Class Struggle No 97 October-November 20111

Class Struggle No 97 October-November 20112

Aotearoa - End of Democracy?

In Aotearoa/NZ the National and Labour parties are both capitalist parties but they are not quite thesame. Labour historically claims to represent working people, while National has always stood forinternational finance capital. Under the current crisis of global capital the NZ Labour Party likeSocial Democratic parties everywhere has almost exhausted its claim to represent the working class.In the face of this historic bankruptcy, support for Social Democracy has been falling as the largestsector of workers no longer vote. Capitalism in crisis is everywhere openly abandoning the figleaf of parliamentary democracy and installing Bonapartist regimes to impose mounting austerity attacks onworkers. The results of the 2011 election in Aotearoa/NZ has confirmed the bankruptcy of SocialDemocracy with the number or voters falling to an historic low at 73% of eligible voters and Labour'sshare of the vote falling to an historic low in the traditional working class constituencies.

Labour Party exhausted historic role?

Labour is being pulled left and right in the face of the globalcapitalist crisis. It’s torn between two masters. On the onehand it has to serve capitalism and manage capitalism byincreasing the productivity of labour the creator of value. Onthe other it has to respond to its working class supporters andtry to claim it serves their interests or it loses its reason forexistence. This reveals that Labour like all Social Democraticparties is founded on a class contradiction between itsbourgeois program and its labour movement base. Its functionis to attempt tosuppress thatcontradiction. In acrisis when thatcontradiction comesexploding to thesurface, Labour hasno option but tomove right toattempt to solve thecrisis at the expenseof the working class.But in the processthe contractionthreatens to destroySocial Democracy.This explainslabour’s lurch to theright. Its new policyon pensions steals the extreme neo-liberal ACT party's policyof making workers work harder, longer, and die sooner.Pushing out the age of retirement from 65 to 67 is an openattack on the working class. To get elected Labour has againabandoned its working class roots and openly appeals tointernational finance capital to allow it to manage its affairsin NZ. It's another lurch to the right in response to a deepcrisis echoing the 1980s crisis management at the expense ofworkers. Labour has gone so far to the right it even makesmulti-millionaire Gareth Morgan’sBig Kahunalook positivelyleftwing.Labour wants to make workers' pay for NZ's economic crisis inthe same way as so-called 'socialist' parties in Greece, Spain,Portugal and Ireland are making workers pay for the crisis ofinternational finance capital. And like those parties whichhave been voted out or replaced by unelected politicians,Social Democracy is exposed as political bankrupt. What thisproves that when it comes to deciding which master it servesLabour always sides with the capitalists and their profitsrather with workers and their needs. Let’s prove that this ishistorically true.Labour was never a socialist party. It was formed in 1916after the historic defeat of militant labour in 1913 to co-optthe labour movement into parliament. But under pressurefrom unemployed workers and destitute working farmersduring the Great Depression of the 30's the First LabourGovernment came to power on a radical populist policy ofeconomic protectionism and income redistribution. This policyprevailed under bothLabour and Nationaluntil the late 1960’swhen falling exportearnings and internalcosts created a bigbalance of paymentsdeficit. The NationalGovernment PrimeMinister Muldoon'sresponse to thedeepeninginternational crisis inthe 1970s was toreinforceprotectionism. Herefused to concedecontrol over NZseconomy even in theface of the threat ofmassive capital flight.Not because he was pro-worker but because he was for theprotection of farmers and manufacturers from rising worldprices for energy etc. Hence the 'think big' economicnationalist policy of self-reliance which ironically echoed thatof the First Labour Government of the '30s. NZ became apariah for international finance capital. When Labour waselected in 1984 it found itself facing a double globalstructural crisis and a crisis of capital flight from a collapsingNZ economy.Labour became the Government without declaring to itsworking class supporters that it would shortly adopt the shocktherapy of monetarist deregulation. It claimed it had nooption because of a crisis of confidence in the NZ economy onthe part of international capital. 'Rogernomics', as it came tobe called after Finance Minister, Roger Douglas, was thepolicy of international finance capital (neo-liberalism)designed to destroy protectionism and privatise public assets.It was driven by the crisis facing global capital of falling

Class Struggle No 97 October-November 20113

profits. Douglas prepared his plans as early as 1980 as anyonewho read ‘There Must be a Better Way’ knows. Labour hadthe unions in its pocket so by the time its so-called ‘red’ [pro-Moscow 'socialist'] leaders woke up under their beds it was toolate. They were rewarded by Labour stripping the unions ofbasic rights just before the 1990 election. The left split toform the New Labour Party while many workers refused tovote Labour. Labour was defeated and the 1990s became adecade of National-led governments that furthered the neo-liberal plan of deregulation.Labour was in Government from 1999 until 2008 but did damnall to reverse its sell-out to monetarism of the '80s. Itreformed the Employment Contracts Act to restore the'balance of power' between employers and unions but theunions remained hollow shells and never recovered their massmembership. Labour had to live within the neo-liberalparameters it had imposed in the 1980s. Its ‘rescued’ someprivatised state assets like AirNZ and NZRail but for the sakeof business not workers. State provision of basicinfrastructure has always been the role of the state in NZ as asubsidy to a weak national capital. So basically Labouraccepted the neo-liberal ‘settlement’ of finance capital ofthe 1980s and imposed further limits on the sovereignty ofparliament through fiscal and monetary policy constraints.This is why it no longer has the tools (or the will) to tackleneo-liberalism and opts for fake ‘tough’ options like makingworkers work harder and longer. Labour’s tax adjustments arefiscal fiddling with do little to reverse steeply regressivetaxation and the widening income gap. Labour introduced theGoods and Service Tax [GST] in the '80s as part of the neo-liberal shift of taxation from capital to labour. Taking GST offfresh fruit and vegetables will be eaten up by inflation in notime. The Capital Gains Tax [CGT] is another grim joke. Itwon’t do anything to stop speculation or boost productiveinvestment in jobs. That’s why Labour’s excellently producedelection advertisements try to cover up its historic sell-out tofinance capital with clips from the Joe Savage and WalterNash eras from 1935-1949 falsely claiming to be going back toLabour’s social justice historic roots.It is the failure of Labour to reconcile the class contradictionthat runs through it that has created the vacuum for the NACTregime to take power and dominate the political domain.Having co-opted the ‘middle class’ and labour aristocracy theNACTs are now resolving the class contradiction by dividingand splitting the working class between aspiring middle classand the ‘underclass’ in the name of national unity. The NACTregime now takes the form of an increasingly authoritarianBonapartist regime.

Down with NACTs Bonapartism!

NACT PM John Key is a leader who appears to be able to standabove ‘partisan’ politics and represent the nation. He canchange the law almost at will. He passes some urgentretrospective empowering legislation and sends a minister toride shotgun. Some say it’s a feature of ‘presidential’ rulethat spawns mini Tsars. His 'presidential' appeal however isthat of finance capital and his reputation as a successful'banker'. John Key the rich banker can pass himself off asabove the nation because he represents the financialsalvation of the nation. Of course this explains why Key is sopopular and can get away with doing what he likes, laugh itoff, smile and wave, and move on.This is a well known phenomenon to Marxists who refer to itas ‘Bonapartism’ after the French Bonapartes who ruled as‘strong men’ in the 1800s seemingly above classes, andtherefore identifying with the nation as a whole. It is afeature of a period of social crisis when the open Tory partiesare too much identified with the greedy, arrogant rulingclass, so a populist figure, apparently straddling the classes,can for a relatively short period maintain a class balance andsemblance of order and stability. Bonapartism provides acover for creeping autocracy as the regime has to implementrapid reforms to make the working masses pay for its crisesand restore its profits. In the current crisis, as the success ofJohn Key shows, Bonapartism is taking the form of unelectedBankers assuming executive power by default allowing SocialDemocracy and Rightwing regimes to hide behind the figleafof the authority of finance capital that is 'too big to allownation states to fail'.Yet Bonapartist figures cannot put the lid on class struggle ina serious prolonged crisis and the working class begins toresist the attacks on it. A very clever Bonapartist like Key candelay the shift to the right by simply smothering working classresistance. He won the ‘08 election as ‘Labour Lite’ keepinghis Tory agenda under wraps. He has removed the wraps ashis popularity and ability to maintain the class balance holds.He is well managed. The RWC and his photo op with the MadButcher continues to promote his stand for the national aboveclasses. He drinks in the corporate boxes with the rugbybosses and sits in the stands with the heartland of workingclass NZ, the league fans, fraternising with another self madeworking class multi-millionaire. To make it easier the LabourParty under Goff is incapable of standing up for the mostoppressed workers. And Mana has not yet been unable toappeal to the disaffected hordes of Labour voters attractingonly 1% of the vote in the 2011 election.However, in one or two or three year’s time depending howrapidly the global crisis develops, the NACT regime will nolonger be able to keep workers down. The Bonapartist regimewill then move right to redefine the nation as excluding the‘outsiders’- the 100s of thousands of workers who have beendisenfranchised by Labour’s open pro-capitalist trajectory inthe last 30 years and who in 2008 and 2011 stayed at home.Labour faces the ignominy of most of its traditional workingclass base alienated from 'their' historic Party.The ‘outsiders’ are those sections of the working class mainlyMaori, Pacifica, youth and women who are over-representedas unemployed, lowpaid, unpaid, precarious, casualisedworkers and labelled as the 'underclass'. The Bonapartistregime attacks these groups to victimise and demonise themin order to divide and smash their unity as workers. TheNACTs have used Brash and will now use Banks to drive racist,sexist, anti-youth and homophobic wedges in this directionhoping to incite the formation of fascist currents. This opensthe way for a fascist movement to demonise and physicallyattack the most militant sections of the working class anddestroy its challenge to capitalist rule.A serious working class opposition to capitalist class rule hastherefore to unite all of these class elements as one singlefighting force. This is what is under way with the wave ofoccupations that is spreading across the world. Theseoccupations are all pointing towards growing support forgeneral strikes from Egypt to Bolivia, Greece to the US etc,which if they become based on workers councils, militias and