Class Struggle 94 April-May 2011

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Class Struggle 94 April-May 2011

Bludger’s Budget
As we would expect from a NACT [National/ACT/Maori Party coalition government] regime backed by the Maori
Party, the 2011 Bludgers’ Budget marked a further attack on workers to boost profits. The main attacks were on
Kiwisaver, Working For Families, Accident Compensation Scheme, and plans for the ‘partial privatisation’ of state
assets. Key boasted that he would create 170,000 new jobs, the same claim he made last year. Of course he was
right - he subcontracted job provision to Australia while NZ lost jobs. Key echoed Treasury’s fraudulent claim that
the NZ economy would grow at 4%, again similar claims made last year, and reached by Australia towed along by
China, while NZ had negative growth. Which country does this guy think he is in: NZ, Hawaii, China or Australia?
We, however, not being NACTites or LABOURites, see this budget as reinforcing NZ’s role as a cheap labour
country with its assets being primed for sale to China. Welcome to the Great South Sea Islands.

Kiwisaver cutbacks welfare system. The NACTs opposed it when it was introduced
but then left it in place until now when they have reduced
State cuts back its the rebates slightly for families
contributions, appears to put on higher incomes probably
the burden equally on workers because this is ‘middle NZ’ and
and employers, but in fact potentially NACT voters. And lots
allows employers to take it off of other nasty, mean cuts where
wage increases. Thus Kiwisaver it hurts the most vulnerable.
becomes like a US type worker
contribution pension fund that Privatisation of state assets
will amount to workers saving
for their pension, with NACTs propose the partial
companies contribution privatisation of a number of
deducted from their wages, specified State-owned
while at the same time the Enterprises – namely the four
state will cut back on major power generators, Solid
Government Superannuation, Energy and Air New Zealand. In
raise the age of entitlement an attempt to head off popular
etc/, thus shifting the burden opposition to privatisation the
of paying for retirement NACTs propose ‘partial
entirely onto workers. privatisation’ i.e. 49% private
ownership 51% retained in public
That amounts to a real wage ownership. These are major
cut and a rise in the rate of corporations with good returns.
exploitation. If Kiwisaver is
privatised then workers may So what the NACTs are doing
end up like US workers who here is grabbing nearly half for
have had their corporate based their own class, here and
pension schemes worth billions overseas. They are trying to
expropriated to bail out sweeten the pill by saying ‘mum
company bankruptcies. and dad’ investors will get
Privatised pensions have fine preference and this will boost
print which says the bosses own kiwi ownership and the NZX.
your retirement as well as your Haha, those mum and dad shares
working life! The only secure will be gobbled up by corporates
retirement for workers is to damn quick. CAFCA has a good
expropriate the critique form the standpoint of
expropriators, not only the NZ social democracy, that state
pension funds but all the ownership implies more public
corporate wealth the workers control than private foreign
created through their ownership
generations of labour.
In fact nationalisation is a form of collective capitalist
Working For Families ownership since the state is the state of the capitalist class.
What nationalisation does, however, is facilitate workers
Working for Families (WFF) was a Labour Party policy to control as a step towards the socialisation of capitalist
redistribute tax (actually a tax rebate like the old rebate for property.
children) to workers who had families. So it’s part of the

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Class Struggle 94
So the answer to the NACTs ‘part privatisation’ plans is to
fight for nationalised property to be under workers control
and for the big private corporates to be nationalised,
without compensation, and under workers control.
Accident Compensation Corporation
The NACT regime will privatise Accident Compensation;
another step towards destroying the working class as the only
force able to stop social barbarism and human extinction. The
whole point of privatising is to open up lucrative business to
bosses and make the workers pay for it. It’s an ideological
reform sure, but it’s driven at every level by profits. Ideas
don’t exist without material roots. Bosses are looking to drive
down the costs of insuring workers on the job and paying for
their accidents off the job, and insurance companies are
looking to make more profits from user pays. The pro-market
ideology is just that. They want ACC privatised to shift the
cost onto workers.
Reformist complaints
about the ACC meeting
some noble ideal of the
‘community’ sharing the
cost of accidents is a
nonsense for capital which
uses up the flesh and
blood of workers, exhausts
nature, and drives
humanity towards
extinction, to make a
profit. Social democratic
appeals to some
redeeming feature of
capitalism is merely
avoiding the calamity and
weakening our ability to
stop it in time. What has
the Labour Party got to
say about this Bludgers’
Budget?
Labour’s shadow
Budget
Labour opposes the cuts in the Bludgers’ Budget but has not
committed itself to restoring them. It has made a point of
saying that some cuts would still be necessary given the
worsening debt situation. It has promised a small tax increase
for high income families and to introduce the Emissions
Trading Scheme on farmers in 2013 to raise $800 m over the
next four years for R&D. It committed to raising the minimum
wage from $13 to $15 on hour. NACT and big business hit back
with claim that this would lose 5000 jobs unless Youth rates
were reintroduced. Labourites have countered with research
that showed that raising the minimum wage in the US and in
NZ did not see rising youth unemployment as hours worked by
youth increased (see Tapu Misa).
These research findings prove the Marxist view that rising
wages are the spur to growth in economic productivity as
employers are pressured to introduce new technology and
raise labour productivity to increase profits. The immense
growth of capitalism over the last 150 years arises from this
pressure. The Labour Party recognises the importance of
labour productivity growth but does not see this as increased
April-May 2011
exploitation of labour and limits itself to strengthening
organised labour to win a larger share of income. Yet the
statistics show that in NZ the productivity share of workers
has declined to the point that even real wages have fallen.
While Labour’s reformist perspective of maximising workers
income shares in the imperialist epoch of capitalism in
decline cannot stop mass poverty, at least it is not openly
complicit like the Maori Party in the NACTs bosses’ agenda of
NZ as a low-wage-asset-stripping country competing directly
with other low wage countries!
A Workers’ Budget
For the NACTs a ‘workers budget’ is what they have to
produce at the WINZ office to prove they are not ‘bludgers’
and can qualify for a benefit. Enough! The real Bludgers’
Budget is part of the NACTs attack on workers to create a
cheap labour force and smash resistance to privatisation and
asset sales to China. Labour has yet to take a stand on a
Budget that puts workers needs before profits. The Green’s 5
point alternative budget
has some immediate aims
but spoiled by its dream
of managing capitalism
as a “sustainable,
prosperous and fair
economy” when it has to
be overthrown as a
precondition to our
survival.
The closest we got to a
Workers Budget in
Parliament was when
Hone Harawira of Te
Mana Party described the
Bludgers’ Budget as the
“Key / Turia / Brash
“Watch me clap while my
people get shafted
again” Budget. I have
seen GST go up, food
prices go up, petrol
prices go up, house
prices go up,
unemployment go up, while the only thing to come down is
taxes for the rich, and I intend to propose a radical way
forward that will: • ease the plight of the poor • scare the
shit out of the rich • and give Maori hope for a better future.
We say Enough! Tumeke! Outrage! Indignity!
• Reverse the Budget cuts!
• Jobs for all on a living wage!
• Build fighting, democratic unions!
• Occupy the foreshore and seabed!
• Occupy all workplaces that close or sack workers!
• No privatisation of state assets, put under
workers’control!
• Nationalise all corporate assets without
compensation and under workers control!
• Build workers councils everywhere!
• For a general strike against the system that is
destroying us all in the name of profit!
• For a Socialist Aotearoa in a United Socialist States
of the Pacific!
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Class Struggle 94 April-May 2011

Brief Stuff
the situation is back to normal. But it’s clear from the fact
that Westpac staff in Christchurch say they are “being forced
Quake City Resists to push loans and insurance policies on financially struggling
customers in the wake of the devastating February
earthquake” that the situation is far from normal . The CTU
Christchurch continues to be the test bed of Disaster and its Labour Party backers wants a Worker Assistance
Capitalism in NZ proving the point that crises allow capital to Package for Canterbury, including ongoing income support,
profit at the expense of workers. Or course crises can be job creation schemes, and skills training. So far, as we would
manufactured too as the sacking of ECAN shows. Dispensing expect, there has been only a small commitment to skills
with the inconvenience and risks of the democratic process is training to fill the shortfall of labour for rebuilding.
justified by declaring a state of emergency, especially a
‘national emergency’. This has enabled the NACT regime to
The CERA’s emergency powers allow the property rights of
pass under urgency the Enabling Act to dispense with any
individuals and small businesses to be ridden over. Angry
democratic constraints in rebuilding Christchurch. Massey’s
small business owners locked out of their businesses while
Cossacks are riding again, but atop growing herds of dairy
they were being looted by cowboy demolition firms protested.
cows this time. There are fewer of them because these are
Brownlee the CERA boss basically tells them to go to hell.
corporate farmers more often these days, some of them in
Brownlie openly mocks even some larger business owners, as
the NACT cabinet or very close to it.
‘obstructing redevelopment’ in the TV coverage.
The Enabling Act is a warning to the rest of NZ of what the
NACT regime will impose if re-elected. The NACT cabinet is
made up of bosses who own large chunks of NZ assets. They
are running the country like NZ Inc with the cabinet at the
board of directors. Christchurch residents are incensed at the
role of Fletcher Building who will profit hugely after being
appointed by Cabinet to lead the rebuild. This is nothing new.
Fletchers was founded around 1940 on the back of a massive
state contract to build army huts and state houses. James
Fletcher was seconded to become the Minister of
Construction. Today the close relations between the NACT
cabinet and big business like Fletchers vindicates Karl Marx
view that: "The executive of the modern state is but a
committee for managing the common affairs of the whole
bourgeoisie".

As we pointed out in ‘Disaster Capitalism Downunder’ the NZ

ruling class is seizing on the Christchurch earthquake to
create business opportunities while at the same time making
workers pay for their economic crisis. Over 80,000 adults and
their families (from fall in eftpos cards used) have been
shunted around NZ to add to the floating reserve army of
labour of over 270,000 unemployed, putting downward
pressure on wages, and reinforcing NZ’s comparative
advantage as a low-wage country which says Bill English is one
way to catch up to Australia. On top of that workers all over
NZ have put their hands in their pockets to support
fundraising, attending concerts, supporting families’
relocation out of Christchurch etc., contributing $73 million
to the Earthquake Appeal by May 17.
Compared with the contribution of workers, Govt is paying
the bare minimum. Govt is raising $8.5 billion in bonds for
Christchurch but more than half of that goes to repaying loans
from EQC, backing AMI and other costs so it’s actual
contribution to is around $4 Billion, yet it makes out that the
cost of rebuilding has added greatly to the deficit justifying
massive cuts in Kiwisaver, WWF, flog off 49% of state assets,
and cuts in social spending.
This is their sob story to shift more of the cost of the crisis
onto workers, in particular Christchurch workers. So the
emergency payments going to unemployed have been stopped
for most workers. The CTU says that support has been cut
from 47,000 to around 4,000 workers. The Govt claims that
Others were not allowed to retrieve their personal property.
The case of David Theobold shows what happens to people
trying to enter property to retrieve personal property. He
entered his house as it was being demolished to retrieve a
valuable computer hard-drive only after repeatedly failing to
get permission. He was locked up for 2 weeks, given a mental
health assessment and treated like shit.
He is not the first, nor will he be the last. So while these
basic democratic rights and financial support of workers are
abused and withdrawn, the NACT regime glosses over its
disaster capitalism routine with photo-op events such as the
visits of royalty and celebrities like Prince Willie and Rachel
Hunter.
What lessons can we learn from the way Disaster Capitalism is
being applied in Christchurch? With so many lives in limbo and
workers dis-empowered, the least we can do is learn from
their experience - instructional for everyone’s future as that
is. While disguising the heightened rate of profit-gouging that
business-as-usual could otherwise not deliver, Disaster
Capitalism works most visibly at the maintenance of myth.
While caring and charity wear thin with fading headlines,
gratitude is manipulated into political compliance to
amorphous and obscure plans. Some prominent myths
maintained by Disaster Capitalism are:
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Class Struggle 94
1. ‘Science understands what is happening and is here to help
you’: in fact underfunding and service cuts have long-since
eroded the effectiveness of commercially-driven science
research. Science didn’t intervene to stop the collapse of
buildings weakened by the September earthquake and save
the 182 lives lost in the February quake. Its primary role here
has become after-the-event pacification of the populace
because panic and necessary evacuations would dent business
profits - especially tourism and hospitality. Public good
science is being misused for the purpose of business
continuity.
2. ‘The public is involved in the reconstruction’: all kinds of
elaborate ruses are in use for convincing workers that this is
the case - information talks, news and advertising media,
websites and workshop ‘engagement’ etc.(‘consultation’ has
been scrapped as ‘too one-way’) - when the actual outcome is
the removal of causes and mechanism for complaints. CERA
has carte blanche. After all, elected regional representation
was disabled by the NACT regime for the very same reason.
City council and community board representatives have been
neutralised too. Appointment of ‘community leaders’ onto
‘representative panels’ is sham democracy. Workers are being
tricked into ‘ownership’ of harmful governance decisions.
Exhaustion and bad roads have drastically cut back civic life,
which is still prevented from accessing the city centre.
3. ‘A level playing field exists for business to get back on its
feet’: small businesses like retailers are struggling to reopen
in the wake of martial law, and their trade will go to big
retail chains and malls - benefiting big finance capital only
and the monopoly capitalist state. Disaster Capitalism can
best be understood as accelerated monopoly capitalism.
4. ‘Urgency means we are better off without sound planning’:
the Resource Management Act and every form of regulatory
safeguard have been sidelined by CERA authority over local
government, yet it was the building code - or what’s left of it
- that can claim first honour in saving lives. Parks and
reserves are being ‘temporarily’ utilised for profit-making
housing etc services, and the city is being reshaped
unilaterally by CERA. Port Lyttelton, for example, has been
given free rein to rapidly expand export facilities by harbour
in-fill.
5. ‘You will be rehoused, paid for by insurance’: everyone
affected by the earthquakes faces large extra costs and no
chance of full reimbursement. Workers’ housing equity is
disappearing into the state banking system - again, monopoly
capitalism at work.
6. ‘Your jobs, income and benefits are secure’: yeah, right.
There are frequent aftershocks, the most recent a 5.5 and
there will be more with no safety and security in sight for
Christchurch workers.
The list of methods and myths by which Disaster Capitalism
raises the economic rate of exploitation for monopoly
capitalism - across all of working society and the environment
- is still larger than this. The reaction of Christchurch
workers has been to wake up and smell the bullshit and
promote their own efforts at rebuilding the city. Working
people need to organise quickly to protect and extend
their own interests through political struggle. We support
the workers of Christchurch and the efforts of the unions
to organise them in this struggle as should all kiwi workers.
April-May 2011
Roots of Fascism
In a crisis capitalism faces the outrage of the unruly masses.
This is because the capitalists want the workers to pay for the
crisis and they resist. The Arab revolution has got the
imperialists worried. It is being fought for those same
ostensibly ‘Western’ values that have been rubbished
constantly over the last century as imperialism has backed
dictatorships in its client states. How to keep the lid on the
unruly democrats? No longer can they install and remove
dictators without the masses appearing in Tahrir (Liberation)
Squares to protest. Not only that, when dictators unleash
their special murder squads Tahrir squares turn into the
peoples’ militias. In Libya and in Syria the pro-democracy
uprising has become an armed struggle which opens the
potential for permanent revolution. Even to win basic
democratic rights it will be necessary to confront and defeat
the state. Imperialism is therefore constrained to keep the lid
on by posing as ‘democratic’ (bombing for ‘peace’ in Libya to
‘protect civilians’) and thus converting ‘pro-democratic’
resistance to its military intervention into a threat to
‘democracy’ i.e. terrorism or crime.
Recognising this, the democrats try to be ‘non-violent’ to
avoid being demonised as ‘anarchists’ or ‘terrorists’.
Imperialism hypocritically demands pacifism from its
opposition while it indiscriminately bombs and strafes its
enemies! Capitalism criminalises political opposition using
anti-terrorist laws, torture and murder all the time claiming
to be defending the values of family, society and civilisation.
But in reality those values are based on exploitation and
oppression. The patriarchal family is the backbone of the
ruling class and capitalist dictatorships. The bourgeois family
is not only the source of unpaid domestic labour, it is the
main bastion of authority in the capitalist state. Men are used
to control ‘unruly’ women as a matter of ‘honour’. In NZ the
patriarchal values of political leaders is notorious. For
example, the NACT (National-ACT-Maori Party Coalition
Government) MP Paul Quinn’s slagging off of drunken women
recently is all about shifting the blame for rape to ‘unruly’
women. Widespread domestic violence is used to discipline
women and children the world over and is often taken to
extremes by warlords like Gaddafi who use rape to instil fear
in women and to impugn the ‘honour’ of their men.
We can see historically that the patriarchal family (both in its
pre-capitalist and capitalist forms) is the compost heap that
gives root to the authoritarian psychology that can be
manipulated and turned against a revolutionary working class.
In Aotearoa this has a long history as petty-bourgeois and
farming families facing the disorder of the frontier, the land
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Class Struggle 94
wars, and the volatility of farming have often been used (by
reactionary politicians, etc) to whip up fear and repression of
both Maori Whanau such as the Tuhoe and working class
families during periods of class struggle.
This is the poisonous patriarchal soil of fascist reaction
against the militant labour movement and the threat of
socialist revolution. Stevan Eldred-Grigg shows how NZ
experienced a wave of pro-imperialist militarism before the
First Imperialist World War when middle class and gentry
dressed their children in military-type unions and gangs of
middle class youth physically attacked socialist and anti-war
meetings (The Great Wrong War, 19-25).
But under capitalist crisis the family starts to breakdown.
Poverty and unemployment, or what Marx called
‘immiseration’ sets in. Working class families produce ‘unruly’
children. The second line of authority is the schools and then
after that the workplaces. These institutions use their
authority to maintain the capitalist order. But when class
struggles break out undermining these institutions the state
has to step into the breech to politicise and criminalise the
dissidents. It starts to actively repress working class
resistance to capitalist rule by ramping up the legal penalties
for dissent and arming the police to arrest and lock them up
as in case of the Urewera 18. And it increasingly uses the time
honoured methods of ‘sectioning’ or jailing dissidents.
‘Sectioning’ refers to labelling people as ‘mentally ill’ and
hospitalizing them under a section of the Mental Health Act.
The NACT regime is about to launch a pre-emptive attack on
the ‘unruly’ in the form of diverting around half of disability
and sickness beneficiaries into the mental health system (see
From Welfare to Workfare in this issue). This is an attack on
the rights of beneficiaries to an income without being coerced
by the state to work or accept ‘treatment’. Police in
Christchurch following the earthquakes have already shown
what we can expect. They have the discretion to lock up
anyone who is ‘disorderly’ on the grounds of a risk of harm to
themselves or others. Christchurch police even went to the
lengths of beating up an autistic youth they arrested for theft
of light bulbs.
Against the powers of the capitalist state to sanction and
jail any act of resistance, the working class has its own
power as THE class that creates the wealth and which can
protect its interests by taking control of production and of
society. It has the capacity to replace the bourgeois family
with cooperative and collective labour. The tiny parasitic
class of capitalists then finds that its power and wealth
dissolves back into the dead labour of generations of
workers which when expropriated by the working class
becomes the economic base of a socialist society.
Health Classes
The NZ state under capitalist pressures (tendency for
fall rate of profit and periodic crises) tries various
restructuring of healthcare to shift health costs onto
working people; thus reducing the proportion that the
state pays. This serves the capitalist class by reducing
their taxes and propping up their otherwise falling
profits (which the working class produced anyway). NZ
April-May 2011
capitalism has cut health care costs in 2 main ways –
cutting wages, and cutting funded services.
In mental health services ‘trusts’ were created for the
purpose of providing services to ‘clients’ who were no longer
provided for by public services. This occurred at the same
time as institutions - hospitals were closed. Community care
has always been on a tension with community dumping
(neglect) and the state driving down wage bills by contracting
services into private has been the underlying dynamic to this.
Fortunately for the state this occurred at the same time as
rising education and skill levels (% passes in education have
steadily increased). So this change may have been able to be
done without a noticeable loss in quality of care. However,
occasional media exposure of extreme cases of rest home
neglect shakes confidence in these services.
In the starting positions care giving roles “health aide” or
“community support worker”, the wages are near the state’s
minimum wage level; competitiveness for jobs, and lack of
union organisation maintains this situation. The capitalist
state runs with an unemployed “reserve army of labour”, and
the Employment Contracts Act and scattered / smallness of
sites allowed employers to keep unions out of many new
trusts.
The access to fully funded free services has been made more
difficult. Health services were not funded to meet the needs
of the population and so waiting lists became a typical
experience of trying to access public funded services.
Increasingly emergency departments turn away patients –
sending them to private 24hr GP clinics instead. A new
definition of an emergency is a barrier to free health care.
Currently the District Health Board covering Queenstown is
proposing a deal with local doctors (GP) whereby
“emergency” patients will have to see a primary health
practitioner (Dr / Nurse, etc) before being passed onto the
emergency service. A private health service is allowed to
charge a fee to the patient, so the state’s proportion of
health services decreases.
The policy of primary healthcare, was Labour government
policy from 2000 – 2009. “Primary” is the frontline doctor the
“General Practitioner” (GP) who most people first see for a
(non emergency) health need. Government had tried to shift
services from fully funded public hospital based services to GP
and non-government organisation (NGO) providers. This cut
costs for the state since generally NGO’s were paying
frontline workers less than the equivalent public services had.
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Class Struggle 94
While the Labour government shifted some money (funding)
to GPs they also tied GPs to contracts for their enrolled
‘patient’ population. Contracts forced GPs to provide after-
hours “medical” services. GPs were grouped into larger
organisations “PHOs = Primary Healthcare Organisations”.
This centralised and concentrated their resources into larger
organisations. PHO’s had brought forward proposals to take
over some functions from the Public Health system, for
example, district nursing. Maori health was also organised
into Maori PHO’s and so a layer of Maori managers has been
created while frontline workers remained low paid. Many
Maori organisations were able to super-exploit their workforce
– extolling workers into longer hours and more, while re-
defining cultural values to ‘do it for the whanau’.
The working class approach to healthcare is that this is a
basic human necessity and fair access for all is essential. The
capitalist class has no interest in providing this. Organised
workers were able to force a Labour government into
providing public health services in 1935. This has steadily
been undermined by the capitalist class complaining about
their falling profits and the costs of providing healthcare and
using the state to dismantle the welfare state. Capitalists
push user pays reforms through their governments.
The fact of private healthcare still existing in NZ, points back
to a failure of the first Labour government to bring all Health
services under public funding. Doctors or GPs were never fully
in the public system, specialists always wanted to charge
their own rates. GPs in the poorer areas of the country raise
Beneficiaries labelled ‘Mentally ill’
National Seeks Mandate for Welfare Cuts
National plans to make the Welfare Working Group’s notorious
recommendations key election policy. The ethnic-cleansing
style recommendations include forcing the sick and disabled
into work, long term contraception injections, compulsory
vaccinations, making single mothers with a second child go
back to work when the baby is 14 weeks old and cutting
benefits for child truancy, failing to get child “health checks”
or refusing treatments.
A ministerial group (including Beneficiary Bashing Minister for
Social Development Paula Bennett, and Not Achieved
Education Minister Anne Tolley) will make the final decision,
and legislation is expected around September this year. WINZ
looks set to be replaced by Employment and Support New
Zealand (ESNZ) in July 2012, with all benefits being replaced
by a single Job Seeker Allowance.
Benefits cut and no jobs
Benefits are at half their pre- 1991 levels in real terms
compared to the minimum wage. A quarter of New Zealand
children (and rising) live in poverty. Child abuse levels are
through the roof. The Red Cross distributes food to hungry
children in our schools. Food prices are soaring and 271,000
are officially jobless. Aotearoa’s unemployment rate
continues at 6.6%, up 0.5% over the year, and that’s excluding
Canterbury. Anecdotally, staff at a North Shore WINZ office
have reported a rise in applicants from around 40-50 a week
to 800 a week since the recession began. Youth not in paid
April-May 2011
less money in fees from their enrolled patients, instead
relying on government for the most part of their funding.
Whereas GPs in the richer areas can charge higher fees and so
rely less on government funding to provide service and take
profits. The danger with this de-facto introduction of “user
pays” health care is the access to services is unfair and
quality of service uneven (eg. more GPs per person in
Remuera than in Manurewa). Primary healthcare has always
been mainly user-pays because of privatisation of service
providers. It is an individualistic model of healthcare where
the user is forced to pay.
Under crisis capitalism, the government is rewriting the rules
for entry into health services and so keeps more services out
of public health sending patients out to their GPs – to pay.
Each winter the District Health Boards have urged people to
stay away from Hospitals’ emergency departments as they
struggle with staffing shortages and winter illnesses.
It is clear that capitalism will not consistently provide usable
and accessible health services. Health workers (Doctors,
nurses and the rest) cannot defend public health alone. We
need to unite with the working class to fight effectively for
full public health services. The capitalist system must be
buried before it buries us. The principle for organising the
new economy is, from each according to their ability to each
according to their need: Socialism.
work is staggeringly high at thirty five per cent.
Despite this alarming poverty and unavailability of jobs, the
National Government continues to pursue an “unrelenting
work focus” (Ministry of Social Development catch phrase)
and plans to drastically slash the remaining benefits and to
“reduce considerably those on sickness and invalids benefits”.
Thousands have already been taken off the invalids benefits
losing $50 per week. The Rebstock Razor gang wants to
reduce spending by nearly a third from around $4.7b to $3.4b
per year by 2011 (dishonestly represented as $47b and $34b
which is the amount for the entire ten years.) It aims to cut
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Class Struggle 94
100,000 people off the welfare rolls in the next decade above
those who will get jobs with the projected economic
‘recovery. Overall, it hopes reduce those on a benefit from
360,000 to 100,000 by 2021. It also plans to increase the
proportion of beneficiaries having to seek work from 37%
to77%; with possible work for the dole.
Commentator Gordon Campbell puts it this way: “If the
American models for these reforms are anything to go by,
those 100,000 people will not simply vanish – they will turn up
on our street corners, living out of cardboard boxes.” At the
same time the Chief Executive of the Ministry of Social
Development earns around $ 540,000 per year (2009 figures).
“Now how many ‘ordinary’ wage and salary earners could live
off that?” (Radical, beneficiary activist, in Indymedia
discussion)
Not Having a Job is now Seen as a Mental Illness
In order to slash the numbers on the welfare rolls, a key
target of the Welfare Working Group (Razor Gang) is the half
of the 145,000 sickness/invalids beneficiaries which it says
have “unmet mental health needs” which prevent them from
working. The ministry admits that it could take “several
years” to turn these 72,000 ‘mentally ill’ people into a source
of profits. “But we can't wait a year to start ... so we are
getting on with training people. Those people will be
essential."
Professor Des Gorman, a member of the Rebstock Razor Gang,
and chairman of Health Workforce NZ proposes that the
Government trains more mental health nurses, and more
general practitioners to
take “a special interest” in
mental health and
addiction. He calls for ACC
style “rehabilitation” to be
available, which no doubt
roughly translates as “work
will set you free” (arbeit
macht frei”).
While it is a good idea for
those making decisions
about the lives of ‘mentally
ill’ beneficiaries to actually
learn something about the
subject (as at present none
of the Regional Health
Advisors or designated doctors working for WINZ have a clue);
the new courses will undoubtedly be a vehicle for the
government’s “unrelenting work” focus. It’s likely to become
increasingly difficult for anyone (especially a trainee) to
question this semi- fascistic approach whose real intent is
hidden behind caring language.
Here’s an example of the Welfare Working Group’s misuse of
language. And here’s the NZ Herald editorial , ‘Work helps ill
beneficiaries get better’, replicating the MSD stories as if
they were true, and their solutions as if they were
commonsense: “Psychological disorders, led by stress and
depression, accounted for the entire increase in sickness
benefits and a third of the increase in invalids benefits from
1996 to 2002.”
The trainees could well become “essential”, working for low
wages, employed by private contractors or NGO’s, learning
how to diagnose “mental health needs” in every second
sickness beneficiary and prescribing work cures and benefit
April-May 2011
cuts for most of them. Perhaps underpaid trainees might even
run programmes at boot camps for the sick, mentally ill and
disabled, similar to those for law breakers and unemployed
already being criticised by John Key’s Science Advisor.
And where is this ‘Mental Health’ money coming from? The
short answer is-beneficiaries and the sick will pay for it with
cuts to benefits and services! Unlike in Australia, where A$2.2
billion extra per year for five years has been provided to
‘help’ the mentally ill into work , nothing extra has been
provided in National’s Budget. So the money has to come out
of existing funds for Social Development and Health, despite
talk about $1.3b having been “ring fenced” for the project.
The view of unemployment as a ‘mental illness’ is a form of
victim blaming. Rather than admitting the truth that the
capitalist system needs unemployment to keep wages down
and profits up, this view blames the individual for their
predicament and suffering. It promotes the delusion that
therapies and drugs for the individual can solve the problem
of unemployment. The only thing that can solve
unemployment is to end the system that creates it!
Co-option of Health Professionals
Robert Steenhuisen, co-chairman of the National Committee
for Addiction Treatment spoke out in support of these
proposals. With a background in compulsory addiction
treatment for offenders, he said that group sessions would
probably work best for beneficiaries who often had multiple
problems besides addictions. The possibility that some people
don’t like working in groups is not mentioned. He went on to
say “"People have to reach
a certain level of awareness
that this is how their life is
and that no one is going to
make it better for them
except themselves".
In this arrogant
prescription, there’s no
mention of the social
causes of people’s suffering
that are largely beyond
their control-unemployment
rates, poverty, social
isolation, racism, sexism,
beneficiary bashing,
harassment, state and
family violence to name a few. Instead we need to learn that
it’s all our fault!
Robert Steenhuisan does say one good thing though: “Working
with people in groups helped them realise they were not the
only ones with difficulties.” The possibility is always there for
people forced together on some ESNZ programme to actually
unite together to fight for their rights.
The New Zealand College of Nurses uncritically reprints an
outline of the “Work Focused Support” approach of Dr David
Bratt, Principal Health Advisor of WINZ, (described by Radical
as a “simple GP’ in Wellington) on their website. They
describe it as “a more integrated approach to combining
matters of health and disability with aspects of social
wellbeing which fits well with a nursing approach”. Perhaps
this support has something to do with the fact that the
majority of the Regional Health Advisors employed by WINZ
were intended to be nurses.
8
Class Struggle 94
Extraordinary Powers of Health Professionals
WINZ Regional Health Advisors (some of whom are nurses, but
at least one is unqualified) and designated doctors have
extraordinary powers as no case officer untrained in health
would dare to reject their “advice”. Radical, a beneficiary
campaigner, points out in a discussion in Indymedia , that all
the RHA’s and designated doctors have an “absolute work
focus.” The designated doctors (who don’t know the client
and see them for only a few minutes) are often given far
more credence by the case officer than the beneficiary’s own
doctor. Radical says:
“I have seen bizarre and absurd "second opinions" that were
totally contrary to (what) the normal GPs’ or other health
practitioners’ clients see...The onus is being put onto the ill
person to "prove" that she/he is really as ill as doctor's
medical certificates state. Indirectly the Ministry also treats
medical practitioners that are not working with them as
"designated doctors" as possibly not being competent enough
to make the assessments they make.”
The only option WINZ provides for a beneficiary who is not
happy with the decision of a designated doctor is to take the
matter to a ‘Medical Appeal Board’. The decision of this
board is final.
As Radical points out, WINZ’s “unrelenting work focus”
compromises medical ethics. The ethics of any health
professional surely require the health interests of the patient
to be put first, rather than the employer’s interests to have
them on the labour market. Indeed the horrendous treatment
that many people with health and disability issues have faced
by WINZ has in fact CAUSED enormous mental health problems
for some people.
One commentator put it this way on facebook: “They have
their own doctors lined up-stacked with arseholes-just like
ACC...I wanted to throw up.”
Compulsory Treatment
Re-casting sickness or invalids beneficiaries as mentally ill,
addicts, or akin to criminals provides an excuse for
completely stripping them of their human rights-not that they
had too many to start with!-and exercising total control over
them.
April-May 2011
Many beneficiaries have spoken of the “soft fascist”, “police
state” or “nazi”-like way they are being treated. The current
proposals for compulsory treatment of beneficiaries are
reminiscent of the Soviet post Stalinist era when political
dissidents were forced to take neuroleptics, mind numbing
psychiatric medication; or of the identical forced drugging of
social dissidents (eg poets, blacks, lesbians and gays) in the
USA who were unfortunate enough to be diagnosed as being
mentally ill (See Mad in America by Robert Whitaker pps 211-
219).
One person reported on facebook: “Compulsory treatment has
already started. People are being forced to take medication
or lose the benefit as it is seen as not making an effort to get
better... even if the medication makes them worse, and there
are no other options.”
What needs to be done?
Many beneficiaries are finding that their lives are being
increasingly controlled by WINZ designated doctors, regional
health advisors, or case officers who are ignorant of ,
unsympathetic towards, or plain hostile to their real needs;-
such as an adequate income, genuine connection to others,
and some autonomy over their own lives. Adding a layer of
mental health trainees and intensifying pressure to look for
work, is adding insult to injury.
Under this increasing pressure, beneficiaries are fighting back
spontaneously and are starting to get organised. In one case
"a woman (at DSW) who was obviously stressed and desperate
for some assistance was stone walled at the counter. She
picked up her baby, 18month old and popped her on the
counter and walked away... Suddenly, there was this huge
commotion and the tone from the dept changed.” (reported
on facebook).
Individually, beneficiaries resist WINZ decisions by making
appeals, sometimes with the help of advocacy groups, and
one beneficiary is challenging the legal basis of entire WINZ
policies. Some beneficiaries are joining the new Te Mana
movement to try to defeat National’s policies.
What is needed is a combined fight back of beneficiaries
and paid workers, with community organisations, anti-
poverty groups, advocacy groups and unions working
together. Unions need to include beneficiaries in their
ranks. The Unite union was set up to do this, but so far has
not done so, apart from the Waitemata Branch which is
successfully organising at a grass roots level.
The protests in North Africa and Europe have shown that
unemployed can indeed fight back, and even lead
revolutionary movements. This is giving inspiration and
hope to beneficiaries here in Aotearoa.
We need to drive National out, fight in our communities
and workplaces, and end capitalism. Expropriate the
expropriators!
In its place we need a socialist society where people work
together to meet real human needs, where women and
children are at the centre and not the periphery, and
where vulnerable members are treated with caring and
respect..
9
Class Struggle 94 April-May 2011

A Living Earth
Bill McKibben's 2010 book, Eaarth: Making Life on a Tough Back in January, 2009, Hansen said, "We cannot now afford to
New Planet. Earth is our only home. Global warming is real. put off change any longer. We have to get on a new path
And it’s not conducive to better holidays. We fight it or we within this new administration. We have only four years left
die with no time for holidays. Our enemy? Fact: 6 of the 12 for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world.
biggest corporates build cars or pump oil to run them. Either America must take the lead."
we disable these corporates or fossil fuels will kill us. Not just
a collapsing climate but all the destructive wars fought over Yet Hansen is an activist only in the sense of calling for the
hydrocarbons that plague us. It’s only a question of what will Courts to charge fossil fuel
kill us first. It looks like corporates or Congress to
the weather is already outlaw coal mining - though
having a go. he has been arrested
protesting open cast coal
Unfortunately McKibben’s mining. But none of this has
solutions fall short of the the urgency or the potential
mark. He trots out the to avoid his famous ‘tipping
usual ‘sustainable’ point’. Obama’s four years
growth, of thinking will soon be up and CO2
slower, smaller, local, emissions will continue to
human scale, solutions. build up at alarming rates.
It’s a matter of
convincing the enemy to Clearly the solutions put up
change course by working by global warming publicists
‘close to home’. Small, and activists are no way
not big: dispersed, not near what is needed to stop
centralised.” (120) But a meltdown. The solution
first we have to convince must be the overthrow of
ourselves. So what to the social system that has
do? created the problem -
production for profit and not
McKibben’s vision fits need.
well with broad Green
activism, educating Our big need is to survive,
ourselves about all but that is not profitable. So
aspects of Global we have to eliminate profits
Warming and then to survive. Capitalism must
dedicating ourselves to die or we die. Climate change activists have to be anti-
home-grown solutions to build sustainable alternatives for our capitalists.
survival. So we have to conserve water, food supplies and find
new sources of energy.
Fortunately a new generation has made the connections. Look
to the Arab revolution and the educated youth coming up
This reads like a Hollywood dystopia movie were a few against the moribund profit system that starves and represses
survivalists start civilisation again after a doomsday event. them. They revolt for ‘freedom’ and form democratic organs
There is no talk of challenging and overthrowing the capitalist to fight for it. Dictators shoot down unarmed protestors, yet
system that relies on oil-driven expansion to make its profits. the revolution strengthens. They have nothing to lose but a
lost generation and a lost planet.
What about the solutions put up by James Hansen the pioneer
global warming advocate currently touring Aotearoa? He has Capitalist barbarism has finally met its match. The educated,
done more than any other scientist to discover and map the unemployed youth rise up against total system dysfunction
“fast feedback effects” that may cause a sudden climate and breakdown. This is the only road to human survival. The
meltdown? Hansen says the "Greenland ice sheet is losing masses mobilise across borders to form regional, continental
mass at 200 km3/y (cubic kilometres a year!), the Antarctic and ultimately global socialist society in which allocation of
ice sheet at 100 km3." And "Last time climate was 2 deg resources to meet basic needs are met.
warmer, the sea level was 25m higher". Here is a very bright
guy who surely knows that such a risk means that a revolution
is needed to avoid the end of Earth and Humanity as we know The necessary by-product of this social revolution will be the
it. living Earth.

10
Class Struggle 94
May Day Outrage
Mayday 2011 marks a major step forward for workers internationally in its struggle against the imperialist ruling
classes. It is the year of the Arab Spring that may soon become a European and Asian summer. Today capitalist
imperialism is experiencing a major structural crisis that can turn out to be a terminal crisis if the workers of the
world advance towards the socialist revolution. Here is our balance sheet of the state of class struggle.
The crisis is one of falling profits as the extraction of value
from workers fails to keep up with investment. This leads to
the vast build-up of surplus capital that cannot be invested
profitably in production that is then forced to speculate in
existing values of commodities including food and fuel,
driving up their prices. The great recession that began in Wall
St in late 2007 was a crisis of collapsing housing debt as
workers could no longer pay their overpriced mortgages. The
effect nearly caused the breakdown of the capitalist system.
The ruling classes only survived because they forced through
state bailouts to pay for enough bad debts to allow the major
banks and corporates to survive. Private debt was turned into
public debt so that the cost of paying for this debt became a
terrible austerity forced on workers everywhere as wages,
jobs and social services are cut back to allow tax cuts for the
capitalists. The near collapse of the markets was a massive
loss of legitimacy for capitalism. The Empire had no clothes.
Workers have now shown that they will not pay for the
bosses’ crisis; “enough is enough” say the outraged lost
generation of youth, who are rising up and fighting for an end
to rising prices, austerity,
dictatorship, corruption and war
imposed by imperialism. “We are not
commodities to be bought and sold by
the banks”.
New Zealand semi-colony
Will NZ become part of the Arab
Spring? Will there be a South Pacific
‘winter’? In the imperialist epoch
(which is the final stage of capitalism
that began around the beginning of
the 20th century) a few imperialist
powers have grown stronger and now
monopolise the world economy
dominating smaller countries as neo-
colonies. The US is No 1 imperialist but
it is being challenged by China as a
rapidly rising imperialist power.
Capitalist crises in this epoch lead to
wars between the imperialist powers
to grab part of the globe off one
another. Since the 70’s capitalism has experience a long crisis
which has had ups and downs but which today threatens to go
from global recession to global depression.
For NZ, a neo-colony dominated by the US and Australia, and
increasingly China, its fate is to be fought over by these
imperialist countries for cheap labour and cheap resources
and assets. Most big business in NZ is owned by Australia and
the US but China is making a late run under the FTA with NZ
to buy up land and assets in the agricultural sector. The US is
countering with a TPAA to try to buy up cheap assets in new
technology and services. As NZs economic standing has fallen
in the period since the 80s 100s of thousands of workers have
moved to Australia. Economically speaking the biggest
April-May 2011
influence on the NZ economy is the fact that the NZ economy
is integrated into the Australian economy and increasingly
into the Chinese economy. That is why it helps to start by
thinking of NZ as Australia’s Eastern Territory (because the NZ
state will soon have about as much sovereign autonomy as the
Northern Territory) or China’s Great South Islands, in its
sphere of influence like much of the South Pacific. One could
add that NZ bosses have outsourced our ‘cultural’ – read
entertainment – sphere to Hollywood so that if the TPAA
comes into effect, our creative ideas will become the
intellectual property of Hollywood – hence the capital being
renamed appropriately Wellywood. The only question is
whether workers will remain passive and see NZ slotted into a
Greater Pacific division of labour where Labour and Capital
mobility is unrestrained, or whether workers wake up and rise
up to join the uprising elsewhere to demand basic democratic
rights a living wage, and then find out that they have a social
revolution to make these possible.
Arab Spring
At the moment the Arab revolution is
pinned down by NATO in the West and
Israel to the North East and Saudi to
the West. In Libya NATO's intervention
has co-opted the revolutionary fighters
behind the TNC. Israel is preparing for
its worst nightmare, that the Egyptian
masses split the army and join forces
with the Palestinians. So it is preparing
the ground for a new invasion of Gaza.
Alarmed, Fatah and Hamas factions are
trying to quickly do a 2 state deal to
keep the lid on a new intifada. To
break the stalemate, the Egyptian
revolutionaries have to open the
borders between Egypt and Libya and
Egypt and Gaza. This would bring to
bear the most populous Arab masses in
direct confrontation with US/NATO and
its chief gendarme in the Middle East,
the Zionist state of Israel, and the
Saudis.
But to do this the revolutionaries in Egypt have to renew their
revolution, mobilise the working class in a general strike, split
the army, win over its ranks, remove the dictatorship of the
Mubarak high command, and create a popular militia that can
join forces with the Libyan revolutionaries in the West and
open the gates to Gaza and unite with the Palestinians against
the Zionist regime. The advance of the revolution in this way
would be met by a massive armed intervention by NATO that
would bring the world's workers onto centre stage against
their imperialist ruling classes to defend that revolution.
Revolutionary Trotskyists must seize the time to expose and
defeat the bureaucratic reformist misleaders of the workers.
11
Class Struggle 94
Cuba
Cuba is on the brink of capitalist restoration. Can it be
stopped? One could say that Cuba has dressed up restoration
in the same language as that used for the Chinese model of
'market socialism' e.g. actually existing state capitalism. It
converges with the much vaunted Chavista '21st century
socialism'. This would explain why Cuba is about to complete
a historic counter-revolution by the Chinese method of many
defeats and repressions of workers over the decades and then
sealing the historic defeat by containing the Latin American
workers behind the Bolivarian popular front with Chinese
imperialism. We cannot stress this enough. Chavez and Castro
are part of an 'anti-imperialist' bloc with China and semi-
colonial semi-fascists like Gaddafi and Assad to stop the new
wave of workers uprisings against the global crisis which can
play the critical role of breaking up the popular fronts and the
fake 'market socialism' that ultimately serves imperialism.
(see article on Cuba).
So will the Cuban bureaucracy succeed in completing the
restoration process before the world revolution destroys the
Stalinist/fake Trotskyist barrier and brings a political
revolution to Cuba? It depends on whether the Arab revolution
deepens and spreads into the rest of Africa, into Europe, Asia
and Latin America, to break the strangle hold of the
Stalinist/Menshevik popular front which ties the workers to
imperialism is destroyed. Only if the worlds’ workers break
with the popular fronts, with social democracy, and advance
the international revolution, will Cuban workers win the
support they need to overthrow the Castroite bureaucracy
and take political power to defend workers’ property.
Aotearoa Election Year
The crisis of the NZ semi-colonial economy is one of
restructuring labour and capital assets (see the analysis of
restructuring in Disaster Capitalism Downunder) too meet the
needs of international capital. This means driving down wages
further and offering state assets cheap to international
capitalism. In NZ the international sector of capital
represented by Alan Gibbs and members of the Business
Roundable has grown impatient with the slow pace of market
reforms to create opportunities for profitable investment.
MMP created parties of the centre-right and centre-left that
had to build coalitions that tended towards the centre.
Parties on the left and right moderated their agendas so as
not to lose the centre. That ‘middle NZ’ was the middle class
of self-employed, small business and better paid workers. But
something has changed. ACTs right wing coup is now matched
by the emergence of the Te Mana Party on the left which sees
a return to the open politics of class struggle.
As we have seen since 2008 the global economic crisis has
polarised the capitalist ruling class efforts to solve the crisis
at the expense of the masses of ordinary people, and those
people who are getting angrier and starting to put up a fight.
NZ is not isolated from this growing global class antagonism.
So the centre no longer holds as Brash on the right is boosting
ACTs claim to urgent policy reforms that can restore capitalist
profits by a return to Rogernomics Mk 2, smashing union
power, flogging off state assets, tax cuts for the rich, low
wages, non-existent welfare etc.
Te Mana Party
On the left, the split in the Maori Party along class lines has
seen the launch of Te Mana. Maori Party is left with the rump
April-May 2011
of the anti-worker iwi elites and their patronage system of
hangers on. Te Mana will attract a healthy minority of those
Maori and non-Maori workers who are starting to stand up and
fight the right wing assault on living standards, jobs, the
welfare state, the unions and ownership and control of state
assets. ACT will pull National to the right while Te Mana will
pull Labour to the left. But both will stay firmly committed to
the global capitalist class and its profit system. National
because it represents the NZ capitalists whose profits depend
on further attacks on workers. Labour because its existence is
devoted to promising to extract more productivity from
workers.
So those who genuinely fight to defend the working class in Te
Mana will soon realise that parliament is a bosses’ talk shop
that masks a state machine dedicated to suppress workers.
They will organise outside parliament to build strong,
democratic fighting unions to take on the bosses where it
hurts most, the workplace, by striking, occupying and taking
control of the productive system to produce for need and not
profit. In this they will not be alone as all around the workers
are standing up like the Egyptians, fight back like the
Palestinians, Libyans and Syrians, and opening the
revolutionary road. This creates the opportunity for
revolutionaries to convince the masses that the only road to
freedom is the road to socialism and that there is no ‘half-
way house’ of bourgeois parliament on that road.
Revolutionary Party
While the Arab revolution is the reawakening of the national
revolution, lots of Western Trotskyists have not woken up and
tail the Stalinists and semi-colonial regimes calling for
Constituent Assemblies as democratic ‘half-way houses’ on
the road to socialism. This is to follow the Stalinist stage
theory of national roads to socialism and the anti-imperialist
united front with the national capitalists. This so-called ‘left’
backs ‘progressive’ national capitalist leaders because it has
no faith in the working class as the revolutionary class. It
actively blocks the revolutionary independence of the working
class by locking it into popular fronts with the bourgeoisie.
This is true of the Chavez Bolivarian popular front that ties
the hands of the Latin American masses behind the Chinese
imperialists in the name of ‘21st century socialism’. No
wonder that Chavistas and the Castroites regard the dictators
Kaddafi, Assad and Ahmadinejad as their allies. They are all
bourgeois autocrats who start off as fake ‘socialist’ leaders of
patriotic fronts only to become more and more open servants
of imperialism.
Marxists begin with the revolutionary class, the working class,
and have a program to advance its struggle. A revolutionary
program needs a revolutionary party to implement it in
practice. An international program needs an international
party to unite the struggles of workers all over the world. A
party is only as good as its program. The program is tested in
the hot points of the struggle. That is why we are for the
Permanent Revolution in North Africa and the Middle East
which wins national liberation only by a workers revolution
and workers government in power; for the political revolution
in Cuba and North Korea that overthrows the Stalinist
bureaucracy to stop it becoming a new capitalist class; and
for socialist revolution in all the imperialist countries,
including China, to expropriate the tiny dictatorships of the
bourgeoisie and replaces it with the ‘dictatorship’ of the mass
working class. We stand by this program and are confident it
will stand the critical test in the hands of the revolutionary
proletariat.
12
Class Struggle 94 April-May 2011

Te Mana Party
The Mana Party is the brainchild of the reformist left that sees the time is ripe to challenge Labour and mobilise
against the New Right. Leading players include leader Hone Harawira, Chairman Matt McCarten, Maori lawyer
Annette Sykes, pakeha radical Sue Bradford and pakeha activist John Minto. They are all democratic socialists or
reformists who see social change being won through trade union and parliamentary struggle. They see that there
is a rising tide of opposition to the NACTs but no Labour Party fightback. There is a danger that young workers,
especially Maori youth who face terrible unemployment, family breakdown, alienation and self-destruction, will
bear the brunt of the rabid extreme rightwing agenda that another NACT government will unleash on the working
class.
The Mana party is the ideal vehicle to rally workers both that paints Mana as a radical breakthrough in NZ politics.
Maori and non-Maori against these anti-worker attacks.
Harawira’s mana with Maori workers survives despite his Te Mana has already got several strong political demands
taking his grassroots activism into parliament. Harawira including the (re) nationalising of power, water and housing;
organised the 2004 Foreshore & Seabed (F&S) Hikoi. It was a an end to asset sales; and end to the 90 Day Fire at Will Act;
great move but instead of staying on the streets it headed for and a Hone Heke tax (sometimes called financial transactions
parliament. It got co-opted by Turia who resigned from tax) that would replace GST. On the face of it these are anti-
Labour and was used her by-election victory to launch the neoliberal demands. They are more against the new right’s
Maori Party (MP) to join forces with National to defeat market politics than against the capitalist system itself. They
Labour's F&S Act. At the time we argued that instead of going are similar to 'anti-capitalist' demands that try to make the
to parliament Harawira should have taken his fight into market serve socialism. Many of today's left reformists look to
occupations of the F&S China’s brand of ‘market
that could be supported by socialism’ as an
Maori and non-Maori alternative to capitalism.
workers thus advancing the For example the Castro
unity and strength of the brothers and Hugo
labour movement. After Chavez are seen as
nearly 3 years of sitting in building ‘market
the anti-worker/ anti- socialism’ influenced by
Maori NACT/MP govt China, though Chavez
Harawira finally reached calls it ‘21st century
breaking point and socialism’ and the Castro
resigned. His break with brothers see it as
the MP and forming Te defending Cuba's 20th
Mana to force a Te Tai century 'socialism'.
Tokerau by-election,
created the opportunity The problem is that this
for leftwing reformists to perspective is unreal as
act. China’s ‘market
socialism’ has nothing to
Harawira has a history of activism as a Maori nationalist. This do with socialism. The re-introduction of the market to China
led him into the Maori party where Maori nationalism was the led to the restoration of capitalism. China is now a state
uniting force. But Te Mana has appeal to non-Maori youth and capitalist and imperialist country. In Cuba the re-introduction
other activists too. Has Harawira realised that Maoridom is of the market is at the point of restoring capitalism. Only a
divided along class lines that he must represent Maori workers major upsurge of Latin American workers can stop this and
against the MP representation of iwi capitalism? Perhaps he the defeat of the Cuban revolution. The common theme of
now agrees that only a united working class can advance the 'market socialists' is that it can be introduced from 'above' by
interests of Maori workers. This realisation would sit well with a bureaucratic or bourgeois leadership rather than an
that of Matt McCarten, the Maori President of Unite union, independent working class from 'below'. So long as Mana Party
and Mike Treen, the pakeha National Secretary of Unite. is led by left reformists, its focus will be on returning activists
Unite under their leadership has recruited around 8000 young like Harawira, Bradford and Minto as MPs to pressure Labour
lowpaid workers in the last 5 years many of them young Maori and the Greens to the left, rather than a working class
and Pasifika as well as recent immigrants. movement that challenges capitalism from below.

Te Mana is the ideal vehicle to project Unite’s politics into
parliament. McCarten is a tried and true politician who took
the Alliance into a decade of parliamentary dead end deals
but still has huge mana with political activists. Mike Treen, a
long-time supporter of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, argues
that Te Mana is a progressive step towards the overthrow of
NZ capitalism. He offers a more hard left alternative to the
dominant parliamentary focus of Mana seeing socialist
revolution as the ultimate goal of its program. Treen
therefore offers to young activists turning left the scenario
What is progressive about Te Mana is that its program will
appeal to many angry workers, especially youth like those we
see rising up in North Africa, the Middle East and Europe.
They will see it as a forum and movement that can defend the
working class against the right wing attacks of National and
Act parties. But they will find that so long as Te Mana limits
itself to putting pressure on parliament that it cannot win any
major gains, or be able to defend what gains have been won
in the past by strikes and protests. All those historic victories
were forced on parliament by struggles outside parliament.
13
Class Struggle 94 April-May 2011

To get a living wage and benefit and to create jobs for all Te
Mana will have to build a party that is capable of taking the
fight to the capitalist class directly by rebuilding the unions as
fighting, democratic organs capable of strikes, occupations,
and defence committees, and ultimately capable of creating
a workers government and planned socialist economy.
• Propose that the Te Mana Party develops as a
democratic, activist party whose main base is in the
Maori and non-Maori working class. Members of
Parliament act as the representatives of the Party
and not its executive.

We will participate in Te Mana Party so long as we are free to
promote our revolutionary program and argue for the
following proposals within the democratic norms of the
Constitution.
• Propose that the Te Mana Party Constitution states
its purpose is anti-capitalist and pro-socialist and
that its objective is a society in which production is
cooperative and for need and not profit.
• Propose that internal democracy is based on an
annual Congress where decisions including elections
of leaders are based on votes delegated
proportionately to representatives of recognised
constituent groups such as Maori, migrants, youth,
women, unions, etc

Cuba for Sale

Cuba is on the final throes of capitalist restoration. The 6th Cuban Communist Party Congress held in April 2011
resolved to make major changes for the Cuban economy to overcome its stagnation. They represent a wholesale
embrace of the capitalist market. No longer limited to the ‘international sector’ where foreign corporates have
made joint ventures with state corporates for years, but for the whole economy. Cubans are now being
encouraged to adopt market practices such as buying state property as private property and employing wage
workers. Thus the capitalist market will replace state allocation of resources as the main mechanism of the
economy. Marxists analyze this as a shift from state planning to the law of value, and hence a shift from a
Workers State, albeit deformed from its birth in 1959, to a Capitalist State.

The Cuban bureaucracy has and found that the new

ruled in place of workers, market relations with
and thus deformed the imperialism were much more
character of the workers lucrative for the bureaucracy
state since the revolution. It than trying to defend the
has played a counter- planned economy. So it now
revolutionary role in the seeks to complete the
class struggle since it process and turn itself into a
became dependent on the new bourgeois class. The
Soviet Union in the early April Cuban CP Congress
1960s. Cuba modelled itself marks a decisive break from
on that Stalinist the revolution and the
Degenerated Workers State sealing of the capitalist
and its theory of ‘socialism counter-revolution as a world
in one country’ cutting itself historic defeat of the
off from the workers in the international working class.
rest of Latin America and Africa where it consistently backed
the national bourgeois leaderships against popular anti-
imperialist struggles.
Following China’s ‘capitalist road’

The Cuban bureaucracy, desperate to become a new

To cite one glaring example, Castro visited Chile to back
bourgeoisie has ‘sold’ capitalist restoration using the same
Allende’s parliamentary road to socialism against the
language as that used by the Chinese CP to cover its
independent armed struggle of the organized workers. The
restoration of capitalism - 'market socialism'. China
Pinochet coup was the result. Despite its loyalty to the Soviet
underwent a deformed workers revolution in 1949 where the
Union the parasite bureaucrats of the Cuban CP learned the
bourgeoisie were overthrown and expropriated, but where the
lesson from its collapse that workers’ property could no
bureaucracy usurped the working class to rule ‘Communist
longer allow it to extract its privileges from workers labor.
China’ as a privileged caste living off workers labor. But the
But to avoid the fate of the USSR which opened itself up to
planned economy underwent long term stagnation due to its
capitalism by means of rapid ‘shock treatment’, Cuba looked
isolation from the world economy and its failure to develop
towards China’s gradual restoration of capitalism. It began to
the forces of production.
open a sector of the economy to foreign private investment
14
Class Struggle 94
A faction of the bureaucracy ‘the capitalist roaders’ took
power and opened up the economy to the capitalist market.
Resistance to restoration was decisively suppressed at
Tiananmen in 1989. In 1992 at the 14th Chinese CP Congress
and at the political committee meeting that immediately
followed the Chinese bureaucracy formally took the decision
to restore capitalism and the law of value to organize the
economy in place of the state plan. The CCP ‘sold’ this
fateful decision as ‘market socialism’ to disguise the end of
the Deformed Workers State and the emergence of a new
capitalist state.
Since that time China has reintroduced capitalism in the
whole of the economy. It encouraged imperialist powers to
play a central role in revolutionizing production in the export
sectors, rapidly accumulated capital in the state sector and
adopted new technology. Today China is an emerging
imperialist economy now recognized not only as an economic
rival to the US and EU imperialist powers, but also a political
rival that has become a model for many semi-colonial
countries to break away from the domination of US and EU
powers. This is clearly the case in Cuba where the Castoite CP
since the demise of the Soviet Union has looked to China as
the ‘socialist’ alternative to US imperialism, and thus a
successful model for Cuba to follow along its own ‘capitalist
road’.
Chavista Popular Front
Cuba’s ‘capitalist road’ converges with the much vaunted
Chavista '21st century socialism'. This is the key to the defeat
of Latin American workers which is necessary to allow Cuba to
complete its historic counter-revolution. Chavez’ Bolivarian
revolution in Venezuela (and which leads the ALBA countries
including Bolivia and Ecuador) has trapped Latin American
workers behind a popular front with China. Chavez famously
talks of walking hand in hand with China towards ‘21st century
socialism’. It is the counter-revolutionary role of the Chavista
popular front in Latin America that allows Cuba to complete a
historic counter-revolution by the Chinese method of many
defeats and repressions of workers over the decades and then
to complete that historic defeat. It follows that if the Cuban
counter-revolution is to be defeated before it is altogether
victorious, it is necessary to smash the Bolivarian popular
front. We cannot stress this enough. Chavez and Castro are
part of an 'anti-imperialist' bloc with China and semi-colonial
semi-fascists like Gaddafi and Assad to stop the new wave of
workers’ uprisings against the global crisis-uprising which can
play the critical role of breaking up the popular fronts and the
fake 'market socialism' that ultimately serves imperialism.
So will the Cuban bureaucracy succeed in completing the
restoration process before the world revolution destroys the
Stalinist/fake Trotskyist barrier to socialist revolution in Latin
America and brings a political revolution to Cuba? It depends
on whether the Arab revolution deepens and spreads into the
rest of Africa, into Europe, Asia and Latin America, where the
strangle hold of the Stalinist/Menshevik popular front which
ties the workers to imperialism is destroyed, and the
international revolution advances to victory. Of course this
means first and foremost a program for political revolution
even at this late stage in Cuba.
Transitional Program (continued)
April-May 2011
Reality is complex and Marxists know that simplifying it
unnecessarily results in tragic outcomes for the toiling
masses. We are not 'objectivists.' We do not believe the 1938
program of Political Revolution against the usurpers of the
workers' political power, the Stalinist parasite bureaucracy,
will suffice in the Cuban case to produce a healthy workers
state on the developmental path to socialism and
communism. Methodologically speaking the "Transitional
Program" prepared us to analyze whatever situation would
come the workers' way. But this is not at all to say that it
gave us an exhaustive catalogue of historical possibilities, as
some sectarians would have us believe.
As the capitalist restoration has been underway for some time
and has now, with the firing of a half million workers, it has
gathered speed and force, increasingly the Transitional
Demands of the program for socialist revolution are
objectively called for. As the Castroite bureaucracy goes
about transforming itself into a Chinese-model 'red'
bourgeoisie, the Cuban working class must see in itself its own
best hope for reversing this historic defeat by overthrowing
the usurpers of the workers' political power and 'expropriating
the expropriators' of the social wealth, of the labor of the
revolutionary generations. Today combined tasks of the
political revolution (against the bureaucracy) and social
revolution (to defend social property, seize capitalist
property, and put it under workers’ control) are on the
agenda. To accomplish these tasks moreover, they need more
than hope; they need a vanguard internationalist workers
party of their own making, a new International, a World Party
of Socialism, based on the 1938 Transitional Program, one
which never subordinates their well being or future to alien
class interests.
The Cuban working class remains the best hope in reversing
this historic defeat by overthrowing the Castroist bureaucracy
which is on the point of transforming itself into a copy of the
Chinese ‘red’ bourgeoisie. Armed with a revolutionary
workers' internationalist program, the Cuban workers need to
mobilize and rally behind them the Latin American masses
currently fenced in behind the Chavista Popular Front. Here
we have a program for socialist revolution that must break
from the popular front, exposing its leaders as bourgeois
Bonapartists who while posing left in the anti-imperialist
fight, are actually the agents of imperialism. No better
weapon to explode the Chavista popular front is the exposure
of its complicity in defending the dictatorships in North Africa
and the Middle East. Why does Chavez defend Gaddafi and
Assad the two most murderous dictatorships posing as
‘socialist’? Because Chavez recognises in their bloody
suppression of the masses, precisely what steps he will have
to take to repress the masses when it becomes clear to them
that he too is the agent of the imperialist bourgeoisie!
The role of revolutionaries today then is to awaken the youth
vanguard who are leading the revolution in North Africa and
the Middle East, with our program for Permanent Revolution,
and to fight for the unity of this vanguard with the workers
organized in the base of the unions, to fight for socialist
revolution, defeating by armed struggle not only the
dictatorships imposed by imperialism, and the facade of
‘democratic’ imperialism represented by social democracy in
the imperialist countries, but also and most critically, the
death trap of the Chavista popular front that ties the hands of
the vanguard of the revolution behind Bonapartists whose role
is to prepare for the full on fascist reaction when it becomes
clear to imperialism that it faces a revolutionary challenge to
its class rule.
15
Class Struggle 94
Zionism: A roadmap to unending conflict
A Zionist Youth
Having been raised in a Zionist household, going to Hebrew
school, buying memorial trees in Israel as a youth for
grandparents as they passed away, being taught that the
whole world hates us and that Israel is our only safe refuge,
being hated as a Jew-boy by my Catholic home town co-youth
for "killing their lord", being finally accepted in 1967 when
Israel showed it "had some balls" (meaning mine must also be
hanging to the floor). I have experience with anti-Semitism in
the concrete form of boots in the ribs and a metal lunch box
smashed against this "faggot-
Jew-boy's" face, so the
Zionist claim that Israel was
our last refuge and that the
world hates us was my
experience as a youth
growing up in 1960’s
American suburbia. Since
then I have seen and fought
with American flag waving,
swastika tattooed,
jackbooted wearing Nazi
thugs in the streets of San
Francisco, Walnut Creek,
Boston and Berkeley so I
know in a way only bruised
knuckles and the taste of
blood can teach one of what I
speak.
A seminal part of my training
as a Zionist youth was that
Israel was "a land without
people-for a people without land" we could point to Mark
Twain who visited the area and reported that it was empty,
barren, desolate and uninhabited. So why shouldn't it be ours?
And just last weekend as we listened to and discussed the
Prime Minister’s tongue lashing of Obama for stepping out of
line on the 1967 boarders issue ,my father reminded me of
Twain's observations in Innocents Abroad. But what is rarely
mentioned about Mark Twain’s trip is: “Palestine’s arable
land is only 17% of its total area”, that “Mark Twain visited in
the middle of the hot Mediterranean summer”, and that
“Mark Twain’s visit was brief by all accounts, and only
encompassed the areas that were cited in the Bible.” Indeed
Twain’s comments about Greece were quite similar to those
about the Holy Land; one could get an impression that Greece
also was abandoned to the ghosts of Zeus and Hera.
The Israeli hero in 1967 was General Moshe Dayan a man of
impeccable Zionist credentials. Let’s hear what he has to say
about how Israel was settled. “Jewish villages were built in
the place of Arab villages. You do not even know the names
of these Arab villages, and I do not blame you because
geography books no longer exist, not only do the books not
exist, the Arab villages are not there either.”
Well that contradicts the rhetoric (and the Zionist youth
training received at Hebrew school and Hebrew summer camp
where we sang the Hatikva); so there were people there? Who
the hell were they and what were they doing there? How did
April-May 2011
we get rid of them? Could this be true? Not possible, we are
the dispossessed coming home not them. So I found the book
Righteous Victims by Benny Morris a highly regarded Zionist
historian.
Morris draws his own subjective pro-Israel conclusions but his
book is full of powerful historic observations:
"Most of the settlers who came in the First and Second Aliyot
lived, at least for a time, as illegal residents. They entered as
tourists or pilgrims and overstayed their permits, or they
entered illegally." (p. 41 Morris)
"A land without people for a
people without a land" was the
Zionist slogan-originating,
curiously, not with Herzl or one
of the forebears, but in Lord
Shaftesbury's memoirs, in 1854,
and recycled by the Zionist
writer Israel Zangwill in an
article in 1901. Ahad Ha'Am, a
leading Eastern European
essayist, opened many Jewish
eyes when he wrote in 1891,
after a three month visit to
Palestine: "We abroad are used
to believing that Eretz Yisrael
is now almost totally desolate,
a desert that is not
sowed....But in truth that is
not the case. Throughout the
country it is difficult to find
fields that are not sowed. Only
sand dunes and stony
mountains...are not
cultivated." (p. 42 ibid)
But the arriving Jews had multiple problems as the Zionist
project commenced. Yitzhak Epstein a Palestinian Jew came
to Basel to address a Zionist gathering in 1905: "He had been
troubled by the eviction of the Druze tenant farmers at
Medulla in 1896. For the time, he said, there was no "Arab
movement in the national or political sense in Palestine," but,
he implied, one might develop in the not-so-distant future:
"Among the difficult questions connected to the idea of the
renaissance of our people on its soil there is one which is
equal to all others: the question of our relations with the
Arabs... We have forgotten one small matter: There is in our
beloved land an entire nation, which has occupied it for
hundreds of years and has never thought to leave it"" (p. 57
ibid.)
How did the newly arriving Jews (the olim) see the local
population? "...as primitive, dishonest, fatalistic, lazy,
savage-much as European colonists viewed the natives
elsewhere in Asia or Africa." (pg. 43 ibid.)
Not to belabor the point but even today's historians of Zionism
cannot deny the primary source documentation. The founding
of Israel was based on a lie sold to Jews across Europe who
were being persecuted and “the land of milk and honey”
sounded like heaven in the face of pogroms of the East and
the Nazi onslaught and genocide that would follow; even if
the concept of a land of “milk and honey” contradicts the
16
Class Struggle 94
concept of a barren, desolate untended expanse.
Were there people there? Yes. The McCarthy (Columbia U.
press 1990 The Population of Palestine) showed the Non
Jewish population in 1877 to have been 426,908 or 97% of the
population at the time 13,942 or 3% were Jewish by 1946, 60
some odd years after the Zionist project began there were
1,339,763 Non-Jewish Palestinians or 69% of the population
and 602,586 or 31% were Jews. In the post 1949 era the
Jewish population in the area swelled immediately
outnumbering the Palestinian.
Who owned the land?
At first the Jewish National fund bought up land from the
Ottoman land lords from whom the local Palestinians rented
eking out a serf like existence. Of course some land was
wholly owned by the locals. But we know that land ownership
is really just a question of power relations over property
distribution. The Ottoman Empire had no more right to the
land of the local people whom
they controlled than say the Tsar
had to the land on which the
serfs worked or the Southern
Slave Plantation owners had to
"their" land. Those working the
land and dispossessed are the
fountain from which the
democratic revolution for land
redistribution springs, just as it
upset the ancien regime across
Europe the land question is the
national question and it had yet
to be resolved in the land which
the Zionists were buying from
the landlord empire which (if it
were to remain) would have
faced the wrath of the rising Arab national revolution. Instead
the Jewish National Fund bought the problem of the
unresolved tasks of the democratic revolution in the Palestine
which would ultimately be directed at who ever got left
holding the bag, the Ottoman were defeated, the English
knew when it was time to release the hot potato and the
Zionist project outpaced the advance of the nationalist
consciousness and organization of the Arabs. Thus the
juggernaut!
Remember Epstein at the Basel meeting in 1905, he "...took
the Zionists severely to task for purchasing land from effendis
and then pushing out the poor tenants, and he asserted,
provocatively , that Palestine in fact belonged to both
peoples: "We are making a great psychological error with
regard to a great, assertive and jealous people. While we feel
a deep love for the land and our forefathers, we forget that
the nation who lives in it today has a sensitive heart and a
loving soul. The Arab, like every man, is tied to his native
land with strong bonds.”” (Morris, p. 57)
Either this was a "land without people - for a people without
land" or as the numbers and the land transfer records show,
the land was colonized by many illegal immigrants who then
found a way to bring in their families and friends buying up
land from the landlord class of a dying and soon to be
vanquished empire, you can't have it both ways.
The record will show that in the early years the Jewish
immigrants were not fit or capable of doing the strenuous
work in the land they came to own. Even on the early socialist
April-May 2011
kibbutz much of the manual work would be done by hiring the
very Arab workers who had lost their land. Has it occurred to
the Zionist that the modern conflict between the Jew and the
Arab in historic Palestine/Erez Yisrael has a material basis in
the dispossession of the land, first by purchase then by driving
a people off their land? Of course not, it is impossible for one
who derives the benefit of an oppressive act of annexation
and subjugation to see it as anything other than justified.
What the Zionists did not want to see is the universal truth
that when an entire people progressively lose their land, are
changed from a self sustaining farming people into a class of
workers for hire with nothing to sell but their labor power,
when their families are driven apart and half are forced into
refugee status for generations, human beings will resist, fight
back and will continue to do so until they are treated justly or
you can terrorize them into total submission. These are the
objective facts, one can go into subjective apoplexy reading
this but all rational people agree on what the historic record
is. Over sixty years ago some 600-700,000 Palestinians, by no
fault of their own, became refugees when they lost their
land, and as General Dayan
reminded us, their villages were
bulldozed right off the map.
Historic maps with demarcated
Jewish and Palestinian Territories
are exactly what Dayan wanted
to erase from history. I guarantee
if you went to Hebrew school like
I did you were never shown maps
like these.
The question of the
occupied territory
For Zionists like my father there
are no Palestinians, the land was
empty when "we" arrived; there is already a Palestinian State
which is Jordan; the early Jewish fighters were not illegal
immigrants and terrorists illegally attacking the British
mandate, they were freedom fighters; if there are refugees it
is the fault of the other Arab nations for goading the refugees
into voluntarily fleeing; we bought the land fair and square
and when they attacked us we created defensive boarders (it
just happens that we control the water, and have cut up the
Palestinian contiguous areas into Bantustans); the wall is
necessary and when they stop sending over bombers there
will be no need for it and all the defensive border checks,
road blocks and such. That these population control
mechanisms take place all over the West Bank cannot be
denied yet the true Zionist denies that this is an occupation.
So the question is who is actually terrorizing whom, what are
the real consequences of the armed conflict between the
occupied and the occupier.
Looking at statistics on the death of civilians the numbers
from B'Tselem, an Israeli human rights group and Remember
These Children, examining fatal violence between the
Palestinians and the Israelis has shown it has been
disproportionate. Since Sept 29, 2000 until Oct 2010 at least
6,430 Palestinians and 1,084 Israelis have been killed. Among
children 124 killed were Israeli while 1,452 were Palestinian.
Of the civilians killed 731 are Israeli while 3,535+ are the
cited as Palestinian dead. Where did the people die? 54.1% of
the Israelis killed were killed on their own territory while
98.9% of the Palestinians killed were killed in their own area,
the occupied territories. Conversely 45.9% of the Israelis who
17
Class Struggle 94
were killed were killed on others' land while 1.1% of the
Palestinians killed were killed on others' land. These numbers
are revealing of the nature of the conflict and the brutality
under which the Palestinian people suffer and other innocents
suffer. Until the rights of the Palestinian people are attained
there can be no peace. You cannot dispossess a people and
keep them in refugee camps on your borders, oppressed,
exploited, and expect there to be peace.
After saying all this to close without pointing to a solution
would be disrespectful to the reader. So although that is a
major discussion in and of itself what follows is the short
version.
What is to be Done?
There can be no peace while historic Palestine is occupied
and the refugees are denied the right of return. Democracy
cannot exist for the Jews in the area and be denied the
Arabs. The Zionist state is a dependent state and sub
imperialist acting as a foot hold in the Middle East for
Western/US/UK imperialism. It is not the much touted
“Democracy” that we (US Imperialism) love; it is the real
estate as it applies to military security in particular of oil
routes. The entire power of imperialism is thus arrayed at
keeping the Palestinian subjugated hence the annual billions
of tax funding going to the Zionist military.
Behind the Palestinian conundrum is what is facing
imperialism today across the Near and Middle East, the
unresolved tasks of the national revolution of the Arab people
Europe Rising?
The revolution will not be twittered says a facebook friend. To which we answer: #tahrir #spanishrevolution
#Libya #Yemen #Syria #italianrevolution #frenchrevolution #palestine etc. What is happening in Spain, Italy,
France and elsewhere in Europe, is the opening of a social revolution promoted by social media, in part inspired by
the pro-democracy revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East. All of these revolutions have their roots in the
resistance of the labour movement to capitalist austerity coming up against dictatorships as in the Middle East and
North Africa (MENA), or the failure of institutionalised social democracy to stop austerity, as in Spain, Portugal
and Greece
This has led to the mobilising
of unemployed and educated
youth outside the unions by
means of facebook and
twitter against these
austerity regimes. In MENA
the unions have been
outlawed or repressed by the
dictatorships. In Europe the
unions have been tied to
social democracy to act as
barriers to mass
mobilisations. Ostensibly,
these uprisings take the form
of democratic revolutions
rejecting the political system
and main political parties
that are ‘owned’ by the banks, or by corrupt dictators. There
is a common opposition to being mere ‘commodities – bought
and sold by the banks’ with no political rights. A moment’s
reflection shows that rejection of fraudulent politics ‘owned’
by banks and corrupt politicians is objectively targeted at the
April-May 2011
issues of national independence from imperialist (IMF/World
Bank, JP Morgan) control, land distribution, democracy,
freedom, the right to a job, and other economic rights are
today inspiring the Arab people more than Al-Qaeda ever
could. But the national capitalist class of these countries and
in Palestine are too weak and too dependent on imperialism’s
finance and market to carry out the tasks which in Europe and
North America were carried out by an emerging and growing
capitalist class between 1680’s and 1880’s. Therefore the
tasks of the Democratic-Bourgeois revolution will fall to the
working class to resolve.
It is the workers’ revolution which can secure freedom for
Palestine and ensure the Jewish workers and the Jewish
people safety within and integrated and multi-ethnic secular
democratic workers’ state. Jews who accept the Palestinians’
right to return and who join in making the workers’ revolution
will build a democratic workers’ state which recognizes the
cultural and religious rights of all while providing economic
planning by the working classes to assure economic justice
which is the only way to end the blood between the sons and
daughters of Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael; a family broken
asunder by first slave relations then the Roman imperium and
ultimately by today’s super power US imperialism. If the
Jewish workers in historic Palestine cannot break from their
capitalist overlords and ally themselves with the Palestinian
right to Self Determination and fight for a democratic workers
state they allow the continuation of the siege mentality of
Zionist colonialism, and peace will not be possible.
heart of capitalism at a time
when to survive it has to force
young workers to work for
slave wages to pay for its
structural crisis. We can
therefore see that the
content, if not the form, of
these uprisings are in fact the
opening shots of potentially
anti-capitalist and socialist
revolutions. This seems to be
taken for granted on the
streets and is reported in the
mainstream media. What is
not understood, is that these
revolutions, to meet the
demands of the youth and
other working people, must become openly socialist to
succeed, and failing that they will subside into defeat and
worse, counter-revolution.
18
Class Struggle 94
So what has to happen to make these revolutions succeed?
There are many competing theories and programs on offer
each putting forth a program for success but we can roughly
put them into three categories, liberal, radical and Marxist.
Liberal Reform
If we start with the liberal reformists, their program asks for
no more than making capitalists pay their fair share of
austerity rather than imposing it upon the youth and other
workers. Their understanding of capitalism is at the level of
distribution. They don’t want to be bought and sold by the
banks, but do not object to fair wages paid by fair employers.
So these street reformers have rejected the institutionalised
reformists such as the Spanish Socialist Workers Party, who
they see as ‘owned’ by the banks, but they are not opposed
to the masses creating new
parties or backing more radical
parties, to challenge the excess
power of the finance sector.
They are not anti-capitalists.
This is the stage that the
Egyptian revolutionaries have
reached. They are negotiating
with the Supreme Command of
the Armed Forces (SCAF) to
prevent the old parties, notably
the PSA of Mubarak, and the
Muslim Brotherhood, from
dominating politics and open
the elections to the new forces
for change. Its reformist
objectives embrace both
secular and liberal Islam
currents. These street reformists will quickly find their liberal
assumptions will be put to the test as they come up against
the class nature of the state which is to manage exploitative
class relations on behalf of the ruling class. So if the European
uprisings that we are now seeing spreading from Spain and
Portugal to Greece and France etc are in part inspired by the
MENA revolutions, then the reformists will quickly learn the
lessons of those revolutions as the struggle to make even the
most minimal changes to the existing ‘system’. The
reformists will be radicalised as anti-capitalists.
Radical Reform
The second grouping is of the anti-capitalist radicals who
speak of the need to make a revolution to overcome capitalist
exploitation and oppression but without taking power. This
includes a range of modernist political currents from
anarchist, autonomist to indigenous and Islam. They view
really existing capitalism as exploitative at the level of
exchange. To get profits bosses pay workers less than the
value of their labour. The state is totally complicit in its legal
backing of this unequal exchange. Typically they think they
can defeat the power of the autocratic state by non-violent
mass movements that refuse to play by the rules of existing
institutions. Therefore to break with the state and the law
mass resistance is necessary in refusing to work as wage
slaves. The state will try to enforce this refusal to work by
bringing out the police etc, but resistance on the street and
workplace will destroy the state’s legitimacy so its moral
authority will dissolve and with it the employers ability to
enforce unequal exchange.
April-May 2011
The pitfalls of this radicalism all flow from its exchange
analysis. The masses cannot impose a radical reform that
equalises exchange without a social revolution that means
overthrowing the capitalist state. The capitalists and their
state are not constrained by a morality that acknowledges
unequal exchange. They think they have the total right to
impose their property rights on workers and to force them to
work, and will use the state to smash resistance that is not
organised as a revolutionary power capable of defeating
capitalist state power in an armed struggle for socialism. The
danger of radical anti-capitalism is that won’t learn these
lessons until it has been defeated. On the other hand, the
uprisings create the conditions for intense ideological debate
among radicals, socialists and Marxists which can rapidly
apply the historic lessons and promote a program for
revolutionary socialism.
Marxist Revolution
While the liberals think that
capitalism can be reformed
to produce a fair distribution
of income, and radicals think
that capitalism can be
reformed to produce equal
exchange of value, Marxists
understand that capitalism
is based on fundamentally
unequal production
relations that have to be
overthrown before social
equality is possible. But this
is not a consciousness that
can be arrived at
spontaneously by camping in the city square or even by
heated ideological debates. Capitalism is able to hide its
exploitation at the point of production by turning production
relations on their head as exchange relations which makes it
seem that individuals can be made equal by getting paid the
full value of commodities they produce. Marx called this
commodity fetishism because instead of labour-time being
seen as the measure of value, value now appeared to be
inherent in the commodities themselves. Marx discovered that
while workers got paid the full value when they sold their
labour power for a wage, that particular ‘queer’ commodity is
able to produce more value than its own value.
The result is the expropriation of surplus value from the
working class in the production process. Surplus value is the
source of profits, and when insufficient surplus value is
produced profits fall. When profits fall capital is not invested
in production but in speculation in existing values. This causes
price bubbles in excess of values that must go bust. Capitalist
crisis therefore begins at the point of production not in the
banks which must go bust when the speculative bubbles bust.
Thus the role of Marxist revolutionaries in the revolutions that
have begun in MENA and Europe is to critique liberal and
radical reformist politics as unable to confront the basic
cause of capitalist crisis and austerity – capitalist social
relations and the state which exists to reproduce and
enforce those relations. Marxists explain what causes the
‘outrage’ and ‘indignity’ and also what must be done to
eliminate that cause by means of socialist revolution.
Outrage>uprisings>class consciousness>revolution!
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Class Struggle 94
What We Fight For
Overthrow Capitalism
Historically, capitalism expanded world-wide to free
much of humanity from the bonds of feudal or tribal
society, and developed the economy, society and
culture to a new higher level. But it could only do this
by exploiting the labour of the productive classes to
make its profits. To survive, capitalism became
increasingly destructive of "nature" and humanity. In
the early 20th century it entered the epoch of
imperialism in which successive crises unleashed wars,
revolutions and counter-revolutions. Today we fight to
end capitalism’s wars, famine, oppression and
injustice, by mobilising workers to overthrow their own
ruling classes and bring to an end the rotten,
exploitative and oppressive society that has exceeded
its use-by date.
Fight for Socialism
By the 20th century, capitalism had created the pre-
conditions for socialism –a world-wide working class and
modern industry capable of meeting all our basic needs.
The potential to eliminate poverty, starvation, disease
and war has long existed. The October Revolution
proved this to be true, bringing peace, bread and land
to millions. But it became the victim of the combined
assault of imperialism and Stalinism. After 1924 the
USSR, along with its deformed offspring in Europe,
degenerated back towards capitalism. In the absence of
a workers political revolution, capitalism was restored
between 1990 and 1992. Vietnam and China then
followed. In the 21sst century only Cuba and North
Korea survive as degenerate workers states. We
unconditionally defend these states against capitalism
and fight for political revolution to overthrow the
bureaucracy as part of world socialism.
Defend Marxism
While the economic conditions for socialism exist
today, standing between the working class and
socialism are political, social and cultural barriers.
They are the capitalist state and bourgeois ideology and
its agents. These agents claim that Marxism is dead and
capitalism need not be exploitative. We say that
Marxism is a living science that explains both
capitalism’s continued exploitation and its attempts to
hide class exploitation behind the appearance of
individual "freedom" and "equality". It reveals how and
why the reformist, Stalinist and centrist misleaders of
the working class tie workers to bourgeois ideas of
nationalism, racism, sexism and equality. Such false
beliefs will be exploded when the struggle against the
inequality, injustice, anarchy and barbarism of
capitalism in crisis, led by a revolutionary Marxist
party, produces a revolutionary class-consciousness.
April-May 2011
For a Revolutionary Party
The bourgeois and its agents condemn the Marxist party
as totalitarian. We say that without a democratic and a
centrally organised party there can be no revolution.
We base our beliefs on the revolutionary tradition of
Bolshevism and Trotskyism. Such a party, armed with a
transitional program, forms a bridge that joins the daily
fight to defend all the past and present gains won from
capitalism, to the victorious socialist revolution.
Defensive struggles for bourgeois rights and freedoms,
for decent wages and conditions, will link up the
struggles of workers of all nationalities, genders,
ethnicities and sexual orientations, bringing about
movements for workers control, political strikes and
the arming of the working class, as necessary steps to
workers' power and the smashing of the bourgeois
state. Along the way, workers will learn that each new
step is one of many in a long march to revolutionise
every barrier put in the path to the victorious
revolution.
Fight for Communism
Communism stands for the creation of a classless,
stateless society beyond socialism that is capable of
meeting all human needs. Against the ruling class lies
that capitalism can be made "fair" for all; that nature
can be "conserved"; that socialism and communism are
"dead"; we raise the red flag of communism to keep
alive the revolutionary tradition of the' Communist
Manifesto of 1848, the Bolshevik-led October
Revolution; the Third Communist International until
1924, the revolutionary Fourth International up to 1940
before its collapse into centrism. We fight to build a
new, Fifth, Communist International, as a world party
of socialism capable of leading workers to a victorious
struggle for socialism.
Class Struggle is the bi-Monthly paper of the
Communist Workers’ Group of New
Zealand/Aotearoa, in a Liaison Committee
with Humanist Workers for Revolutionary
Socialism.
Online at: http://redrave.blogspot.com
Phone 0064 0272800080
Email cwg006@yahoo.com
http://communistworker.blogspot.com/
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