The Key Factor: PR and The National Party

Novembers’ election saw a narrow victory for the National Party and its allies. Compared to their 2008 result, National saw their vote drop by about 10%- over 95,000 votes. They only received such a large share of the vote because Labours dropped even more- an enormous 255,000. ACT went from 5 MPs to 1, who would have been gone too if not for winning Epsom- the country’s richest electorate with the lowest Maori population. The Greens and NZ First were the only parties in parliament that grew their vote from 2008¹. 1 in 4 people did not vote.

All in all, about a third of New Zealand’s adult population voted for National. Those voters can’t all be written off by the left as “middle class”. Around 75% of people in New Zealand make a living by selling their ability to work, and while there is significant stratification within that 75% it (many near the top of the pay scale would expect to personally benefit from National policy, though this is usually not the case²) the reality is workers are continuing to vote for the National Party.

This can in part be put down to Nationals slick PR campaign crafted by the Australian public relations firm Crosby/Textor before the 2008 election. For the last 4 years John Key has cultivated an image of a smiling, friendly everyman. He refused to be interviewed by Radio New Zealand and their no-nonsense journalists, but appeared regularly on Radio Sport where he discussed topics such as cats and how attractive he found British actress Liz Hurley. He even hosted a one hour show on Radio Live which he described as an ‘election free zone’.

This act by Key seemed to appeal to a section of the population, and somehow his sheen of populism didn’t scratch. He was able to brush it off when the media reported that Aroha Ireland, the poster child for National’s 2008 campaign, now aged 16, was heading to Australia saying there were no opportunities for young people in this country. “I don’t see us catching up, we are going backwards while they are getting way ahead,” she told media. Aroha was part of what Key in 2008 described as an “underclass” which he admits has actually grown under his watch.

Labours fear based campaign

Labour didn’t have a popular leader this past election. The party machine seemed to realise that Phil Goff was about as exciting a a wet dish cloth and left his face off billboards, opting instead to showcase their polices. While the $15 minimum wage policy is a good one, Labour jumped on that bandwagon to late for it to be seen as genuine concern for low paid workers (Unite led a campaign for a living wage in 2009 and it has been Green policy since then). As per usual, Labour’s biggest attempt at winning votes was playing the “we’re not National” card. As such their campaign was based on fear, fear of what might happen if National remained in government.

Their message to the poor of New Zealand was vote Labour- you have no other choice. Campaign material disguised as eviction letters were sent to solo parents, and most cynically of all Phil Goff told Radio New Zealand he was so adament about not working with Hone Harawira that if Mana was needed to form a government he would concede and let National govern.

Political Zombie: The return of New Zealand First

The nationalist New Zealand first party did not cross the 5% threshold in 2008, possibly reflecting that their views on matters like immigration were falling out of favour with a more tolerant society. They were poised to to get a similar result in 2011 until political commentators reached a consensus that the only chance the country had of a Labour led government was if NZ First got into parliament. Two of the writers on The Standard New Zealand’s most popular centre-left political blog declared their intention to vote for NZ First. It was an extreme example of “strange bedfellows” as the tiny white supremacist movement had also endorsed New Zealand first.

Many other would-be Labour/Green voters had the same idea. As it typically does, this strategic voting failed. New Zealand First achived 7% of the vote, but as their extra votes came t the expense of Labour, the Greens and possibly even Mana their seats had no impact on the forming of a government. It instead meant the entry to the house of people like Richard Prosser, who believes the burqa should be banned in New Zealand and compulsory military training should be introduced.

A Greener parliament

The other high achiever was the Greens, who now have a record 14 MP’s, including New Zealands first deaf MP Mojo Mathers who entered parliament after special votes were counted. The high vote for the Green Party reflects a deep concern for the environment- which polls show was seen as the most important issue for voters- no doubt the Rena oil spill played a role too. While the last National government had a memorandum of understanding with National, no formal agreement exists between the two parties this year.

MMP referendum

MMP was still the favoured voting system by New Zealand, but at a much reduced majority from when it was introduced. A review into MMP will take place which could lead to a lowering of the threshold required for parties to gain representation.

Looking toward 2014

Three years of long struggle lies ahead. A campaign against funding cuts for Aucklands only 24/7 rape crisis line has already had a partial victory, with funding secured for a further 6 months. National has much more planned though, including attacks on beneficiaries and privatisation of state assets. The next budget will likely see funding frozen or cut in many important areas.

Whether or not they win a third term in 2014 will depend largely on those million New Zealanders who didn’t vote this time. Mana is likely to gain in this area as turn out is lowest in the Maori seats, not to mention that the two Maori Party co-leaders will be retiring at the end of this term. If the trend continues the Greens will also continue to grow- though this could come from moving rightward and taking votes from Labour.

But Mana was unlikely to repeat the success of the Māori Party when it was launched in 2004. For a start, there was no hikoi this time, and of course, Mana did not have the backing of the Brown Table. Mana also failed to make a real breakthrough into the Pasefika and working class Pākehā communities, perhaps because it was perceived to be a party exclusively for tangata whenua, like the Māori Party.

State Assets

There were also political weaknesses. Some of the contradictions within Mana were evident from its statements on the question of asset sales. It was a priority campaign for Labour who painted the issues in not-so-subtly nationalistic terms. “Grow our economy, not someone else’s” was Labour’s slogan – as if “we” all have the same interests in the New Zealand economy, whether beneficiary or billionaire!

Mana’s position was variable. In some instances, candidates talked about assets that “we” currently own. Well, they are owned by the state. But who “owns” the state? The reality is that the working class currently has little control over State Owned Enterprises, as evidenced by spiralling household energy costs.

In a press release, Mana candidate John Minto called for New Zealand government accounts to be shifted from “Australian-owned” Westpac to Kiwibank by posing the proposition: “What about some national economic pride in New Zealand?” Comrade Minto does his own long and proud record as an internationalist a disservice with such a comment. It also contradicts another of Comrade Minto’s statements, where he described Mana as being the “smallest party with the biggest ambitions.”

On the other hand, at a candidates’ meeting in Devonport, Harawira delivered a solid case against assets sales with the statement: “If assets are in private hands, whether foreign or New Zealand owned, they only care about three things – (1) profit, (2) profit and (3) profit.”

We in Mana need to be sharp on economic nationalism if we want to grow beyond 1% of the party vote. After all, if our policies are presented as a pale imitation of New Zealand First, we can hardly be surprised if voters end up going for the real deal instead.

Next Steps

Mana held a national hui in South Auckland on 4 December, where Matt McCarten stepped down from the presidency of the movement, and Annette Sykes was elected as his interim replacement. Sykes declared Mana to be “the first vanguard of resistance” to the austerity of the global recession. “We are a movement to be reckoned with, and we will change the world.” She compared Harawira to Labour’s Norman Kirk and Mana Motuhake’s Matiu Rata. She spoke of the tricky relationship between kaupapa Māori issues and class issues in terms of winning the party vote, adding “we have the intellectual and practical strength to deal with it.”

Harawira said Mana should now “kill off the Māori Party”, and acknowledged that more work needed to be done in reaching out to Pasefika especially: “We must take up the overstayers’ amnesty seriously.”

Workers Party has raised a proposal for Mana to develop a programme of political eduction for its activists, encompassing topics such as political economy, imperialism/ colonialism, and Treaty/ constitutional issues, as well as practical elements such as running a successful campaign and public speaking. If Mana is to emulate the spectacular success scored by the Greens in this election, the party vote will be crucial. And the party vote is ideological. Mana needs to clearly define and articulate its political ideas, vision and programme. The first step towards doing that is discussion and debate within the membership.

And as class war returns under a second term National-led government, Mana must be at the forefront of every progressive struggle. Mana’s positive orientation to the CMP lockout and the anti-eviction campaigns of state housing tenants in places like Glenn Innes, point to the way ahead.

This year New Zealand electors will vote in a national referendum, held as part of the general elections, asking them firstly to indicate whether they want to change from MMP, and secondly to indicate their preferred electoral system. The other options are First Past the Post (FPP), Preferential Voting (PV), Single Transferable Vote (STV), and Supplementary Member (SM). If a majority votes in favour of retaining MMP that decision will be binding. However, if a majority votes against retaining MMP, there will be a further referendum in 2014 whereby electors will decide between MMP and whichever alternative procedure gains the most support in the 2011 referendum. If a new system is selected in 2014 it will come into effect at the 2017 election.

Real advanced democracy can only be imposed and administered by the majority of working people through a workers‘ government. In the current period though, in which the working class has clearly not yet recovered organisationally or politically from the onslaught of neo-liberalism, it is important to ensure that the electoral system offering the most democratic electoral procedure prevails. From this point of view it is in the best interests of the working people and oppressed groups to retain MMP.

The capitalist state and elections

Marxists refer to ‘bourgeois democracy’ to describe the current form of state rule in advanced capitalist countries such as New Zealand. Marxist theory accepts that capitalism allows a form of national political democracy, and it is labelled bourgeois democracy because it is the sort of democracy which was given birth by the development of capitalism and operates in the interests of the capitalist class (the bourgeoisie).

In Europe bourgeois democracy was established by revolutions, led politically by the emerging capitalist class against feudalism and the accompanying rule by monarchy. In other cases bourgeois democracy was transferred by colonial forces (i.e., Australia, New Zealand), or brought into being by the monarchy itself so as to remove barriers to the development of a capitalist economy (Japan).

The emergence of the capitalist system brought about bourgeois democracy by introducing constitutions and parliaments to limit or overthrow the political monopoly maintained by monarchies. Just as monarchical rule was attached to feudal relations of property and production, bourgeois democracy arose from the development of capitalist property relations and capitalist production.

Outside of advanced capitalist countries, in semi-colonial countries, the development of bourgeois democracy is restricted by the interference of imperialist countries which operate against the interests of local democracy and against the accumulation of local capital. This is not to say that local capitalists play a progressive role in semi-colonial countries, but rather that the development of bourgeois democracy in such countries has become impossible after the development of monopoly capitalism / imperialism in the countries of advanced capitalism.

New Zealand is an advanced capitalist country with a comparably entrenched bourgeois democracy. This was established by British colonial forces from the mid-1800s. Capitalist property relations and capitalist production were transplanted into Aotearoa / New Zealand, predominantly by settlers and the British Crown. The political form of this democracy is the Westminster system which is a representative democracy, within which people (at first excluding women and Maori) can vote for Members or Parliament (MPs) who then have the power to make and administer law. This form of government was placed into New Zealand with great dedication by the British Crown, as this institution and its laws were used to further smash up Maori custom and property relations.

Within New Zealand’s representative democracy, the voting procedure from 1853 when the first parliament was elected through to 1993 had been First-Past-the-Post (FPP).

Consequences beyond vote-counts

As is well known to voters who replaced FPP with MMP by referendum in 1992, FPP produced parliaments that were not representative of the proportion of votes attributed to candidates by party and yet parliament was completely dominated by party politics, which were the politics of National and Labour. When National was elected in 1951 it was the last FPP election at which the party whose candidates collectively gained more votes than candidates of another party came to power.

While FPP distorted the majority vote for and between the two major parties, it also ensured that smaller parties, whose candidates throughout the country may have achieved a reasonable percentage collectively, could not gain corresponding representation in parliament and were marginalised. In 1981 for example, Social Credit Party candidates drew over 20% of the vote nationally but were only able to win two electorates and therefore two seats in parliament.

The type of electoral procedure used has wider implications than how the votes count up and distribute MPs. The electoral procedure also impacts on the way parliament is able to pass legislation. Under FPP New Zealand was known as an executive paradise because of the way in which cabinet – comprised solely of one party – was able to dominate policy by keeping its MPs beholden to it through party discipline.

Within the fourth Labour government, the cabinet dominated by Richard Prebble, Roger Douglas and David Lange (though Lange tried to distance himself from its actions), and backed by powerful business interests, was able to enact sweeping neo-liberal changes, sold large parts of the state sector and started the deregulation of the labour market. It did so through undemocratic measures afforded to cabinet; skipping Select Committees, allowing debate on only minor details, keeping proposals in-house to cabinet, and generally isolating the rest of parliament.

Roger Douglas

The shift to a neo-liberal regime was of course based on the requirement of capitalism to restore profitability, and was socially possible because of union-alignment to a traditional bourgeois workers party (Labour) and activist focus on non-economic reforms often to the exclusion of economic concerns. However, the experience of the fourth Labour government shows how a party could completely capture policy under FPP. The Labour Party’s rank-and-file membership declined rapidly as a result of the changes carried out by its cabinet, changes that only a tiny minority of New Zealand’s electors supported.

As well as increasing the ability of electors to vote ideologically (through party votes) and abating the marginalisation of small parties, the introduction of MMP has also enabled a degree of constraint against one-party capture of cabinet (the negative impact of such capture made obvious under the fourth Labour government). Under MMP it is likely that governments can only be formed through coalitions. This usually leads to a multi-party cabinet, meaning that cabinet supremacy is restricted and cabinet secrecy broken down.

Left strategy and alternative vote procedures offered in 2011

Political alternatives of the left are currently being put forward from a position of weakness. Therefore the left needs to argue for the maintenance of a vote procedure that can accommodate both a) drawing upon ideological support for left alternatives through nation-wide party voting, and b) drawing upon support from supporters and progressive voters in local electorates where left alternatives are able to be established on the grounds of genuine working class and community leadership in practice.

If PV is to be introduced parliament will remain the same size and there will be 120 electorates. In each electorate voters will rank the candidates in order of preference. The candidate with over 50% of votes is elected. If there is no such candidate then first preference votes for the last-ranked candidate are recounted with the second ranked candidate as first preference. This is repeated until a candidate holds more than 50% of the vote. All things being equal (i.e. that there is no structural political or social change between now and such an election) this system would be likely to return strength to the two-party system. Minor party candidates with strong electorate constituency support can still be elected, but that is already the case with electorate voting under MMP.

A change from MMP to SM would produce a decline in the share of seats gained through party votes and reduce the proportionality established by MMP. Essentially the number of seats derived from party votes would reduce from 50 down to 30 and increase the number of electorate votes (parliament would still consist of 120 seats). Overall, this procedure would also tend towards restrengthening the two-party system.

STV would have the effect of limiting the ability of electors to cast a vote on ideological grounds. There would be no party vote through which electors could express pure political preference. The number of MPs would stay the same but each would be an electorate MP, and there would be multiple MPs per electorate. While the use of STV would avoid disproportionate correspondence of votes and seats, and would likely result in coalitions and not reinforce a two-party system, the danger is – all things being equal – that it could also influence electors to vote for likely winners and scale down voting (or at least high preference voting) for alternative politics.

The workers’ movement and democracy

At the present time and at first glance independent participation in general elections and preferences of electoral system do not appear to be the burning questions for the far-left in New Zealand. Moreover, the far-left does not uphold bourgeois democracy / representative democracy as a source of change in favour of the working class. The New Zealand parliament is the machinery of the ruling class and, upon any electoral success, the left would be required to treat it as such.

There are two reasons as to why the far-left needs to be clear in its position on the electoral system. Firstly, any section of the far-left embarking on rebuilding a workers party and the radical workers movement needs to take a tactical view. Of the electoral systems available, MMP is the one that offers more scope for future initiation of electoral interventions or campaigns of the far-left.

Second, socialists need to make explicit the connection between socialism and democracy. Openly struggling for democracy is essential for rebuilding fighting unions, for short-term building of far-left organisations, for forging any organisation that will ever be capable of properly challenging capitalist power and establishing workers’ democracy. Championing democracy is also neccessary for rearticulating the ideas of genuine socialism in contrast to Stalinist methods. As well as articulating a view of post-capitalism, the far-left has to support the electoral system which offers the most democratic space.

Dear Parties,
I am an 18 year old female. I would really like to be interested in politics, but I don’t know anything about it! I graduated high school 1 year ago, and for a few years political representitives have making sure I am enrolled to vote for the coming election. However no party has ever come forward to us to explain how everything works. I don’t know anyone my age who has a reasonable knowledge about politics. Probably, in the 2011 general election, most of my classmates will be making uninformed desicions about their choice of vote.

I understand that I can read your views on most of your websites but none of this makes any sense to me- there needs to some kind of 101 handbook ‘for dummies’ about what you are offering.

On Facebook, there is a tab on your profile called “Political Views”. All of my friends have things like “boring”, “what?!” or “none” written as theirs. You should be concerned!

Please explain!

Here’s what Jason Froch, a Workers Party member replied to her:

Many thanks,

I’m actually rather delighted by your e-mail, it’s good to know that I’m not alone.  I too have problems trying to make sense of that parliamentary sideshow that consists of bourgeois politics.

In 2008 we had before us:

v     An economic system which requires continued and rising levels of unemployment

v     State legislation that ensures the continuing fall of real wages derived from work, already down 25% since 1982.

v     A predatory war in Afghanistan where New Zealand soldiers assist in the slaughter of civilians, all to assure US military and economic interests

v     The continuation of an exploitative relationship with environment which will see a number of pacific islands underwater in the near future and cause massive social costs

v     Violence against women who are often unable to leave their abusers because of an inability to support themselves and their children

v     The spread of third-world diseases in our communities because of inadequate housing and an inability to afford a doctor visit

v     Not to mention disproportionate magnification of all the above if you happen to be born Maori, Pacific Islander, or are an immigrant

And yet this reality did not connect with those politicians whose happy smiles asked to be our representatives once again in 2008 (the only difference between them being marginal differences in the rate of tax cuts—43% of which have gone to the top 12% of taxpayers).

Every three years or so we scratch our heads trying to decide whether to vote for “false smile A” or “empty suit B”, realising they actually don’t represent our class interests.  Our generation’s indifference towards politics is really quite an understandable reaction to the fact that none of the options presented are worth supporting.  First time a tragedy. Second time a farce. Ninth time indifference.

Now that you’re 18, if you’re from the working-class you’ll most likely find yourself joining that reserve-pool of the unemployed.  Or maybe if your from the middle-class and your whānau doesn’t depend on you to help to feed, cloth and shelter the younger ones, you’ll heavily in-debt yourself to attend university and pick-up some skills before joining that same reserve-pool of the unemployed.  Either way, once you’re there you’ll wait on a benefit designed to break you of your dignity, to condition you—should you be lucky enough—to take any job that is offered no matter how horrible the conditions.

As socialists, the Workers’ Party sees the inhumanity, exploitation and human suffering necessary under a capitalist mode of production as abhorrent.  As revolutionary socialists, the Workers’ Party sees parliamentary politics and the state as being a method of legitimising and enforcing the capitalist economic system.  Workers’ Party does not engage in parliamentary elections to become administers of that human suffering, like other parties, or even to better the terms of exploitation.  We engage in elections as a means to spread our message.  Our end is to create a new economic and political system that represents the interests of all the working classes, a true democracy operating over an economic system not based on exploitation.

Of course this sort of political action cannot be achieved through votes alone, but rather will require the strength of workers to initiate strike action and the solidarity for them to defend their common interests as they build a revolutionary consciousness.  See you on the streets…

Don Franks

Below the big beaming blue and red billboards it was vacuous capitalist personality politics as usual.

Labour’s candidate claiming to be “working for Mana’ was Labour Party leader Phil Goff’s press secretary.

The best National’s Hekia Parata could produce for a slogan was a bastardisation of her own name – Vote Parata- “Heck yeah!”.

In the end Labour’s Kris Faafoi won the seat with 10,397 votes to  Parata’s 9317.

National came within 1080 votes of snatching a safe Labour seat  while their party is in government. Parata shattered Labour’s previous 6000-plus majority, turning Mana from the ninth safest seat in the country and one of Labour’s strongest bastions to a marginal one for the 2011 elections.

Faafoi had been the favourite to win the seat vacated when Winnie Laban left parliament for a post at Victoria University. In the end, he was only saved by a massive desperate effort from Labour’s electoral party machine. On the final day, even Phil Goff was out frantically knocking doors.

Despite all the hype voter turn out was low, around 50% .

While the big parties cared only for grabbing numbers, late entry candidate Matt McCarten stood out by raising some working class demands, like raising the minimum wage  to $15 an hour and an end to GST.

The Workers Party supported  Matt as a genuine working class fighter with hands-on experience promoting workers’ rights.

Since kick-starting Unite union in 2003 Matt has been a prominent and committed figure campaigning for low paid casualised workers.

It was also a plus having a high profile candidate to the left of Labour because in the Workers Party view, that  helps to highlight how similar National and Labour are. (http://workerspartynz.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/15-matt.jpg>)

Matt McCarten’s campaign team put in long hours of hard work  focusing on three points: increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour; making job creation the goal of economic policy; and replacing GST with a 1 per cent financial transaction tax.

These policies were made into a petition and taken to 12,000 homes.

This large-scale exercise brought campaign staff into discussion of some basic social issues with a mass of employed and unemployed workers. Half of the people door knocked signed the petition.

This encouraging petition support did not, however, translate into votes. While the Unite leader had expected to get “over 5% and hopefully closer to 10%”, in the end his 816 votes amounted to 3.6% of the vote.

In socialist terms, the Unite leader’s election effort had a built in political weakness.

Although standing against them from the left, Matt’s attitude to Labour was basically like that of a caring man to his erring but recoverable sibling.

For instance, his central election statement said, “I’ve been supportive of Labour’s long overdue realisation that the new right agenda implemented by their party and carried on by National has been a disaster for New Zealand. But I have been disappointed at their timidity over what the alternatives could be.”

The day before the vote he wrote, “I hope my message to Labour got through – that they can’t take their supporters for granted and must stand for something that isn’t National-lite.  “If it did,” said Matt, “then taking three weeks being a carpetbagger in Mana was worth it.”

This view of Labour as a party which, with a few hard  kicks in the arse, might be made to serve workers’ best interests was repeated by key campaign officials like Joe Carolan, who insisted:

“Labour are too soft, and are bereft of any tangible policies that make a difference to the working class”.

The Workers Party doesn’t share those views of the Labour Party.

Far from being too soft, Labour has at times been the favourite party of big business and very capable of slashing workers’ rights and living standards as we saw in the 1980s.

Today Labour is a socially liberal capitalist party where middle class professionals outnumber workers 10 to one. While the party was founded in 1916 on a section of the union movement it was never a revolutionary party despite some socialist rhetoric in the early days. In government Labour has never even remotely undermined the rule of capital. In fact Labour governing in the last decade enabled the rich to grow richer far more dramatically than the previous decade under a National government. (See The Truth About Labour http://workersparty.org.nz/resources/the-truth-about-labour/ for  the Rich list figures on wealth in NZ).

When the system is booming Labour will deliver some crumbs to the workers – as will National – and when it goes into its usual bust cycle they – like National – will attempt to shore it up at the expense of workers’ rights and living standards.  Attempting to lobby Labour in a leftward direction, therefore, simply doesn’t work.  All it does is, at best, confuse the workers to whom the message is presumably directed or, at worst, create illusions in Labour – illusions which will lead only to demoralisation further down the track.

Labour has few links to the working class these days, although pockets of pacific Island working class suburbs like Porirua and Mangere have maintained almost blind loyalty to Labour. Most of the working class no longer consistently votes Labour; many workers don’t vote at all , and just as many vote for other parties.

Another weakness of  McCarten’s campaign was lack of internationalism. Matt had initially intended to highlight policy which defended migrant workers’ rights. That policy never made it into the core campaign message. Sticking up for migrant workers may not be an easy vote winner in the short term, but from a socialist point of view its indispensable. A strong movement for workers’ power can only be built on the understanding that we owe more loyalty to our fellow toilers overseas than we have with our own bosses at home.

While Matt McCarten’s Mana campaign was broadly supported by the Workers Party, within the organisation there was debate on how best to engage with it. The majority of members wanted the party to maintain independence as an organisation and saw the risk of simply become foot-soldiers for a social democratic campaign. When some WP members became campaign employees the question of political independence became more complicated. A few argued that the experience of campaigning would in itself be invaluable.

The question of party independence while working on broader campaigns is not a new one. We have grappled with this in the anti-war movement and in trade union work. Inner party struggle is an uncomfortable but  positive thing. While the Mana campaign debate generated some heat it  also produced deeper understanding.

Matt McCarten’s candidacy in Mana was partly an experimental trial run for his aim of a ‘new left party’. Matt’s modest vote suggests that there is no base of support to launch such a party in New Zealand. Even among Unite union’s membership the political project has gained no traction. There is not space in this article to go further into the problems facing left social democracy – that is for a separate article – but it is very clear that as a movement in New Zealand and internationally it is in worse shape than revolutionary socialist movements which are beginning to win mass support.

The March edition of The Spark carried a report of some inspiring class struggles by workers across Europe. Regrettably, that resistance has found very little political expression in the recent elections for the European Parliament. Support for far-right parties has surged, against a backdrop of the lowest ever turnout for a Euro-election, with just 43% bothering to vote.

BRITAIN: Two members of the racist British National Party (BNP) – which restricts its membership to British “Indigenous Caucasians” – were elected to the Parliament. BNP führer Nick Griffin was forced to abandon his media conference outside Parliament in London after being jeered and pelted with eggs by anti-fascist protesters. The right-wing nationalist United Kingdom Independence Party beat the beleaguered ruling Labour Party into third place, capitalising on voter rage at an expenses scandal in the British Parliament.

The largest centre-right grouping in the Euro-Parliament will be transformed by the departure of Britain’s Conservatives, who say they will form a new anti-federalist alliance with other right-wing parties, mostly from eastern Europe.

FRANCE:  The Socialist Party’s vote fell to just 16.6 per cent, a dramatic reversal of their previous Euro-election result of 29 per cent in 2004.

The recently formed New Anti-Capitalist Party of Olivier Besancenot only just fell short of the five percent minimum necessary for representation in the European parliament, polling 4.8 percent.

GERMANY: The Social Democratic Party suffered its worst ever result with just 21% of the vote, a damning verdict by its supporters on its coalition with the conservative Christian Democrats (CDU) led by Angela Merkel.  Although taking first place, the CDU vote still fell compared with the Euro-elections in 2004, losing ground to the more stridently pro-business Free Democratic Party.

ITALY: In a similar tactic to his French conservative counterpart Sarkozy, President Silvio Berlusconi and his conservative Party of Freedom found a winning formula by mixing demagogic promises about protecting workers with anti-immigrant rhetoric. However Berlusconi’s vote of 35% was still well short of the 45% he had predicted.

NETHERLANDS: A populist party which vows to ban the Koran and close the European Parliament, picked up four seats with 17% of the vote, coming second only to the ruling conservative Christian Democrats.

SWEDEN: In a surprise result, The Pirate Party, which aims to legalise internet file-sharing and protect people’s privacy on the net, won one of Sweden’s 18 seats in the European parliament.

IRELAND: Local government elections were run at the same time as the European elections, and they threw up some encouraging results. A groundswell of anger at the Irish state bailing out banks, construction firms and developers, while simultaneously cutting welfare rates and public services had manifested itself at various intervals over the preceding year.

The ruling Fianna Fáil party were the big losers of the election. Support for the party fell to the lowest level since its formation, garnering just 25 per cent of the vote. The Green Party’s decision to enter coalition with the populist Fianna Fáil and its abandonment of a range of core policies sealed its fate: the party was decimated. It lost all of its council seats in Dublin, and is left with no representation on any of the four local authorities.

Meanwhile the small hard left parties made some significant gains. The Socialist Workers Party, in the form of the People Before Profit Alliance, made an electoral breakthrough, winning a total of five council seats. The Socialist Party consolidated its base in Fingal, just north of Dublin City, winning three seats. And Socialist Party leader Joe Higgins won a European Parliament seat for the Dublin constituency, at the expense of the two incumbents from Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil.

With National back in power, albeit as a minority government, what can workers expect? Is this going to be a repeat of the first term of the last National government (1990-1993), the one that produced the “mother of all budgets” (cutting the dole, the DPB and other benefits by around 25%) and the notorious Employment Contracts Act?
According to much of the left, it is going to be just as bad – or even worse! They think this is especially so because of ACT, and often insist on referring to the government as the National-ACT coalition. A number of important points are missed by that analysis, however.

Who is actually in government?

First, at the most basic level, this is not a National-ACT coalition. It is a National minority government in which the links with the Maori Party are stronger than those with ACT. Indeed, John Key and his closest associates seem keener to forge links with the Maori Party than with ACT and its founder-ideologue Sir Roger Douglas (the former minister of finance in the fourth Labour government, which launched the biggest attacks on the working class since the Depression).
Secondly, the National Party today is not now the party of rural reactionaries and upper-crust racists and hasn’t been for a long time, despite many leftists continuing to present it in this way. In terms of social composition, the Nats are a party of urban liberals, like Labour. They understand that in order to be, and remain, a viable party of government they have to relate positively to the changing demographics and social attitudes of New Zealand society. They even set up a diversity project headed by Bill English to attract Maori, Pacific Island and Asian New Zealanders and to develop a political base among those sections of New Zealand society. National now has more Maori MPs than Labour, in fact. (For instance, see http://liberation.typepad.com /liberation/2008/08/national-goes-p.html.)
Thirdly, the new National cabinet reflects the newer face of National. Despite claims in some parts of the left that the National front bench was the same old discredited right-wingers, the likes of Lockwood Smith and Maurice Williamson have been replaced by newer, younger faces like former DPB beneficiary Paula Bennett. As Key said before the election, there is no portfolio for Douglas. The left needs to come to terms with the National Party as it is now, not as it was under Muldoon.

Economic policy

But what about economic policy? Surely, the Nats are the party of union bashing and grinding down the workers?
National is not inherently more hostile to workers’ interests than Labour. Just as with Labour, what the new National Party government does in terms of economic policy will be overwhelmingly conditioned by how much of an economic downturn there is. They’re not going to attack the working class because they have some ideological fixation with making workers poor (they don’t have such a fixation and, in fact, they never really have had), and least of all are they going to attempt some pitbull job on the working class just because Roger Douglas might want them to.
The attacks of the 1984-93 period, carried out just as much by Labour as National, reflected that New Zealand capitalism was up shit creek without a paddle. The capitalists had absolutely no alternative. That’s not the situation at present and it remains to be seen how deeply the woes in the finance and banking sector in other countries will hit New Zealand. Because the New Zealand economy depends on exports, and to some extent easy foreign money, it could be hit quite hard. On the other hand, the decline of the New Zealand dollar (which is a product of these woes) is good news for exporters because it makes New Zealand products cheaper in export markets than those of their rivals.
Unless they’re really in a huge crisis, the capitalists prefer not to make big attacks on the working class – especially when they’re blessed with social stability and a tame-pet union leadership like the CTU brass. Why screw that up unless the economic situation is so totally dire that you have to?
One of the things that a large part of the far left has in common with the market-rules ideologues is that neither group really understands that the market is just a thing and can’t organise the preconditions for its own existence and continuance. The operation of the market depends, for one thing, on social stability, yet the operations of the market undermine social stability by trying to commodify everything and individualise society.
Smart capitalists therefore understand that capital, because it’s merely a thing, requires conscious human planning and organisation to maintain social stability and manage society so that the market itself can operate successfully and deliver maximum profitability to the capitalists. In the First World, the capitalists are prepared to pay for stability too. And, generally, they’d rather pay a bit for it than have a big scrap with the working class. This only changes when there is a really serious economic crisis – that is, a real crisis across the whole of the economy, not just problems in the finance sector.

International situation

The situation of the New Zealand economy depends in no small part on international decisions. At present governments of both “Labour” and “National” types across the First World are tending to use the state to pump money into the economy, institute greater regulation of the finance and banking sectors, and continue to remove barriers to global trade. In the absence of mass working-class struggle, the capitalists and the governments that represent them have quite a lot of manoeuvring room to use such a mix of policies.
On the other hand, all the bailouts funded by governments are going to have to be paid for by the working class at some stage – government spending comes out of the surplus-value produced by workers. Similarly, the real economy, the part of the modern economy where real goods and services are produced, is going to be affected by the debt baggage of the artificial economy, ensuring a general slowdown which will be paid for by workers – for instance, in the form of layoffs. While a low New Zealand dollar facilitates exports, those exports still have to find markets, and so the slowing of other economies is going to have an effect on New Zealand’s export sector.
Within New Zealand, there have also been fresh announcements of redundancies. However, redundancies have been a fairly common feature of the New Zealand economy under Labour for the past nine years. Since the banking and finance sector internationally has been hit, there hasn’t yet been any notable increase in redundancies in New Zealand. This may change, but the most important issue here is that the unions, and workers in general, need a strategy to fight layoffs. For years, we’ve needed a perspective that moved from passively accepting redundancy to actively organising resistance.

Where to for the left?

Meanwhile, chunks of the left engaging in hyperbole about the biggest meltdown since 1929 and scare-mongering about a “National-ACT” junta kind of regime simply gets in the way of the clarity we need right now.
We need an ongoing, clinical assessment of the depth of the problems in the artificial economy and their impact on the real economy if we’re to organise effective opposition to the government around economic issues. Otherwise, the danger is that the left will cry wolf, engage in hyper-activism and end up discredited, burnt out, demoralised and confused – just like much of it did after the 1984-1993 period.

Since the office was first introduced in 1789, the President of the United States has been the leading figurehead in American capitalism, imperialism and exploitation. It is impressive that for the first time in 219 years, in a country that only roughly 40 years ago institutionalised segregation and only roughly 140 years ago still practised slavery, a black face is now at the top. But that does not change what the US presidency represents.

Barack Obama is a very skilled politician. He recognised that the American people hated George W. Bush and were eager to throw him and the Republican Party out at the first opportunity available. As a fresh face to the US political stage, he did not have the baggage of a tired old politician that the public had been aware of for over a decade or more, as in the case of McCain and Clinton. Obama could present himself as a “blank canvas” for voters to paint their own hopes and dreams onto, like many successful populist politicians. He tapped into a public discontent and exploited it for his own advantage. His actual policies are almost inconsequential to his monumental success. That is where the “change” everyone is so hyped up about comes from – from cynical political posturing. It does not actually mean anything.
Due to his populism and “blank canvas” image, a lot of the left are likely to be very soft on Obama in the coming years. Which is odd, as Obama is no actual leftist. For example, he wants to withdraw from Iraq – so he can escalate the war in Afghanistan. While Obama was portrayed as an “anti-war” candidate, the reality is different. Obama opposed the Iraq war only because it went against American imperialist interests; as he said at a rally against the Iraq war in 2002, while he was still an unknown state senator, “I am not opposed to all wars. I’m opposed to dumb wars.”

In many ways Obama will be better for US imperialism than Bush was, as now American imperialism will have a charismatic, likeable face which will make it much easier for America to get away with a lot of their despicable actions. Obama has also stated his commitment to capitalism time and time again, saying in a 60 Minutes interview, “I think our basic principle, that this is a free market system and that that has worked for us, that it creates innovation and risk-taking – I think that’s a principle that we’ve got to hold to as well.” Obama has always been a capitalist and an imperialist politician at heart.

All of Obama’s cabinet and staff choices so far comprise Washington insiders, former Clinton administration officials and war hawks. There is no sign that there will be much of a change in direction for any future appointments. For example, his first choice as his running-mate was Joe Biden, the war hawk senior Senator from Delaware who is also the current chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations. Biden voted for the Iraq war and as recently as 15 November 2007 he expressed his support for the Patriot Act. This Act expanded the powers of the federal government to spy on its own citizens and allows the President to detain anyone he wants as an “enemy combatant”. Biden is also an avowed supporter of Israel.

Obama’s first cabinet appointment was Rahm Emmanuel as his chief of staff. Rahm Emmanuel is an Israeli-American congressman, a notorious Democratic partisan, and, like Biden, a pro-Israel warhawk, so this appointment goes against Obama’s to make politics less divisive. During a pro-Israel rally he claimed Israel was ready for peace and that Palestinians should “turn away from the path of terror”, which is a tad laughable considering all the atrocities Israel has committed against the Palestinians.

Rahm is also a prominent member of the New Democrat Coalition, an organisation within the United States Congress that advocates pro-business policies and economic liberalisation. This is the same group Hillary Clinton is a part of, and she is being appointed Secretary of State. But during the primary election campaign Obama claimed that the most striking difference between himself and Clinton was their foreign policy, as, like Joe Biden, Clinton also voted for the war in Iraq.

And if all this disappointment wasn’t enough for all the peaceniks who pinned their hopes on this candidate as a catalyst for “change” from the Bush administration, it was then announced after much speculation that Robert Gates from the Bush administration will stay as Secretary of Defense under the Obama administration.

As we can see, Obama isn’t going to be very left-wing. Not only has he appointed right-wing war hawk Democrats to important cabinet positions, but his economic advisory board consists of billionaires such as Warren Buffett and free-market advocates such Austan Goolsbee. His choice as head of the government’s National Economic Council is a man by the name of Lawrence Summers, an ardent proponent of globalisation and free trade. This man once advocated (in 1991) that the First World dump all its pollution into the territory of Third World nations. His logic was that “countries ought to export more pollution to developing countries because these countries would incur the lowest cost from the pollution in terms of lost wages of people made ill or killed by the pollution, due to the fact that wages are so low in developing countries”.

Thailand is currently in crisis, with a deformed expression of class struggle occurring between one side that wears yellow shirts and another that wears red. How can we make sense of this situation, and what is the way forward for those of us interested in the interests of the poor and working class? John Moore, formerly a resident in Thailand, and now a Workers Party activist, argues that the Thai working class is a mass force that has yet to roar, but that the small radical element amongst them shouldn’t ‘give up the bullet for the ballot’ to reform Thai society through the Thai capitalist state.

People’s Alliance for Democracy – utterly reactionary

The aims and class interests of the so-called People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) are utterly reactionary. They want to effectively disfranchise a majority of the population. They are quite blatant about this, saying the rural poor are uneducated and therefore unfit to determine who is the government.

They can certainly draw big numbers. But in a city of over 12 million, protests of thousands needs to be put in context. There have also been cases of Bangkok residents being paid to attend PAD rallies. In a city with mass poverty and increasing unemployment it doesn’t take much dosh to draw in 1000s to a protest. The PAD protesters are commonly termed as the yellow shirts for the colour of the tops they wear.

PPP – populist, but not progressive

On the other side are supporters of the Peoples Power Party (PPP), called the red shirts for the colour of tops that wear at counter-protests. The red shirts have actually been able to draw bigger numbers, including a rally of 60 000 pro-government supporters in Bangkok this year. The PPP base is amongst the rural poor, predominantly in the North-East of Thailand known as Isan. However the PPP is no progressive force despite its populist programme and base support. It has a clear anti-working class programme, and is led, and still supported, by a section of the Thai ruling class.

PPP’s mass popularity, and seemingly unbeatable formula, has irked sections of the Thai elite. The current coalition against the PPP party is made up of royalists, the Bangkok ‘middle class’, and millionaire business interests. It is also supported by top military brass.

A ‘deformed’ expression of class struggle / What side is best?

This picture is confusing. The clash between the red shirts and yellow shirts could be seen as a ‘deformed’ expression of class struggle. (See Thai crisis exposes class struggle) The yellow shirts are predominately middle class whereas the red shirts are made up of poor supporters of the PPP. However, both the programmes of the PPP and the PAD are anti-proletarian, pro-capitalist, and both parties are led by representatives of the Thai ruling class. So the conflict can equally be seen as a dispute between the Thai ruling class itself.

What side should proletarian revolutionaries take in Thailand? This question particular interests myself as I lived in Thailand for over two years, and my wife is Thai. I’ve also had contact with the only Marxist group in Thailand, the Workers Democracy Group (WDG) led by Trotskyist influenced academic Giles Ji Ungpakorn. The WDG has now transformed itself into a more populist based group, the Peoples Coalition Party (PCP).

There is no basis for political support for either side in the current dispute. Both sides represent sectors of the ruling class, both have, and aim to, implement anti-working class programmes. And both are fully committed to managing the Thai capitalist system in the interests of various sections of the Thai ruling class.

Although PPP have implemented policies that have especially benefited the rural poor, their opening up of the Thai economy to western corporate interests and their deregulation of certain parts of the economy will, if not already, have a negative impact on the livelihoods of millions of poor farmers and rural workers. The PPP’s policies are an extension of the populist welfare policies of the former Thai Rak Thai government.

What if there is a violent clash between pro-government forces and the PAD? I think it could be argued that there would be a side for the working class to take in the context of such an immediate clash. The right-wing PPP bases its support and power on the maintenance of a form of bourgeois democracy. The PAD clearly wants to dismantle what limited democracy exists in Thailand. Their ascendancy in such a clash would clearly lead to a disfranchisement of the majority of the population.

The small Trotskyist influenced PCP, I believe, has taken the correct stance of giving no form of political support to either side in this dispute. I think they have exaggerated the point in calling the PAD ‘fascist’. The ascendancy of the yellow shirts would not lead to the type of totalitarian societies seen in traditional fascist situation such as Italy, Spain and Germany in the 1930s. The PAD wants to seriously curtail democracy, but I do not think there is any evidence to say they would smash organisations of the working class and the rural poor, as happened in the case of the usurping of power by traditional fascistic forces. However the PAD are clearly reactionary.

Historical Politics

The ongoing crisis in Thailand needs to be seen in the context of the election of the populist Thai Rak Thai (Thais Love Thailand) party in 2001. For the first time in this country’s modern history a political party directly appealed to the sentiments of the mass of the population, overwhelmingly poor farmers, with a populist economic programme. The ‘mass’ protests against Thai Rak Thai (TRT) in 2006, and subsequent protests against the present Peoples Power Party (PPP) led government, are a reaction against the voting power of the poor. The PPP is essentially a reformed TRT, since it was banned in 2007 after a military coup.

With the election of TRT in 2001, Thailand’s poor received a number of benefits. With the 30 baht health care plan, millions of Thais, previously denied adequate health care, could now go to the hospital and come away with medicine. Many villages had roads resurfaced, or surfaced for the first time. The moneyed elite deride former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra for ‘buying’ the poor’s vote, but this is the same way votes were ‘bought’ by Western Social Democratic forces and the new deal US Democratic party in the 1930s and 40s. For much of the population, their lives just got better under TRT.

Ironically former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is a billionaire and one of Thailand’s richest men. A section of the Thai bourgeoisie initially aligned themselves with TRT, which combined ‘Keynesian’ populist policies in the rural areas with anti-working class neoliberal policies. Key elements within the military and the royal family eventually fell out with the previous Thaksin-led government, beginning to see his mass support as a threat to their power influence. Populist policies have included economic grants to villages (used for microcredit loans) and the 30 baht health scheme. Such populist policies were combined with corporatisation and selling off of state assets and an opening up of the Thai economy to imperialist corporate interests. The Thaksin-led government gave strong support for US foreign policy in the hope of gaining a United States-Thailand Free Trade Agreement. The anti-working class nature of the TRT government was highlighted by the mass strike of 200,000 electrical sector workers throughout 2004 against electricity privatisation.

What is the way ahead for the working class and rural poor in Thailand?

What is the way ahead for the working class and rural poor in Thailand? Giles Ji Ungpakorn has made some sound critiques of Maoist views of class struggle in Thailand. The Maoists were once a mass force in Thailand, basing themselves predominantly in the rural North East during the 1970s and 1980s. During this time they carried out an orthodox Maoist ‘people’s war. The Thai Communist Party (CPT) members have given up the bullet for the ballot and aim to reform Thai society through utilisation of the Thai capitalist state.

Many former CPT comrades were co-opted by Thaksin, seeing TRT as representing a section of the ‘progressive’ bourgeoisie. The  former CPT members active in TRT/PPP see the most significant divide in Thailand as one between ‘feudalist and traditional forces’ and ‘progressive forces’ including the new capitalist elite, the working class and rural poor.

Giles has made succinct critiques of this two-stage revolution approach, and rightly points out the all elements of the Thai elite represent different interests of the Thai capitalistic class. Even the royal family has major business interests, and certainly much of its new wealth is based on capitalist accumulation. (See From the city, via the jungle, to defeat: the 6th Oct 1976 bloodbath and the C.P.T.)

The working class in Thailand has shown it can be a powerful force, such as with the above mentioned mass mobilisation of 200,000 workers against electricity privatisation. In the current crisis, the Thai working class has not yet shown itself to be an independent force. Some corrupt state sector union bosses have called for strikes in support of the reactionary PAD, but to my knowledge these calls have not been met with any significant action or support by public-sector workers.

The Thai working class is a mass force that has yet to roar. However, the hope for an escape from this country’s woes lay in a party that can organise and lead this class to taking state power.

Editorial note: this article has been edited since it was orignially posted. There were references to the revolution in Nepal that many in the Workers Party felt were disrespectful.