has decided to go nationwide and stand for parliament as well as councils. Under the law, becoming eligible to contest the list vote in general elections requires a party to sign up 500 paid members. So RAM has begun asking sympathisers around the country to become financial members ($1 fee for three years, donations encouraged). Since this process has been underway for just a few weeks as I write these lines, it¹s too soon to be sure how good the response will be to RAM¹s membership drive. All I can say this early is that clusters of people from Labour, Green, socialist, Maori, union, social justice, migrant and student backgrounds have signed up or promised to do so. What RAM activists are sure about is the need to take practical steps towards constructing a nationwide broad left party as a grassroots alternative to the Labour-National duopoly. The quality of life of most New Zealanders has worsened over the last quarter century. We now live in a high-skill, low-wage economy where many working families can never afford their own home. As the prophets of corporate profits swagger across the national stage, their market-driven greed poisons the community values of a past era. The undermining of our social environment is paralleled by the ruination of our natural environment, as climate warming outstrips the market-driven non-solution of emissions trading. It was a Labour government that, in 1984, began the biggest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich in our country¹s history. This legal robbery continued unchecked after National was elected in 1990. While Helen Clark¹s current administration has softened some "more market" obscenities, the basic neo-liberal game plan remains intact. Regardless of whether the government is run by Labour or National, our country is increasingly a "democracy" of one dollar, one vote, rather than one person, one vote. We need to popularise an alternative vision if we are to build an alternative party to the ruling duopoly. "Every worker is a human being who deserves the right to dignity. For that right to be at the heart of our society, workers need economic justice and democratic control over our future." So says the opening section of the Workers Charter, which was crafted by well-known activist John Minto and myself and a few other leftists several years ago. RAM has officially embraced the humanistic, co-operative, ecological, egalitarian and democratic vision of the Workers Charter. It is a vision that can appeal to a wide spectrum of workers, students, homemakers, professionals and small business owners who are concerned at what is happening to our society and ecology. Many of these people will have voted for right-wing parties like National in the past, others will be disillusioned Labour supporters. RAM is aiming to unite them all in a people¹s movement for social justice and ecological sanity. The ten points of the Workers Charter, which have been endorsed by the Council of Trade Unions, promote: 1. The right to a job that pays a living wage and gives us time with our families and communities. 2. The right to pay equity for women, youth and casual workers. 3. The right to free public healthcare and education, and to liveable superannuation and welfare. 4. The right to decent housing without crippling mortgages and rents. 5. The right to public control of assets vital to community well-being. 6. The right to protect our environment from corporate greed. 7. The right to express our personal identity free from discrimination. 8. The right to strike in defence of our interests. 9. The right to organise for the transfer of wealth and power from the haves to the have-nots. 10. The right to unite with workers in other lands against corporate globalisation and war. While the Workers Charter gives RAM a reference point as we open a dialogue with others at the grassroots, it will not be treated as set in stone. RAM will keep an open mind to all possibilities of how we might combine with other groups sharing a similar vision. Creating a nationwide broad left party should be a common cause for all grassroots visionaries. The future can be ours if we unite for a new future! -----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pheonix

Though the headlines are low key and the reporting muted, Behind the scenes the Labour Government is quietly bathing in the praise of profiteers and business leaders celebrating the new deal, But will Free Trade with China revisit the ashes of Phoenix on working people? In the late 90's I got a week's work in Onehunga stripping out a manufacturing plant, disconecting and dismantling all the machinery, while fork hoists stood by to load it all on to trucks. The company was called Phoenix Sheet Metal. And they manufactured electric hot water cylinders that are installed in houses. (you have probably got one in your house.) The workers, all members of the EPMU told me that they were all being laid off. I asked them if their company was losing money. They told me, no the company was quite profitable. But they said the company's owner had found out that he could make even bigger profits from importing Mac Intosh computers, and consequently he had decided to close his factory and sell off all machinery and reinvest the money in becoming a computer importer. As they say money always chases the highest return. From then on hot water cylinders installed in New Zealand have also been imported. Pat O Dea

Pat O Dea on Chris Trotter's criticism

Talk about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. > > Labour's policy's which Trotter continues to trumpet, while also > continuing to attack the left is bizarre, While these sorts of attacks > are not new, the reasoning behind them must be different. (lack of > reasoning might be more accurate.) > > In the last few elections Trotter and his supporters in the Labour Party > continually and noisily attacked anyone who dared to try and organise > an electoral alternative to the Labour Party. > > Their rational being, that we would split the left vote, and therefore > we were working (albeit indirectly for the National party). > > The attacks on those calling for a left alternative were often > vituperative and sometimes even degenerated into personal slurs and lies. > > "You lot are working for the Right" etc. > > > But, this time, nothing we on the left of Labour, could possibly be seen to > be doing, could be construed by Trotter in even his most fanciful > slurs and personal attacks, as being responsible for Labour's electoral > downfall. > > > This is all their own work. > > > Trotter has asked us what do you think should be done. > > > Here is my list. > > 1/ Cancel the tax cuts. > Because of the newly revealed deficit in the public accounts, any tax > cut now will lead to direct cuts in the social wage, ie public health, > public education, public transport, public housing etc. > Just what National wants. > > 2/ Immediate support for the CTU's call for, $15 p/h minimum wage in > '08, > The Labour government is viciously opposed to this call by the CTU. > Instead of even discussing this issue, they have rudely and completely > ignored this call from the umbrella organisation of the New Zealand > union movement. (This would be far more affordable than the tax cuts, > the bad effects of which will impact on the poorest while the only the > rich will get the benefits.) > > Chris Trotter instead of getting behind this call from the CTU has also > ignored them. And has decided to use his pulpit in the media, to launch > a campaign of sectarian attacks on the left. > Chris could personally, instead of abusing his position. Get behind the > CTU's call and popularise it as much as possible. But no, rather like > Don Quixote he would rather waste his time charging at the windmills at > the top of the Labour Party, as if it would make any difference, if > Clark was in charge or Goff. > > 3/ Real action on Climate change > > The latest British based, New Scientist magazine reports that "Half of > New Zealand's greenhouse gas emissions come from the guts of sheep and > cows" > > Also in the news this week. Fonterra New Zealand's biggest corporate and > arguably our biggest polluter. Has as well as all their environmental > crimes, (pollution of fragile braided river systems, and replacement of > traditional, carbon absorbing cropping lands, with mega dairy > conglomerates, which are wasteful in resources and really unsuited to > the rain shadowed Canterbury Plains.) > > Has also been found guilty of price gouging the kiwi consumer and also > artificially driving the prices up for their few smaller competitors by > their control of the milk costs. > > All this despite mega profits. > > Here is a chance to strike two birds with one stone. legistlation to rein > in this corporate monster should be immediate. (a) price controll on > milk and dairy products. (b) return arable dry plains areas back to > cropping which is more suitable for this more fragile environment. And > put a halt to anymore dairy conversions in this sensitive area. > > Every molecule of methane is 30 times more damaging to the environement > than CO2, and by ignoring this issue Helen Clark has been labled a > Methane denier. Trotter also probably falls into this camp. > > 4/ Cancel the Free Trade Deal with Communist China. This one should be self explanatory. And also is reflected in the ignored call from the CTU affiliates to dump this strategy All these 4/ points while different and not as radical as those in the unityblog, are entirely reasonable and politically feasible. But will the Labour Government even consider this, or any other more left, worker friendly program? The immediate answer must be, no. And even Chris Trotter if he was being honest would have to admit this. So this makes the Unityblog SW call for the building of a broad left alternative to Labour the only logical alternative. Of course people like Trotter would say that this will still be ineffectual because such a new political grouping will not be the majority party in parliament and so would not be able to affect policy. But overseas experience has shown that this is not true. In Germany the growing but still tiny Die Linke party has dragged the whole German parliamentary centre leftward, just by their very existence. Likewise the it is very unlikely that the Labour Government would have returned some of the foreshore rights to even one local hapu if the Maori Party wasn't in existence.

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!

Different pictures of Europe’s left

Different pictures of Europe’s left

by Alex Callinicos

The collapse of Romano Prodi’s centre-left government in January was a miserable end to the hopes of all those who had wanted to see an end to the sleazy right wing politics of Silvio Berlusconi.

Italy was the European country where the prospects of a renewal of the left seemed very real after the 2001 Genoa protests and the 2002 European Social Forum in Florence. But that was squandered when Rifondazione Comunista joined a government committed to neoliberal policies and the war in Afghanistan.

But one shouldn’t draw the conclusion that it’s all over for the European radical left. In Germany and Greece, the picture is very different.

The German political scene has been galvanised by the formation of Die Linke (The Left) in June last year. Die Linke brings together former members of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in western Germany and the PDS, the old East German ruling party turned reformist.

In recent state elections Die Linke has been winning significant scores – crossing the barrier of 5 percent of the vote required to win parliamentary seats in Hesse and Lower Saxony and achieving 6.5 percent in Hamburg a fortnight ago.

The rise of Die Linke represents a rebellion by working class voters against the SPD’s swing to the right. Ruling under Gerhard Schröder in coalition with the Greens between 1998 and 2005, the SPD forced through Agenda 2010, a platform of “reforms” that slashed unemployment benefits.

Defeated in the 2005 elections, the SPD formed a “Grand Coalition” government with the CDU conservatives under Angela Merkel. The precursors of Die Linke won 8.7 percent of the vote and 54 seats in the federal parliament.

Scuppers

Under new chair Kurt Beck the SPD is running scared of Die Linke. It has dumped Agenda 2010, pushed through an increase in unemployment benefit for older jobseekers, and forced the Grand Coalition to introduce a minimum wage for postal workers that effectively scuppers plans to privatise the post.

Merkel has been leading a government campaign against the tax haven in Lichtenstein. “What you see happening is the SPD leading the CDU by the nose while Die Linke is leading both Greens and the SPD by the nose,” complains Guido Westerwelle, leader of the neoliberal Free Democratic Party.

Meanwhile in Greece there have been two massive general strikes in the past four months. The right wing New Democracy government is facing resistance to its policies of pensions “reform” and privatisation and has been engulfed in scandal.

But this isn’t benefitting the other big party, the centre-left Pasok. Pasok, which adopted New Labour-style policies under its last prime minister Costas Simitis is also in crisis.

When I was in Athens a fortnight ago, an opinion poll gave New Democracy 31 percent, Pasok 28.3 percent, left coalition group Synaspismos 16.2 percent, the Greek Communist Party 7.1 percent, and the far right LAOS 3.8 percent.

The most dynamic factor in the situation is Synaspismos, which originates from different fragments of the KKE, traditionally the dominant force on the radical left in Greece.

Until recently, Synaspismos struggled to pass the 3 percent barrier to win MPs. Now, together with the KKE, it has won the largest share in public opinion for the radical left since the 1950s.

The successes enjoyed by Die Linke and Synaspismos reflect a combination of two factors – the crisis of social democracy and militant workers’ struggles. Both countries have seen important strikes recently.

But both parties also face the same trap – coalition with the centre left. “I can assure you,” a top SPD leader told the Financial Times a few weeks ago, “as long as the chairman [Beck] and I have anything to say about it, there will not be an alliance with Die Linke at the federal level.”

But more recently Beck floated the idea of an SPD-Die Linke coalition in Hesse.

Die Linke and Synaspismos need to learn the lesson of the Prodi government. It’s the struggles from below that offer the way forward, not parliamentary manoeuvres and combinations.

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

Colombia – the Israel of the Americas

Bush and Uribe implement "Plan Colombia"

1. Cluster bombs used as Colombia invades Ecuadorian terriory-
2. Ecuador and Venezuela scramble troops and tanks to defend their borders
3. Both close their embassies in Bogata

Colombia Assassinates Raul Reyes of FARC

March 2nd 2008, by Justin Podur - ZNet Commentary

The second-in-command of FARC (Colombia's guerrilla group), and perhaps its most visible spokesperson, Luis Édgar Devia Silva, or "Raul Reyes" (the nom de guerre), was killed by the Colombian military in bombings yesterday. The Colombian military killed some 15 guerrillas in the operation, according to their own reports, including Raul Reyes. The reports suggest that it was basically an assassination, of the type the Israelis have committed in recent decades and are most recently accused of committing against Hizbollah commander Imad Mughniyeh (indeed, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez noted the similarity, asking if Colombia was going to be converted into the Israel of the Americas). From El Tiempo (Colombia's national newspaper): "Reyes was killed in an intelligence operation that included the Army and Air Force, which intercepted a satellite phone call from the guerrilla chief, in recent hours that made it possible to find his exact location."

Raul Reyes was assassinated on Ecuadorian territory. The Ecuadorian army took some of the bodies, but the Colombian army took Raul Reyes's and those of other FARC officers.

Ecuador has retired its ambassador from Colombia.

Venezuela has also closed its embassy.

Ecuador and Venezuela are both moving troops to their borders with Colombia.

The Ecuadorian President, Rafael Correa, called Uribe a "criminal, mafioso, paramilitary" leading a "narco-government".

"We do not want war, but we will not permit the Empire or its puppy, President Uribe, to weaken us." Those were Chavez's words on the Venezuelan radio program, Alo Presidente on March 2. Chavez called Raul Reyes a "good revolutionary" and his killing a "cowardly assassination". Further, he said "It is very serious that a country arrogates to itself the right to bomb the territory of a neighbour and commit an incursion to take bodies, violating many international laws. Think of the consequences, not just for Colombia, but for your neighbours."

The Venezuelan government's official communication noted that the assassination was "a very hard blow against the humanitarian accord and the possibility of negotiations, revealing the irresponsibility of those who privilege the military option and escalate the armed conflict, making more difficult political and negotiated solutions, without regard for the consequences."

The assassination was, literally, the answer to FARC's second unilateral release of four kidnap victims, former Congresspeople, an operation coordinated with help from Venezuela. There are, therefore, numerous parallels with Israel. First, the tactic of high-tech, long-distance assassination of high-profile leaders. Second, the killing of dozens of others around as 'collateral damage'. Third, the use of such assassinations to undermine the possibilities for dialogue and negotiated solutions.

In this case, as with so much else in the region, the target is Venezuela and the objective is to escalate to a regional conflict - or, rather, an intensification and internationalization of the military conflict that is happening in Colombia. Such a conflict would be incredibly destructive for everyone involved, for Colombia and Colombians, for Uribe and his regime, and of course for Venezuela's revolution. The US, however, would benefit. When US allies use the same tactics in the same sorts of political situations against US enemies, there is reason to suspect a US role.

The US/Israeli approach in the Middle East, from the invasion of Iraq in 2003 to the invasion of Lebanon in 2006 and the ongoing massacres in Gaza, has been to commit atrocities and acts of violence and, using their superior militaries, exploit the political and military opportunities that arise (this is a military counterpart of what Naomi Klein calls "the shock doctrine"). Even when they have backfired politically or strained military resources, these violent approaches have cost their victims much more than their authors, who continue to have reason to believe that more violence can work.

One of the political opportunities that Israel counts on after it commits an assassination is some random act of violence by the Palestinian armed groups, which it can then exploit, calling the Palestinians terrorists. The FARC have been told that if they unilaterally release kidnap victims, the response will be the assassination of their commanders. What should those who believe the only solution to the conflict is a political solution say to them?

It would be a major improvement in world affairs, especially in the Middle East but increasingly, perhaps, in the Americas as well, if assassination was not viewed as an acceptable instrument of policy. As it is, the best short-term hope for the region is if there is an outpouring of official and popular disgust at Uribe's regime (and those who call the shots for that regime) for what it has done, throughout the Americas.

Justin Podur is a Toronto-based writer.

A FARC guerrilla

After marches against the Farc guerilla movement, Andy Brown looks at the roots of repression and the opportunism of the US-backed regime

“From above, they looked like a white river flowing through the streets of Colombia’s capital. They wore white T-shirts that read, ‘Yo soy Colombia (I am Colombia). Stop the kidnappings, the lies, the murders. No more Farc’.”

So gushed the Christian Science Monitor in the US, reporting mass demonstrations in Colombian cities last week against the leftist guerrilla force Farc, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

These were undoubtedly mass demonstrations, mobilising hundreds of thousands. Most were better off Colombians and supporters of president Alvaro Uribe’s government.

The president spoke at one of the rallies and they were heavily promoted by the private pro-Uribe media and by his backers in the US and elsewhere. Slogans were explicitly for Uribe and often against the Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. State institutions backed the marches, with schools often shut to encourage participation.

Uribe is the US’s favourite Latin American leader and Colombia is its frontline of intervention in the continent. The US has provided a massive financial and military “assistance” programme, first under the cover of the “war on drugs”, then seamlessly converted into the “war on terror”. Colombia has become increasingly important to the US since the elections of Chavez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia – both of whom speak out against US imperialism.

Uribe is currently trying to get favoured trading status with both the US and the European Union. The anti-Farc mobilisations are another attempt by him to emphasise his government’s legitimacy in the eyes of the West.

Uribe’s government has an appalling human rights record. It has systematically persecuted social movements and trade unions. Its supporters have engaged in large scale murder and intimidation. The army, the police and right wing paramilitary groups have organised a reign of terror, especially in the countryside.

The right wing paramilitary groups still operate freely, often with the support of the state. Colombia remains one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a trade unionist, with killings, death threats and disappearances still common.

By far the greatest violence in Colombia comes from the state and state sponsored death squads. Yet it is kidnappings by Farc which are the focus of the current marches. Farc holds about 40 political hostages. It is also alleged to hold several hundred others for ransom.

Chavez was recently involved in an operation to release two of Farc’s hostages. Chavez afterwards called for serious peace negotiations and the recognition of Farc as a legitimate political force, but Uribe and the US are desperate not to give credit to Chavez or make concessions with Farc.

Any serious peace process in Colombia must involve negotiations with both Farc and the other major rebel group, the ELN. Many ordinary Colombians want an end to the civil war which has brought appalling violence. Uribe seems set, however, on defeating the rebels. But there is no serious prospect of this – huge areas of the country are outside government control.

The US not only backs Uribe’s hardline stance, but is desperate that Chavez is not seen as instrumental in any peace process.

Farc has been fighting corrupt and elitist Colombian governments for decades. It is undoubtedly involved in drug production and trafficking, though we should not fall for the hypocrisy of the state’s denunciations of this. Establishment politicians, the armed forces and much of the ruling class are up to their eyes in drugs, corruption and organised crime.

Author Forrest Hylton describes a situation where “Colombia’s establishment political parties have become so addicted to drug profits that they have relegated their traditional allies in the church and the old-money establishment for the huge monetary resources that drugs bring.”

Farc emerged as a result of the establishment violence against the poor and any political organisation which sought to represent the excluded. They do offer some protection for the farmers in the areas they control who face chemical crop spraying and violence from US-backed “counter-insurgency” programmes. However, Farc is not based on a mass democratic movement, and social and economic conditions in their areas are not significantly better for the poor. Farc also taxes the peasants and sometimes enforces recruitment into its militia.

So Farc’s guerilla strategy will not offer the political progress ordinary Colombians badly need. But against all the odds and in a climate of fear, the Colombian trade union and social movements – including women’s groups, Afro-Colombians and indigenous people – are fighting for change. Among municipal workers, food processing unions, oil workers, miners and others there is a brave and well-organised resistance to neoliberalism. A progressive electoral voice for these movements is also beginning to emerge, despite the repression and a long tradition of abstention from electoral politics on the Colombian left.

These progressive forces generally have no links to the guerrilla fighters, though this has not stopped the right from using this as a pretext for bloody attacks on them. These movements offer the future for working people in the Colombian cities and countryside.

Slaughter in Gaza- the Warsaw Ghetto of the 21st Century

Slaughter and starvation in Gaza-
six month old baby murdered
another 56 killed by Israeli attacks yesterday

ALL OUT-
GLOBAL DAY OF ACTION
AGAINST WAR AND OCCUPATION
12 noon MARCH 15th
AOTEA SQUARE, AUCKLAND

(a) End the occupation of Iraq
(b) Freedom for Palestine
(c) No NZ Troops in Afghanistan

Do your part, organise many more to come-
Join AntiWar Aotearoa and organise HERE

Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza: Disturbing Parallels Commentary: Steve Hutcheson, Arab News

I saw a photo last week of a father holding his 6-month-old baby son. The father’s face was devoid of expression; the child in his arms was dead. The boy’s name was Mohammed Al-Borai; he along with several others had been killed in a blast fired indiscriminately by an Israeli cannon into the densely populated areas of Gaza. There were more photos, one of a group of young boys holding flowers standing around the battered and bloodstained body of the baby boy. That struck me as the most poignant. I had been having a discussion about the cause of suicide bombers among Palestinians and it will be this image more than any other that will concern me more than most. In their minds the young dead boy will have more impact on their future than anything any one might tell them. It was then that I started to contemplate perhaps more fully the plight of the Palestinians today and the parallels in the history of the Jews that led to their mass exodus from their own countries to immigrate to the land that was at the time known as Palestine. The Warsaw Ghetto during the Jewish Holocaust holds special significance to the European Jews. It was a place of oppression and the pathway to the ultimate death of thousands of their population that has become symbolic with their struggle for recognition. Yet what they are failing to acknowledge as their descendants press forward with their own brand of Jewish and Zionist idealism is the parallel set of conditions that they are now imposing on the Arab people of Palestine. The Nazis rounded up the Jews of Poland and quartered them in a small area of Warsaw, building a barricade around the perimeter to prevent them leaving. So too have the Israelis through conflict and force pushed many of the Arab inhabitants out of Israel into an enclave that now has a population density of 4,200 people per sq. km which is 14 times that of the surrounding area of Israel which has 360 people per sq. km. The Nazis deprived the ghetto inhabitants of food and essential supplies. So too has the Israeli government stopped the flow of goods to the 1.4 million inhabitants of Gaza by limiting the convoys of supplies to a mere trickle. The Nazis reduced the average calorie intake of the Jewish inhabitants of the ghetto to 241 calories per day. So too have the Israelis reduced the calorie intake of the Palestinians in Gaza. According to a UN report, it is presently at 61 percent of the average daily requirements. The Nazis restricted public utilities such as water and electricity. So too has the Israeli government. The Nazis restricted the inhabitants from adequate health care. Israelis restrict the health care in Gaza by limiting the medical supplies in or the treatment of cases that need to be done outside. The Jewish inhabitants through the ZZB and the ZOB resisted the oppression by the Nazis albeit too late and their rebellion was brutally crushed without concern for who was in the way. So too have the Palestinians of Gaza through their own resistance organizations, in particular Hamas, rebelled against their oppressors and so too do the Israelis use all means available to crush the rebellion without concern for who is in the way or who they maim or kill in doing so. The Nazis destroyed the structure of the ghetto leveling it to the ground in a broad quest to rout the resistance to their oppression. Israelis indiscriminately level buildings and the infrastructure in Gaza in a quest to rout out the resistance to their oppression. The Nazis assigned the Jewish people to a lesser status of all their inhabitants depriving them of their rights as citizens and even as humans. Israel assigns the refugees held in Gaza less status than is given to the Jews worldwide and deprives the Palestinians of their rights to return to their former lands. The Nazis applied whatever was at their means to break the will of the Jewish inhabitants of the ghetto. Israelis do the same thing; they use whatever is at their means to break the will of the Palestinians. The Nazis killed the Jewish inhabitants of the ghetto indiscriminately. Don’t the Israelis kill indiscriminately the inhabitants in forcing their control over Gaza? The Jews of Israel and elsewhere are quite right to protest at the inhumanity of the Nazis in their treatment of them and oblige the world not to allow the same situation to happen again. The Palestinians protest at the inhumanity of the Israeli treatment, yet in a bizarre twist of events, the world still allows the oppression to happen and continue. It was after the Jews in the ghetto had been largely killed or transported that the world stood up and felt guilty in not acting sooner. With the picture of Mohammed Al-Borai in my mind I question when the world will stand up and say: Enough is enough, there is not going to be a repeat of the Warsaw Ghetto and particularly when its perpetrators are those who suffered the most by its conduct. There is a basic conflict of inhumanity occurring to the Palestinian people of Gaza that the world is deliberately ignoring. An inhumanity that was inflicted by the Nazis on the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto is now more than ever closely paralleling that which they are inflicting on the people of Gaza. They learned a hard lesson but it was not a lesson learned well. They have been given the power to practice humanity but have decided instead that they will treat the concerns of the Palestinians in the same inhumane way the Nazis treated them. A future monument will no doubt contain photos of Mohammed Al-Borai in the arms of his father and the world will decry the injustice. Steve Hutcheson has worked in crisis recovery in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Indonesia for the past several years and is now based in Thailand. He can be contacted at: steve50@mail.com Israeli minister threatens "holocaust" as public demand ceasefire talks Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 29 February 2008 Israeli officials began damage limitation efforts after the country's deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai threatened Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip with a "holocaust." The comments came a day after Israeli occupation forces killed 31 Palestinians, nine of them children, one a six-month-old baby, in a series of air raids across the Gaza Strip. Israel claimed that the attacks were in retaliation for a barrage of rockets fired by resistance fighters in the Gaza Strip which killed one Israeli in the town of Sderot on Wednesday, 27 February. Palestinian resistance groups, including Hamas, said the rockets were in retaliation for the extrajudicial execution of five Hamas members carried out by Israel on Wednesday morning. Israeli occupation forces have killed more than 200 Palestinians since the US-sponsored Annapolis peace summit last November. In the same period, five Israelis have been killed by Palestinians. Speaking to Israeli army radio today, Vilnai said, "the more Qassam [rocket] fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, [the Palestinians] will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah because we will use all our might to defend ourselves." A report on the BBC News website headlined "Israel warns of Gaza 'holocaust'" noted that the word "holocaust" -- shoah in Hebrew -- is "a term rarely used in Israel outside discussions of the Nazi genocide during World War II." The BBC later reported that "many of Mr. Vilnai's colleagues have quickly distanced themselves from his comments and also tried to downplay them saying he did not mean genocide." An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, Arye Mekel, claimed that Vilnai used the word "in the sense of a disaster or a catastrophe, and not in the sense of a holocaust." The attempt to limit the damage of Vilnai's comments is not surprising. It was recently revealed how another Israeli official, Major-General Doron Almog, narrowly escaped arrest at London's Heathrow airport in September 2005, in connection with allegations of war crimes committed against Palestinians in the occupied territories. British police feared a gunfight if they attempted to board the El Al civilian aircraft on which Almog had arrived and on which he hid until he fled the United Kingdom back to Israel as a fugitive from justice. Incitement to genocide is a punishable crime under the international Genocide Convention, adopted in 1948 after the Nazi holocaust. "The 8 Stages of Genocide," written by Greg Stanton, President of Genocide Watch, sets out a number of warning signs of an impending genocide, which include "dehumanization" of potential victim groups and preparation, whereby potential victims "are often segregated into ghettoes, deported into concentration camps, or confined to a famine-struck region and starved." [1] Vilnai's holocaust threat, however much Israeli officials attempt to qualify it, fits into a consistent pattern of belligerent statements and actions by Israeli officials. Israel has attempted to isolate the population of Gaza, deliberately restricting essential supplies, such as food, medicines and energy, a policy endorsed by the Israeli high court but condemned by international officials as illegal collective punishment. As The Electronic Intifada has previously reported, dehumanizing statements by Israeli political and religious leaders directed at Palestinians are common (see "Top Israeli rabbis advocate genocide," The Electronic Intifada, 31 May 2007 and "Dehumanizing the Palestinians," Ali Abunimah, The Electronic Intifada, 21 September 2007) On 28 February, Vilnai's colleagues added their own inflammatory statements. Cabinet minister Meir Sheetrit stated that Israel should "hit everything that moves" in Gaza "with weapons and ammunition," adding, "I don't think we have to show pity for anyone who wants to kill us." And today, Tzachi Hanegbi, a senior member of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's Kadima party said that Israel should invade Gaza to "topple the Hamas terror regime" and that Israeli forces, which now enforce the occupation of Gaza from the periphery and air, should prepare to remain in the interior of the territory "for years." While Israeli leaders escalate the violence and threats, some other top officials and a vast majority of the Israeli public support direct talks with Hamas to achieve a mutual ceasefire, something Hamas has repeatedly offered for months. "Sixty-four percent of Israelis say the government must hold direct talks with the Hamas government in Gaza toward a cease-fire and the release of captive soldier Gilad Shalit," the Israeli daily Haaretz reported on 27 February citing a Tel Aviv University poll. The report noted that half of Likud supporters and large majorities of Kadima and Labor party voters support such talks and only 28 percent of Israelis still oppose them. Knesset Member Yossi Beilin, leader of the left-Zionist Meretz-Yahad party, called for an agreed ceasefire with Hamas, noting that "there have been at least two requests from Hamas, via a third party, to accept a cease-fire," Haaretz reported on 29 February. Israel's public security minister, Avi Dichter, visiting Sderot the previous day, criticized Israel's military escalation, saying, "Whoever talks about entering and occupying the Gaza Strip, these are populist ideas which I don't connect to, and in my opinion, no intelligent person does either." And, in an interview with the American magazine Mother Jones, published on 19 February, the former head of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, Efraim Halevy, repeated calls for Israel and the US to negotiate a ceasefire with Hamas. Dismissing lurid rhetoric about the group, Halevy stated that "Hamas is not al-Qaida," and "is not subservient to Tehran." The question remains as to why when the vast majority of Israelis and Palestinians, some senior Israeli officials, and Hamas leaders are all talking about a ceasefire, the Israeli government refuses to accept one and the US refuses to call for one. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has blamed the escalating bloodshed entirely on Hamas, and has failed to call for a ceasefire. This echoes her support for Israel's merciless 2006 bombardment of Lebanon which she notoriously celebrated as being "the birth pangs of a new Middle East." The Palestinian and Israeli populations are exhausted by the relentless bloodshed, however unequal its toll. They are paying the price of a failed policy, pushed by Washington and its local clients, which attempts to demonize, isolate and destroy any movement that resists the order that the United States seeks to impose on the region. Co-founder of The Electronic Intifada, Ali Abunimah is author of One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse (Metropolitan Books, 2006).