All great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice… first as tragedy, then as farce.

-Karl Marx, 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte

October 15th has a double significance in this country, as both the day of the 2007 invasion of the Ureweras, and the day the global ‘Occupy’ movement arrived here in 2011. On October 15th 2011 thousands were mobilised across the country; turnout in Auckland was particularly impressive, while the hundreds who showed up in other centres were largely new to ‘the usual suspects’ (such as myself.) Smaller occupations cropped up in New Plymouth, Marton, Invercargill and elsewhere, showing the resonance of this new political language.

Numbers have fluctuated since. Commentary by Socialist Aotearoa accuses the left of ‘vacillating,’ however the reality is that occupiers have vacillated in general; while Occupy Auckland mobilised thousands on its first day, its current battle with attempted eviction involves a relative hard core. We have to learn from this downward trajectory: what happened and why?

Different situation
While it undeniably resonates, Occupy does not drawn in the breadth of support here that it does in the US. This in large part follows from different economic conditions; while this country is relatively sheltered from the global financial crisis, in the US it rapidly destroyed significant chunks of the middle-class. Mass foreclosures provide Occupy Wall Street, and the other US occupations, with a steady stream of radicalised forces. There are concrete forces pulling people into being involved, whereas New Zealand has seen a more moral aspect to many people’s involvement.

Things are not peachy in the land of sleeping hobbits either. While our comparatively limited financialisation, and close relationship with the booming Australian economy, keep our economy stable for now – real wages have fallen 25% in the last 30 years. Inequality is second highest in the OECD. Instead of mass foreclosures, a steady build up of pressure is developing within the housing market, with the rate in the first 6 months of 2011 being 1008 as opposed to 230 mortgagee sales in 2007, a pattern identified in the US before the crash. We’ve seen over five billion dollars of mainly working class savings, frittered away in a silent tragedy affecting hundreds of thousands of people, in the US everyone was affected, in New Zealand it has been the working poor. Our sleep-walk leads either towards an awakening or a cliff, towards socialism or barbarism.

Political character of Occupy
People’s attraction to Occupy stems partly from its “non-political” nature, that is non-parliamentary and non-party political. In 2011 NZ had its lowest turnout since women got the right to vote in the 19th Century, so this rejection of formal politics certainly resonates. The politics of Occupy come through in support for locked out meat workers, for evicted public housing residents in Glen Innes and Pomare, for the homeless – it’s a movement that sides with the working class when it matters.

There are limitations to the (anti)politics of Occupy. Raising existing divisions within “the 99%” is frowned upon. Myths and hierarchies that run throughout society, such as victim-blaming attitudes toward people who bring up sexual abuse, are reproduced. The initial understanding of the 99% concept is for a homogenous unity of the majority that leaves those not straight, white, pakeha, either having to keep quiet for the sake of unity or being consciously or unconsciously pressured to leave.

Idealism makes this harder to address. The notion of “horizontalism,” of networks that go across rather than top-down, in effect mean attempting to wish away concrete power structures. The consensus process (replaced with 90% majority in some places) means that a conscientious majority cannot respond to immediate situations, for example destructive behaviour. Protracted processes of ‘defence’ for destructive behaviour (sometimes concieved in a quasi-legal language) outweigh concerns such as respecting those who’ve been harassed, with a reactionary minority able to filibuster.

In Wellington in the middle of December, after the majority of people had left, the focus changed to concentrating on the issues facing the homeless, who unlike other occupiers have nowhere else to go. The issues faced by those with mental health issues, recent releases from jail or other situations that leave them without shelter are serious and are not dealt with enough. The political collapse of occupation, and the solidarity and goodwill felt at the start, has isolated occupiers, leaving them vulnerable to attacks by the state, seen already in the repeated attacks on Occupy Auckland.

Some insist on the form of commune-style camps over the content of organising communities. After a number of women and queers left over destructive behaviour, one person stated at a General Assembly: “Occupy Wellington is this campsite, and if you leave the campsite you leave Occupy Wellington.” This is very different from saying “we are the 99%.”

Solidarity is fundamental.

What next
Councils and cops are finally coming down hard on the occupations, after appearing for a while to put up with or actively condone the various occupations. It is an important principle to support all progressives under attack. Right now, councils are bypassing the legal process, arresting people and releasing them an hour later with no charge. The key strategy right now seems to be the straight up theft of occupiers tents and personal possessions, in an effort to make their lives as difficult as possible.

However, the state is not the primary risk in the long term; occupations in the US have outlived many evictions; the real risk is that we don’t learn from our mistakes.

Ian Anderson and Joel Cosgrove

“Anti-Stalinism, by itself, is no program for common struggle. It is too broad a term, and it means different things to different people.”

-James P Cannon, American Stalinism and Anti-Stalinism

Recent shifts in our organisation are renewing historical questions. At Workers Power 2011, comrades from the International Socialist Organisation and Socialist Aotearoa noted that our organisation was revising its position on tino rangitaratanga, and advocated we also revise our position (or more accurately come to a position) on “Stalinism.” Over the last year Mike Kay has contributed Discussion Bulletins on the subject, noting continued disorientation in the wake of Stalinism. His latest IDB argues, “In 2012 we must begin the discussion on Stalinism in earnest. We also need to address why it is that comrades have not been forthcoming with substantial written replies to the IDBs tabled so far.”

In this spirit I take up the discussion of Stalinism.

Stalinism(s)

While thoroughly rejecting Stalinism during the counter-revolution itself, Cannon noted in American Stalinism and Anti-Stalinism that it “means different things to different people.” Less than a century since, the definitions of Stalinism (and therefore anti-Stalinism) have multiplied.

In 1991, two “Stalinist” groups took opposite positions on a question that would determine the future of the working-class movement in this country. The Socialist Unity Party (SUP) was a pro-Moscow organisation that dominated the trade union bureaucracy, with Ken Douglas heading the Council of Trade Unions. The Communist Party of New Zealand (CPNZ) had joined China in the Sino-Soviet split, then followed Enver Hoxha, a determined Stalinist. Both groups had real roots in the working-class and trade union movement.

1991 was the year of the Employment Contracts Act, (ECA) the essence of which remains intact to this day. The ECA would cut off union access rights; kill compulsory unionism; further restrict the right to strike; and all but demolish organised labour. This required a substantial fightback. The CPNZ was the leading socialist group in agitating for a General Strike. By contrast, the SUP placed significant pressure on trade union leaders to vote against the move, sometimes against the wishes of their membership.

These two groups had a very different relation to the international state bureaucracy. The SUP formed the local branch of an international bureaucracy that had suppressed uprisings in Hungary 1956, Czechoslovakia and Paris in 1968, and been defined by Mao as “social imperialist.” The CPNZ had followed Mao in his rejection of Soviet social-imperialism, and would later affiliate to the International Socialist Tendency, an explicitly anti-Stalinist organisation. What does it mean to say both groups were Stalinist?

Original generation of Bolsheviks liquidated

Defining Stalinism
Returning to Cannon’s American Stalinism and Anti-Stalinism, he defines Stalinism in relation to the Stalinist bureaucracy:

Stalinism has its social base in the nationalized property of the Soviet Union—the product of the great revolution. It is not the continuator and legitimate heir of Bolshevism, but its antithesis. The Stalinists, a privileged bureaucracy which fastened itself on the Soviet state in a period of its degeneration and decline, had to liquidate in blood virtually the whole generation of the original Bolsheviks, before they could consolidate their power.

This is certainly compelling, and if anyone in our organisation wishes to defend the Stalinist counter-revolution, particularly its repression of communists, the floor is open. Otherwise, we must ask what implications Stalinism has for the ongoing movement. Cannon notes how Stalinism is widely conflated with communism:

Most anti-Stalinists, especially the professionals, identify Stalinism with communism. This only serves to embellish Stalinism in the eyes of the radical workers, to reinforce their illusions, and to strengthen the position of Stalinism in their midst.

We now see the flipside of this, how the discrediting of Stalinism has discredited communism for many workers. This partially confirms Mike Kay’s argument that the left suffers from post-Stalinist disorientation. However it needs to be taken further.

In a brief article entitled Three-Phase Stalinism, Marxist intellectual Ernest Mandel partially accepts “[the] position that a stalinist or neo-stalinist party is one which subordinates the interests of revolution (i.e. of the working class) in its country, to those of any state bureaucracy.” However he notes that not all Stalinists have a state bureaucracy to defend; for example pre-revolution Hoxha, Mao or Ho Chi Minh. Mandel treats Stalinism dynamically, as something movements depart from and uphold aspects of, not something fixed and absolute.

Some socialists use this organisation’s lack of affiliation with any one tendency to discredit us as ‘soft on Stalinism,’ an accusation also levelled at Mandel. Comrades continue to draw inspiration from Mao’s work, particularly Combat Liberalism and his work on the mass-line. It would be opportunism to simply abandon Mao for the sake of easier agitation; we must debate the role of pro-Mao politics in the movement, and the degree to which they represent a continuation of “Stalinism.”

Mao and the problem of state power

The Chinese revolution was in part a departure from Stalinism as practiced in the Soviet Union. Mao assessed Stalin and his period as “70% good, 30% bad.”  Mao’s mobilisation of the peasantry as a revolutionary class departed significantly from the Soviet strategy. My point here is not to advocate for Mao’s position on the peasantry, especially as we have no peasants in this country – rather to note the specific aspects of the Chinese revolution and the limitations of the term “Stalinism.”

Mobo Gao’s The Battle For China’s Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution teases out the class contradictions within Chinese society, and the way they affect memories of the revolution. Gao was a peasant during this period, and as an academic tirelessly campaigns against caricatures of the revolution by the Chinese intelligentsia.

Mass participation

One of the primary differences between the Stalinist Soviet Union and the Mao era in China is that, unlike Stalin who employed an efficient and iron state machine to crack down on political opposition, Mao… mobilised the masses and let them consume the truth and belief values of class struggle in practice.

It’s important to understand that the Cultural Revolution mobilised the masses against a layer of Stalinist bureaucracy. This ‘revolution within the revolution’ was a major departure, in fact a plain reversal, of Stalin’s approach. Contrary to the common depiction that revolutionaries were forbidden to read anything but the Little Red Book, publications, cinema and cultural clubs proliferated during this period – along with the circulation of previously prohibited material. Some revolutionaries even departed from Mao, considering his works insufficient (Gao.)

This upsurge in struggle, connected to a rejection of Soviet social-imperialism, helped galvanise the New Left throughout the West. Mao remains a popular figure in Third World struggles, including struggles against the party bureaucracy in China.

Pro-Mao thinkers generally recognise that the Cultural Revolution ultimately failed to seize control of China’s direction, with right-wing bureaucrats taking control of the party after 1976. In the ensuing years they would restructure the economy as a sweatshop for the world, and massacre radicals in Tiananmen Square. This brings us more fully to the question of bureaucracy, and of ‘socialism in one country.’

I would argue no tendency has an absolutely correct answer to the problem of bureaucracy, that we’re in the very early days of that debate. In his article A Theory Which Has Not Withstood The Test of Facts, Mandel challenges the SWP on this point:

Let us suppose that one day [the SWP] succeed in leading the British working class to a siezure of power. What type of society would emerge from this victorious revolution? A socialist society? Have the SWP comrades been suddenly converted to the reactionary utopia of socialism in one country? A state capitalist society because of the “the pressure of competition from the world market”? Workers’ power would scarcely be in a position to counter this pressure in Great Britain alone. Would their efforts have then been in vain? A socialist society by virtue of the fact that the British revolution “would immediately spread to the rest of the world”? But if that does not happen, or at least not for some time, wouldn’t Britain then be a transitional society between capitalism and socialism which all advanced workers and communists/socialists would unite in an effort to protect from the dangers of bureaucratisation, even if they couldn’t elimate them entirely? What is the point of rejecting today the very concept which one would be forced to apply tomorrow?

It would be idealist hubris for any group to claim the answers to Mandel’s questions, the problem of how a revolutionary administration functions in isolation. Our organisation formed from a merger of pro-Trotsky and pro-Mao elements, who figured that these differences shouldn’t prevent revolutionary unity. This had the affect of obscuring historical questions, particularly the continued impact of Stalinism. In functioning as the “memory of the class,” we must study and debate these historical problems, before we consider aligning ourselves with any one tendency.

Ian Anderson
09 Jan 2012

Sources
Cannon, James P (1947) American Stalinism and Anti-Stalinism
Gao, Mobo (2008) The Battle For China’s Past: Mao and the Cultural Revolution
Mandel, Ernest (1989) Three-Phase Stalinism
Mandel, Ernest (1990) A Theory Which Has Not Withstood The Test of Facts, taken from Resistance pamphlet State Capitalism: A Marxist Critique of a False Theory

Only he [sic] who can keep his heart strong and his will as sharp as a sword when the general disillusionment is at its worst can be regarded as a fighter for the working class or called a revolutionary.

Gramsci, Avanti, Piedmont edition, 24 September 1920

 At the last Retreat, I raised the concept of the fighting (or “combat”) propaganda group as an appropriate model for the WP in current conditions. Whilst the idea seemed to meet with general approval, I haven’t had the chance to expand on it until now.

The WP now, and for the foreseeable future, needs to be a “fighting propaganda group”: an organisation whose chief concern is propaganda, but which conducts its propaganda while always immersing itself in and responding to the class struggle, and while always seizing every real opening for genuine agitation.

Plekhanov defined propaganda as conveying many ideas to a single person or to a few people, whereas agitation conveys only one or a few ideas to a whole mass of people. Since history is made by the mass, agitation is the aim of propaganda. Propaganda is directed towards the vanguard; agitation towards the masses.

Whilst the Bolsheviks remain our great inspiration as the leaders and organisers of the Russian Revolution, the experience of the US communist movement is also of great relevance to us. Rather than organising under conditions of Tsarist illegality with fledgling industrialisation, the US militants confronted bourgeois democracy with a massive proletariat. James P. Cannon wrote a great deal that is of value to the challenges of organising a fighting propaganda group. That is the starting point of this bulletin.

Cannon’s Opposition

Cannon describes how, as a delegate to the Sixth Congress of the Comintern in Moscow in 1928, he obtained a copy of Trotsky’s document “The Draft Programme of the Communist International: A Criticism of Fundamentals.” He and a fellow delegate, Maurice Spector from Canada, smuggled the document out to North America and began the struggle against Stalinism in the Communist movement there. Cannon had come to realise how “devotion to the Comintern, which had originally been one of the greatest merits of the pioneer communists, was being turned into a sickness which called for a radical cure.”

Cannon says there are two determinants of the fate of a young group: “The first is the adoption of a correct political programme. But that alone does not guarantee victory. The second is that the group decide correctly what shall be the nature of its activities, and what tasks it shall set itself, given the size and capacity of the group, the period of the development of the class struggle, the relation of forces in the political movement, and so on.”

Cannon conceived of a revolutionary group as representing “a dialectical unity of opposites. In one sense it is, in effect, the fusion of the rebel instincts of individuals with the intellectual recognition that their rebellion can be effective only when they are combined and united into a single striking force which only a disciplined organisation can supply.”

When the class struggle revived by the end of 1933, the nascent Trotskyist group adopted the slogan “Turn from a propaganda circle to mass work.” However, the decision “met determined resistance from comrades who had adapted themselves to isolation and grown comfortable in it.”

There were sharp disagreements within the Trotskyists over their fusion with the increasingly radical American Workers Party. The opposition insisted on the principle of the unconditional independence of the revolutionary party. Cannon’s reply was: “All that is correct… but there is just one screw loose in your argument. We are not yet a party. We are only a propaganda group. Our problem is to become a party. Our problem, as Trotsky pout it, is to get some flesh on our bones.”

Furthermore, Cannon argues, “The revolutionary labour movement doesn’t develop along a  straight line or a smooth path. It grows through a continuous process of internal struggle. Both splits and unifications are methods of developing the revolutionary party. Each, under given circumstances can be either progressive or reactionary in its consequences.”

When joining the broader movement, Cannon said: “We enter the Socialist Party as we are, with our ideas.”

“Our first prescription for our people was: Penetrate the organisation, become integrated into the party, plunge into practical work and thus establish a certain moral authority with the rank and file of the party; establish friendly personal relations, especially with those elements of the party who are activists and therefore potentially of some use. Our plan was to let the political issues develop normally, as we were sure they would.”

Undoubtably the WP needs to restructure its organisation. However the task of reviewing our political lines is the prerequisite to this – “The organisational question is important, but the political line is decisive… Organisation questions are important only insofar as they serve a political line, a political aim.”

The African American Question
“The early socialist movement, out of which the Communist Party was formed, never recognised any need for a special program on the Negro question. It was considered purely and simply as an economic problem, part of the struggle between the workers and the capitalists; nothing could be done about the special problems of discrimination and inequality this side of socialism.”

But following the October Revolution, the Comintern began to exert serious pressure on American socialists to “demand that they shake off their own unspoken prejudices, pay attention to the special problems and grievances of the American Negroes, go to work among them, and champion their cause in the white community.”

The Comintern also pushed for the slogan of “self-determination” in the thirties, although Cannon considered that the slogan “found little or no acceptance in the Negro community; after the collapse of the separatist movement led by Garvey, their trend was mainly toward integration, with equal rights. In practice the CP jumped over this contradiction. When the party adopted the slogan of ‘self-determination,’ it did not drop its aggressive agitation for Negro equality and Negro rights on every front.”

 Whither the WP?
The history of US Trotskyism is rich in lessons for a small combat propaganda group such as the WP today. To take one stellar example, the leadership that the movement gave to the Minneapolis General Strike of 1934, remains an inspirational model for revolutionary socialists to this day. However there are also major differences in the situation in New Zealand today compared to Cannon’s “heroic” period: notably, vastly lower levels of class struggle, and the absence of a major Stalinist party. We should also bear in mind that Cannon’s group eventually degenerated into a sect that took on Stalinoid politics that it once struggled against so vehemently.

Establishing the balance between propaganda and agitation is an on-going process, guided by the logic of the class struggle. The group must be flexible and responsive enough to engage with (and initiate) new struggles. Equally, it must continually assess the effectiveness of each intervention, drawing up a balance sheet to determine whether it merits the expenditure of our meagre resources. Our job is not to be “good citizens of the left”, people who religiously turn up to every demonstration and leftist meeting going. We select our activity on the basis of what is irreplaceable about the WP.

 A group like Redline, as a pure propaganda group is incapable of meaningful growth, because of their on-principle abstention from activism. (Although they have managed to act as a “sinkhole”, dragging one or two of our demoralised comrades down into passivity.) Even their ability to produce propaganda and analysis is limited by their disconnect from real struggles, which ensures they cannot do meaningful “reconnoissance” work in new formations such as Mana or the Occupy Movement.

 Socialist Aotearoa, on the other hand, has a tendency to focus on agitation at the expense of propaganda, meaning that it lurches from one frenetic activity to the next, without assimilating the lessons in a coherent and continually developing world view to guide future struggles; they fail to function as the “memory of the class.” Nevertheless, the potential in the coming period for joint work with the likes of SA is far greater than it is with Redline.

 On specific political questions, in previous IDBs I’ve argued that we should pay greater attention to the questions of Māori oppression and Stalinism.

 A common left criticism of the Israeli “tent city” protest movement was that it was very vocal about the level of rents for apartments and the price of cottage cheese, but very quiet about the oppression of the Palestinians. However, the WP has until recently been muted in its criticism of the special oppression experienced by Māori in Aotearoa. We are currently in the process of rectifying this major failing.

Stalinism is largely a historical question, but it casts a long dark shadow over the Socialist outlook in the 21st Century. Even if the bureaucratic states have not endured, the modes of thinking that they gave rise to are still with us. In 2012 we must begin the discussion on Stalinism in earnest. We also need to address why it is that comrades have not been forthcoming with substantial written replies to the IDBs tabled so far.

The motto that Cannon used to quote was: “do what is necessary, not what is possible.” Retooling the WP as a fighting propaganda group for New Zealand conditions is the task we must set ourselves.

Mike Kay
01 January 2012

Sources
Cannon, J.P. (1972) The History of American Trotskyism Pathfinder
Cannon, J.P. (1962) The First Ten Years of American Communism Pathfinder

CEO Graeme Harrison (left)

Employer confidence in current environment
The lockout and the aggressive ultimatum-ist way in which it was carried out has given a clear indication of employer confidence within the current industrial relations and political environment. Speaking on National’s industrial relations policy ahead of its release for the 2011 election John Key said frankly and publicly, “The unions won’t like it” thereby announcing that unions will have to face more attacks as a follow up to National’s first-term attacks such as probabationary employment, sick leave changes, union access changes, and changes to reinstatement possibilities after unjustifiable dismissal is proven.

However, it is not just the government which has lead employers to this relatively secure position from which they can attack. Strategies used by trade unions over the last two decades have led to a weakening of union combatancy. Primarily this has occurred through the adoption of partnership and productivity strategies agreed between unions and employers. Whilst such strategies may – at certain periods – lead to some economistic gains, what they also do is reduce the organisational literacy of the movement.

The CTU has been central to promoting the partnership and productivity strategy in the 1990s and 2000s, however it did play a reasonable role in this dispute, particularly in the area of fundraising within which it helped to co-ordinate large amounts of donated money collected through unions, worksite collections, street collections, and so forth. An overall outcome of the dispute has been that the employers have seen that the union movement will pull together against particularly aggressive employers. This pulling-together also had an international character, with Unite in the UK making donations to the dispute and putting pressure on British retailers of ANZCO meat.

Freedom to take industrial action
While our members participated in picketing of McDonald’s stores (McDonald’s is a major purchaser of ANZCO meat), and in a few cases helped with organising such pickets, it must be said that this was not the type of activity which could bring a convincing victory for the CMP workers. The CMP plant was not within the McDonalds supply chain and therefore the pickets largely had a symbolic role to raise awareness about the dispute.

Combined industrial action is what will be needed in future struggles to support workers against employer offensives like this one. Other meat workers from around the Manawatu were consistently present, in a tightly organised way, at the CMP picket. It is this sort of solidarity which the workers movement needs to translate into solidarity industrial actions against connected companies in such disputes. The Labour Party, back in 2000, legislated for harsher sanctions against workers who engage in sympathy actions. Solidarity striking must be put back on the agenda in New Zealand’s unions.

Nada Tawfeek is an Egyptian born activist currently residing in New Zealand. She wrote this first-hand account for

As the plane I was on approached Cairo, and I could finally see the pyramids after a good 24 hours of flying from New Zealand, I couldn’t help but wonder how different Egypt would be; whether it would already have changed or not. A part of me expected to step out of the plane to a brand new post revolution Egypt but the other part of me thought it would find the familiar hectic Egypt. Not long after leaving the airport I discovered that both my expectations were real. Although everything in Egypt looks the same as before the January revolution, the atmosphere is strangely different. Every radio station plays songs about the revolution and building a better Egypt, every Egyptian TV presenter now has a show about politics, the average Egyptian who most likely had no interest in politics a year ago could now talk about the different parties at length, and the closer the elections day got the more extreme this would seem.

The night before the Election Day was one of the most exciting days for many Egyptians since the revolution. Everywhere I went I heard young people talk about how they were incredibly proud that their generation got to witness a day like this, and older people talk about how this was the first time they had ever voted in their whole life. This day for many Egyptians was a challenge. Finally people felt that their voices were going to be listened to and that their vote would actually count, and people weren’t going to let this opportunity pass no matter how anxious they were. The fact that this was the first time most people were going to vote made the new experience one they were slightly scared of because no one knew what to expect. People were afraid that the old government and its supporters might have a plan in place, but the excitement overcame the fear.

The elections became the center of conversation, complaining about how far away the school you were going to vote in became a popular conversation starter before the election, and afterward it was replaced by how long you stayed in the queue. Some of the people I spoke to stayed for over 4 hours in line waiting to vote- but none of them were complaining, in fact everyone seemed to really enjoy the day. All in all the day was a success, the army were incredibly helpful at making sure everyone was safe and comfortable, the turn up was huge (60% turn up) and to top it all of the weather was fantastic. The votes were out the day after, the majority being for the Islamic parties, which most people felt was fair.

Solidarity protest in Christchurch

In the days following the elections the mood started to change. A sudden wave of havoc hit Egypt again. Some people started protesting against the fact that the army were still in control and called for a faster shift of power, but this time the protests were a lot different to the ones that happened in Tahrir Square. A number of people started burning the Egyptian institute; which is an extremely historically valuable library full of old books and maps that represent Egyptian history. Many people were confused at how anyone could try to destroy such a building and why they would. People started to question whether this was a plot by the old regime to create havoc or weather the army was behind this, many conspiracy theories were spoken about. The institutes’ director, Mohammad-Alsharnoubi was seen crying on TV and everyone was generally saddened by the loss of such an important building. The main question asked in all media channels was; “who are these people?” There was no real answer but people calling in on political shows seemed to want the army to intervene and ensure everyone ruining public buildings got arrested.

The army did intervene- violently. Videos of soldiers beating individuals were on every news channel and rapidly spread on the Internet. Everyone was extremely confused, no one knew whether the violent people caught on camera were actually the army or not, rumors spread that these were people dressed as soldiers rather than soldiers themselves. Egypt, if you watched the news, looked like it was on fire, but many other incidents like this had happened during the year and people knew that eventually everything would settle. After a while everyone calmed down and political parties agreed that everyone should keep safe and stay at home until the elections were over and the army could finally pass the power on to the elected government.

The blood and pain of anyone who suffered for the revolution would never be forgotten; people still keep the families of those hurt since January in their prayers. After the Egyptian institute incident things seemed to calm down. New years marked a new start for Egypt, Tahrir square was full of people again but this time to celebrate. Singers, actors, sheikhs and priests all gathered to celebrate and pray for a new and safe year while the crowds cheered for them and for Egypt. Ever since then things have been considerably stable and personally I’m pretty optimistic at what the future holds for Egypt.

“Of course, even among the workers who had at one time risen to the first ranks, there are not a few tired and disillusioned ones. They will remain, at least for the next period as bystanders. When a program or an organisation wears out, the generation which carried it on its shoulders wears out with it. The movement is revitalised by the youth who are free of responsibility for the past.”

-Trotsky, The Transitional Program

The resignation of four senior WP comrades on the eve of our January 2011 Retreat probably came as a shock to most of the Party. Those comrades announced that they would abandon any claim to the Party in favour of setting up a theoretical and international solidarity focused blog. Ian Anderson’s discussion bulletin “On the Party Question” did a good job of analysing their collective statement of resignation. In this bulletin, I intend to further probe the reasons behind the split.

Jared Phillips’ initial take on the split was that the senior comrades’ stated reason for leaving the WP – the objective conditions – was an excuse, and in reality they were just demoralised. Maybe so, but this still does not get us to the root of the problem. Everyone gets demoralised from time to time, especially when the struggle is at a such a low ebb. The point of having an organisation with a programme is that such a collective can sustain us through the Dog Days. It must in the end come down to a political deficiency.

Recently I asked a British comrade if there was any precedent for this event, since every split that I was aware of involved factions fiercely vying for the membership, tradition and apparatus of the party. My comrade suggested the United Socialist Party (VSP) formed in West Germany in 1986 as a historical parallel. The group was the product of a merger of two groups: the Mandelite International Marxist Group, and the Communist Party of Germany/Marxist-Leninist, an originally pro-Mao party that was later supportive of the Albanian leader Enver Hoxha. The VSP fielded a slate of candidates for the 1987 federal elections, but the party failed to win any seats in the Bundestag and consequently lost its electoral recognition. Eventually, the Mandelite leadership gave up and walked away from the party. The unwillingness to confront the question of Stalinism ultimately led to the dissolution of the VSP.

Could a similar dynamic have driven the split in the WP? Of the four comrades who left, only Don could have ever been described as a “hardcore” Stalinist – and that would only have been accurate more than 20 years ago, since when he has done a great deal of reassessment. Daphna and Mark came out of the original Workers Party, which – while it maintained a critical distance – if you read Ray Nunes’ writing, remained very much in the tradition of Stalinism (and its Chinese variant, Maoism.) Phil was an activist with Sinn Fein, which had a long association with Stalinism; e.g. in the 1960s, the Stalinists took over the leadership of the IRA.

None of which should be read as characterising these comrades as crude Stalinists. They are all thinking, non-dogmatic, humane people. However, the politics that one picks up in one’s youth has a profound effect on one’s long-term outlook. If the Stalinist regimes are seen as “post capitalist” in some way or other, then the collapse of the Eastern Block in 1989-91 will end up seeming like a historical defeat. The hardcore Stalinists very quickly “biodegraded” into Social Democracy or passivity. The more critical and nuanced people survived as activists for longer – in these comrades’ case, 20 years.

The way in which Stalinism distorted the outlook of socialists was profoundly disorientating. Or, as a wise old Sri Lankan ex-Stalinist once put it to me: “We used to think that our lodestar was the morning star; when, in fact, it was the evening star.”

The founding statement of the Revolutionary Workers League (which became the core of the present Workers Party) stated:

Differences continue to exist over historical questions such as the degeneration of the Soviet Union and the Stalin/Trotsky debate and some aspects of the Chinese revolution. It was agreed that these are not sufficient to prevent principled revolutionary unity and can be discussed at leisure in the future by members of the RWL, including publicly in the organisations press.

[June 2004]

As it turned out, those debates were endlessly deferred as “historical questions.” But some baggage cannot simply be jettisoned. The collapse of the Eastern Bloc and the neo-liberalisation of China had allowed for a convergence of outlooks between “pro-Trotsky” and “pro-Mao” groups, which resulted in the WP. Stalinism was treated as a “black box”, whose input was the healthy, democratic Bolshevik revolution, but whose final output were sclerotic, bureaucratic police states. Such an approach to the history of our movement has proven to be inadequate. We need to settle accounts with the twentieth century before we can move ahead. We need to open up the black box of Stalinism.

Mike Kay
18 May 2011

An initiative of Occupy Christchurch

10 am: Occupy Movement and Local Issues

How can we develop the Occupy Movement to be an effective political and social force in Christchurch and Canterbury?

11 am: Situationism & post situationism

The Situationist International, having been cited as an inspiration for  OWS, deserve a second look. While aspects of the SIs’ pre-68 analysis and even modified lessons from the May-June ’68 “evenements” themselves have been seamlessly integrated into OWSs’ processes, as the general assembly, strictly mandated “working group” sub committees and so on, using information readily available on the web, I think there are lessons in the underreported years ’69 to 2010 that haven’t been looked at yet.

12 pm: Cooking with Bartman

A cooking lesson from one of Occupy Corners resident chefs

1 pm: Break for lunch.

2 pm: Facilitating Consensus.

A workshop to develop skills and understanding of the role of facilitation in consensus based groups. Discussion will cover decision-making tools, active listening skills, hierarchy, participation, and working together. Facilitator – Joanna Wildish.

3 pm: Feminism

The issue of the oppression of women in our society is one that every social movement should be engaging with. This workshop will be a space for discussion of feminist issues.

4 pm: Mental Health

With mental illness effecting one in five people, mental health is a topic we need to engage with. Discussions on the relationship between capitalism, activism and mental health, and sharing of information to challenge stigma and discrimination onsite will be the basis of this workshop.

5 pm: The Mechanics of Capitalism

How does capitalism work? Topics covered will be the class nature of society, exploitation, hegemony and more.

“The Occupy movement has joined thousands of other resistance movements all over the world in which the poorest of people are standing up and stopping the richest corporations in their tracks. Few of us dreamed that we would see you, the people of the United States on our side, trying to do this in the heart of Empire. I don’t know how to communicate the enormity of what this means.”

The show of solidarity with activists in the developing and under developed world could be why socialists and labour activists in Nigeria decided to adopt the name ‘Occupy Nigeria’ for the protests they began in January this year.

Background

There are many reasons for Nigerians to protest. Despite being one of the worlds biggest oil exporters (the largest in Africa) much of the population lives on less than US$2 a day. Corruption is rife in the government, infrastructure is badly maintained and food prices are on the rise. Despite all this, mass protests were not expected by many commentators. “even though Nigeria is just a few hours flight from Egypt or Libya, no one believed for a moment that the winds of change would reach Africa’s most populous nation.” wrote Michael Bociurkiw, a Canadian journalists who was in Nigeria during the Arab Spring.

That all changed when the Nigerian government announced on January 1^st that it was ending a fuel subsidy resulting in a doubling of fuel and transport prices. The result of this was that many Nigerians could not afford to get to work, or power the generators that are relied on because of a blackout prone electricity system, The ending of subsidized fuel was the spark that set things aflame .

Protests and general strike

Following the announcement protesters shut down petrol stations and blockaded highways. Nigerias union movement called for an indefinite general strike on January 9^th. Chris Uyot of the Nigeria Labour Congress told the BBC “We have the total backing of all Nigerian workers on this strike and mass protest”. Thousands gathered daily in Gani Fawehinmi Park in Lagos. The gathering in the park featured speeches by labour leaders and civil society activists, as well as, artists’ performances.

After a week the general strike achieved a partial victory, with president President Goodluck Jonathan announcing a cut in fuel prices, although it fell short of the previous subsidy.

The role of imperialism

The reason behind the ending of fuel subsidies was repaying public debt. Christine Lagarde, head of the International Monetary Fund, visited Nigeria in December and around the same time the World Bank sent its executive director Nguzi Okonjko-Iwela to take over as the country’s  finance minister. She was also made co-ordinating minister of the economy, a portfolio created especially for her.

Nigeria has borrowed vast amounts of money to fund the infrastructure required to obtain and export its oil reserves, yet it sees very little of the wealth the stems from the oil industry. Much of the media converge has pointed out the cost the general strike has had to the economy- estimates range in the billions- but rarely is it noted that the average Nigerian hasn’t missed out on any of this money, instead the ones missing out are Shell, Chevron, Agip and Total.

Further reading: Occupy Nigeria Takes On Nigeria’s Occupiers

“As a country we should be doing our utmost to back our wharfies. Despite the efforts of National and the country’s media to make this dispute about money, this is all about having reliable and stable employment. The workers want to know that they have a set number of hours per week. If it was about the money why would they only want to settle for a 2.5% pay rise when they are being offered 10%? What I don’t understand is why the workers are being held responsible for risks to the business. Tony Gibson will get his huge salary each week no matter what and the Council wants a 12% return on capital no matter what. It is the wharfies who are expected to pay the price each week if business is down. Under any other business regime, the owner is the one who takes the risk, not the workers!

“As for politicians saying that we should not get involved, what a load of crap. This dispute became political when Rodney Hide set up the appointments of the Board of Directors for the port…

“In 1951 there was a watershed strike involving wharfies. Today we are faced with another defining moment regarding employment rights in this country. Rest assured that if the wharfies lose then this right wing Government will see it as an endorsement to go ahead with the casualisation of hours and it will be another blow to the union movement, a movement that has for so long protected blue collar workers.”

At the end of 2011, an advertisement for Libra tampons was pulled from air after members from the queer community called out the company for its transphobia. Many argued that the company was sending a strong message to those who did not identify as the gender they were assigned at birth, that they were not as ‘authentic’ as their biological counterparts.

The issue was framed as being problematic for only a small amount of ‘oversensitive’ members of the trans community but the advertisement can be linked back to the way that negative images work to oppress many on the gender and sexuality spectrum.

Featured on Australian and NZ television, as well as the Libra website and Youtube, the advertisement featured two women applying their make-up in a bathroom at a club. One appears to be a cis-woman[1] and the other appears to be a drag queen. The two embark on a competition to see who the ‘real woman’ is by both putting on mascara, lipgloss and adjusting their breasts. The contest is ‘won’ when the cis-woman pulls out her Libra tampon causing the drag queen to storm off defeated, due to her apparent biological deficiency – the fact that she cannot menstruate like her cis counterpart.

Comments flowed in on the Libra Facebook page and various news, blog and social networking sites accusing Libra of being, at best ignorant, at worst, blatantly transphobic and misogynist. Those who spoke out were labelled as being ‘too sensitive’ and disregarded the issue as ‘political correctness gone wild.’ The main discourse being used, or ways of talking about the advertisement were framed around the idea of ‘personal offence.’ Some gender variant people made the argument that they were not offended, which implied that the whole issue was moot. The drag queen appearing in the advertisement made the public announcement that she saw no need to apologise and saw the problem as coming from a ‘small portion of the trans community’ who have ‘chosen to view the ad as a personal attack.’

Aside from the fact that most gender variant people do not ‘choose’ to feel attacked by advertisements that use their often difficult lives as the butt of a joke by a multimillion dollar corporation, the entire framing of the discussion should be readjusted. Advertisements such as this one should be seen as having an oppressive effect, rather than an offensive one.

Pyjama pants with Ugg boots: offensive?

Labelling a comment, slur or stereotype as offensive, lowers the problem to that of the individual rather than identifying it as a structural problem. Someone could be offended by loud music or bright coloured clothing. An old co-worker of mine felt personally offended every time she saw someone wearing pyjama pants tucked into Ugg boots to a shopping mall. At the same time, someone can be offended by a woman who strongly speaks out in a male-dominated environment, or a queer couple holding hands down the street. A corporation could be offended when a marginalised community protests against their transphobic advertisement – a CEO could feel personally attacked in much the same way as those being degraded or insulted by their media campaign.

The point here, is that while offence is an important component in this debate, it cannot be the only way in which we describe and discuss how media and oppression works. As one blogger puts it: “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can mobilize an entire society in violent hate against me.” Depicting a gender variant person as being ‘less woman’ than a cisgendered woman due to the fact she does not menstruate is oppressive. Reinforcing a gender binary that assumes and expects that you fit into one gender category or the other is oppressive. Profiting off the fear of someone not being able to fit into one of these gender categories is oppressive. These are not personal attacks on individual members of the trans community; they are the product of an oppressive system.

Issues of oppression need to be understood at a material basis – that is, not just social phenomena that happen to random individuals, which only make sense through a lens of personal experience. Transgender people are the subjects of discrimination when it comes to basic rights such as employment, housing and medical care, as well as being threatened by verbal and physical harassment in their daily lives. This oppression is at its very core, structural as it is reproduced within institutions such as workplaces, hospitals, schools and governmental agencies. While, these oppressive forces can be clearly felt on a personal basis, the way of articulating the problem and arming against its destructive effects must be done on a wider level that takes our economic and social system into account.

Capitalism is often thought of as just an economic system but it should also be understood as a social relation. How we relate to each other as individuals, groups and identities is shaped by capitalist logic. These social relations, such as the gender binary, are reproduced through the capitalist media.

While gains have most certainly been made, trans people are often stigmatised, insulted and ridiculed within the mainstream media. The Libra advertisement is just another message that reinforces the oppressive idea that gender variant people are second class citizens. If you ask any transgender person, they will feel the very real effects of this at some point in their lives, if not on a daily basis. Furthermore, it cannot be forgotten that a company is profiting off these very messages because of an advertising industry that uses fear and division as a tool to sell products.

Many members of the queer community failed to recognise the oppressive nature of the message the advertisement sent. If we are going to combat queer oppression that has negative effects on both same-sex attracted people and the gender variant population, there needs to be a recognition that an attack on the trans community is an attack on us all. We need to shift away from the mode of thinking that blames the individual for taking a ‘personal offence’ at an oppressive act.

An advertisement may seem small, but it is one building block of many that have over history, built a mighty wall of structural oppression. Unfortunately that one brick isn’t going to cause the whole wall to crumble, but if we can together get a foothold, and find the right tools to start chiselling away at those ruptures, then maybe we can tear it down and build a world in which no-one is treated as second class.