1. Opposition to all New Zealand and Western imperialist intervention in the Third World and all Western imperialist alliances.

2. Secure jobs for all with a living wage and a shorter working week.

3. For the unrestricted right of workers to organise and take industrial action and no limits on workers’ freedom of speech and activity.

4. For working class unity and solidarity – equality for women, Maori and other ethnic minorities and people of all sexual orientations and identities; open borders and full rights for migrant workers.

5. For a working peoples’ republic.

As you can see it’s not a fully-fledged program or blueprint for the future socialist society. A lot of revolutionary groups have long-winded programs calling for the nationalisation of x industry or for more money on y social program – usually the longer the program, the smaller the group and the more sharply they counterpose themselves to every other tendency on the far left.

Our 5 point platform, as one of our comrades put it during a talk at our recent Marxism 2008 conference, focuses instead on “the things that the NZ working class needs to get right” in order to develop revolutionary anti-capitalist consciousness. The reasoning being that workers can quite happily sign up to demands like the abilition of GST on food or free public transport which are perfectly legitimate demands in-and-of-themselves, but they still won´t be any closer to understanding the need to overthrow capitalism.

During various campaigns (such as running in the upcoming parliamentary elections) we do of course raise concrete demands such as the abolition of GST, but we don´t make that our sole raison d’etre as other groups like RAM/Socialist Worker do.

By contrast our 5 point platform are if you like the principles which we use to inform and guide our everyday campaign work and determine our political priorities. For instance last year one of our biggest campaigns was in defence of the Iranian asylum seekers imprisoned at Mt Eden – something from which from much of the left abstained as they didn´t see it as a top priority compared to some of the more “popular” issues such as free buses. But because we knew that the struggle for open borders is an absolutely indispensible part of winning workers to revolutionary ideas, we made it our number 1 priority (even though the potential audience was very very small).

It would be different perhaps if our goal was to get elected to parliament and “reform” capitalism, but on the campaign trail we are always honest with workers about the fact that at the end of the day capitalism cannot be reformed and in any case that that is not what we are about (hopefully this clarifies that we are definitely not Lassalleans!).

As far as learning from history goes, we do have an enormous variety of views in our party about issues such as the class nature of the USSR (some say bureacratic collectivist, some say state capitalist, some say degenerated workers state etc etc).

However the main lesson we draw from the failure of the so-called “socialist” regimes is the need for real and transparent internal party democracy, with comrades having the right to discuss and debate differences of opinion openly (including publicly in the party press). This was the case in the Russian Bolshevik Party right up until the 1917 Revolution, however subsequently it was replaced with a brand of bureaucratic monolithism – falsely labelled “democratic centralism” – which held that the party could only speak with one voice and that all internal party dissent must be muzzled.

This model of “democratic centralism” was coined by Zinoviev and later spread to Stalinist and Trotskyist parties worldwide – the outcome was worse in the case of the Stalinist parties probably because many of them held state power, but the internal regimes of many Trotskyist parties were also pretty shocking.

For this reason in our constitution we allow our members to disagree with the party on any issue as long as they don´t contravene the basic 5 point platform or do anything that “brings the party into disrepute in the eyes of the working class” (eg scab on a strike or take bribes while serving as an elected official).

Hopefully this answers some of your questions – but feel free to email us if you have any more!

Can you elaborate? I looked on your site and couldn’t find any information that relates to a Five Point Platform.

Personally mine would be:

1. to abolish GST

2. to either impose a graduated tax on the value of unimproved land or the nationalisation thereof, which prevailed until Massey allowed freehold ownership when his government came to power. Karl Marx appeared to recognise the central place that private ownership of land had in perpetuating the capitalist economic system, which he expressed in the Critique of the Gotha Programme. Councils already have the power to do this under the Local Government Act 2002 (not nationalisation). The funds could be used to fund a universal basic income, which would allow us to dismantle the invasive and coercive Beveridge/Croly Welfare State and the minimum wage which effectively makes workers (bluecollar and whitecollar) subsidise the ameriolation of market failures.

3 to abolish the Employment Relations Act and replacement with one that doesn’t infringe on the rights of labour to strike politically. This and its predecessor, the Employment Contracts Act, handily constricted and marginalised the oppositon of the workers to the criminal looting of the public wealth by traitorous domestic and foreign capitalists in the 1980s and 1990s.

4. Further reform the Local Government Act, in order to devolve powers currently retained by central government, which will ideally provide for more direct participation in governmance and decisionmaking by those that are directly affected them.
I’m rather partial to the administration of the Emilia Romagna region in Italy who have had a communist government for virtually 50 years.

“The beneficiaries of “real services” are people working in small and medium enterprises. In the United States, we usually think of small businesses not only as firms that pay low wages but as especially hostile to any government intervention. Neither is true in Emilia-Romagna. With only 3.9 million people, the region has an amazing 68,000 manufacturing enterprises. (New York State, by contrast, has 18 million people and about 26,000 manufacturing enterprises.) No invisible hand provides Emilian firms with financing, daycare, urban planning, technical assistance, research institutes and specialized laboratories. Small companies can’t be expected to devote much capital to research and development. They can’t even afford to hire marketing consultants. The regional government arranges for these services — chiefly by contracting with nonprofit economic research agencies like the internationally respected NOMISMA. “
http://www.uwcc.wisc.edu/info/bologna.html

5. Abolish the Ministry of Trade and Enterprise. Why should workers provide wealthfare for companies in the end appropriate the surplus value of their workers?

6. Either abolish the corporate charter of corporations which provides them with “personhood” and limited liability or alternatively provide the same rights for worker cooperatives, perhaps in a form resembling the UK Limited Liability Partnerships.
http://www.opencapital.net/theory.htm

7. Nationalise the Reserve Bank and direct it to fund programmes that are of importance to the New Zealand people, like the First Labour government did in the 1930s.
“Where will the money come from?�?; the Government’s answers were never explicit, but in fact a good deal of the money came from State credit created by the Reserve Bank. This institution, by an Act of 1936, had become a fully governmental body; where these expensive programmes could not be financed out of current revenue or overseas funds, the Government simply borrowed from its own bank. Neither the housing programme nor the guaranteed price could have been financed without such credit.�?

http://www.teara.govt.nz/1966/H/HistorySettlementAndDevelopment/193549 theLabourRegime/en

What do you think?

“We do sometimes have interesting discussions and debates about the historical stuff, and take an active interest in the struggles going on today in other countries such as Nepal and the Philippines, but we don’t think we need to have a program for how to carry out those revolutions.”

I think debating and discussing the history of the revolutionary struggle is highly relevant, because it holds valuable lessons from which we can draw so we don’t repeat the same mistakes from the past. For example what transpired during the Spanish Revolution between Marxists and Anarchists. As George Santanya wrote, Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.”

“We’ve quite enough on our plate trying to make one in Aotearoa!”
You’ve got that right when limpwristed reformists like the Greens and the Labour Party are reviled and marginalised for being “communists” and “radicals”, because of the “liberal” social agendas.

Last question. Whats your party’s view as to the end goal of Marxism, that being the eventual withering away of the State? I think that mutualist anarchists by nature being “reformist” would the most likely candidates within the anarchist movement to work with you as long as we share than commen end goal. From what I’ve read, many socialists prior to the fall of the Soviet Union, didn’t appear inclined to support such a thing, because of the apparent (and questionable) success of the Soviet Union in providing an alternative political and economic structure to capitalism, whilst not appearing to realise that it was merely capitalism without the constraints of liberal democracy (more rightly labeled fascism). Do Marxists now feel as though this goal is no longer realistic, if so they should more accurately label themselves Lassalleans.

That’s why our 5 Point Platform is limited to issues that are important for the working class in NZ in the 21st century.

We do sometimes have interesting discussions and debates about the historical stuff, and take an active interest in the struggles going on today in other countries such as Nepal and the Philippines, but we don’t think we need to have a program for how to carry out those revolutions. We’ve quite enough on our plate trying to make one in Aotearoa!

Are you guys Marxist-Leninist, and if so does that mean you support the earlier New Economic Policy of the early years of the Soviet Union or “the dictatorship of industry” which was advocated by the fascist Trotsky and eventually applied by Stalin after he exiled him?

“Now that’s an attitude we need to see more of on the left.”

It really is a shame. Until the last few years I had no idea how ideologically split the Left and even communism and anarchism are.

“However, Socialist Worker/RAM and the Greens do not really classify as Left parties anymore – they’re centreist, liberal groups through and through. SW/RAM are too busy calling for GST to be removed only from food to bother with a silly idea like the complete abolishment of GST in it’s entirety, and the same goes for the Greens.”

Thats a damn shame. Note I didn’t bother mentioning the Labour Party, because they’ve since been captured by the bosses and identity politics activists. They should have changed their name in the 1970s like Norman Kirk had wanted (it was in his biography). For the Right to label the Labour Party as socialist just how ignorant or how intolerant they are of other social, economic, and political views other than their own. I’ve just been reading Rhetoric of the Red Dawn by Jason A. Lee, one of the Labour Party’s most radical MP’s who was kicked out of the party by Peter Fraser in the 1940s. He noted that happening way back then.

Prior to the First Labour government, they sang “The Red Flag”.

“The people’s flag is deepst red.
It’s shrouded oft their martyred dead.
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold.
Their heart’s blood dyed its every fold.”

After the Labour Party mellowed its aims to gain wider appeal, some of the more radical M.Ps would sing a song in parody.

“The people’s flag is the palest pink.
Its not so red as you might think
We’ve been to see and now we know
They’ve been and changed its colour so.

In his book written in 1965, he wrote that if they were to sing the song on that date they would have sung.

“The peole’s flag is deepest red
But we’ve got to keep up with the Joneses.
All people that on earth do dwell
Sing to the Lord with a cheerful voice.
‘God Save our Gracious Queen.’
So we can keep up with the Joneses.

Appropriate no? With Helen Clarks stated aim of regaining “our” former rank in the OECD.

I’ve joined the Green Party, to hopefully agitate from within. I know that Russell Norman is a former socialist, though he appears to recognise the irony of his position, something you are no doubt aware of.

“It’s a funny position we find ourselves in. Just as the social democrats (Europe), labourists (UK, Oz, NZ) and new dealers (US) of the 1930s and 1940s had to save capitalism from its own destructive tendencies by introducing a range of modifications and interventions on the market system, so now the Green Parties of the world find ourselves in possibly a similar position. The best of the old social democrats like Michael Cullen are too locked in the old paradigm to understand it, and the sectional interests like the business roundtable and employers federation are too narrow to see it, but we have to intervene on the market system to place a price on resource use and pollution so that we can save the planet. And in the process we will quite possibly save the market system from its natural tendency to destroy or consume all resources leading to its own demise.”

Its just that they are so naive about economics. They feel that if they impose “environmental taxation” on businesses that it’ll be force to change their behaviour so as not to be subject to the extra costs, in so failing to realise that those companies will no doubt pass the costs onto their customers who are inevitably workers, who can’t afford to change their behaviour because they’re struggling already. I’m trying to educate them about something that even the Right understand and appear almost concerned about, but its hard to get through to them.

Now that’s an attitude we need to see more of on the left. :P

“What is needed is for you to reach out to other groups with similar aims, such as other Left parties, like the Alliance, Socialist Worker, Socialist Aotearoa, and even the Greens, to form a united front in a campaign for the abolishment of GST.”

We’d be happy to work alongside other left groups on a campaign against GST, and we’ve made some suggestions along those lines to various people. However, Socialist Worker/RAM and the Greens do not really classify as Left parties anymore – they’re centreist, liberal groups through and through. SW/RAM are too busy calling for GST to be removed only from food to bother with a silly idea like the complete abolishment of GST in it’s entirety, and the same goes for the Greens.

That said, if they did approach us and stated their willingness to get involved in a campaign for the complete abolishment of GST, we certainly wouldn’t just brush them off.

I agree that GST is the most dispicable tax that exists, because not only is it regressive, but it also effectively criminalises non “market” transactions as it subjects them to taxation and therefore must be paid with hard currency even though they’re not conducted with cash, in effect making the transaction uneconomic or forced underground. Not to mention for businesses, its a deductible expense, whilst workers have to pay it.

I’m a mutualist-ararchist, but I’m wiling to sacrifice ideological purity in order to assist with political initiatives that will provide for increased welfare for people like me, the working class.

What is needed is for you to reach out to other groups with similar aims, such as other Left parties, like the Alliance, Socialist Worker, Socialist Aotearoa, and even the Greens, to form a united front in a campaign for the abolishment of GST.

Why don’t you spend copies of the speech to all potentially interested parties? I’m very appalled at the complete ignorance of economics amongst the Left. I guess thats what happens when the discourse is dominated by academics primarily with the social “sciences”, whilst the capitalists are free to frame the debate about economics in terms that are in their interests.