State Houses for All!

Tenants protesting NACT government selling state houses in Tamaki a working class community in Auckland City, New Zealand.

The NACTs (National and ACT) are making a major push to sell off the state housing stock to developers, and pretending that the private providers of “social housing” will meet the need for affordable housing. Rubbish! The NACTs are kicking working class communities like Tamaki out of their houses and selling off the valuable land to their property developer mates as a ‘market solution’ to housing.

For the NACTs workers should pay out of their wages for housing in the market. Where slave wages mean workers cannot afford market rents the state relies on private charities and Maori trusts to step in.

Labour’s answer is to promise to subsidise private ‘affordable’ houses for $400k that no working class family on the minimum or even median wage can afford. The Greens promise more state houses but their middle class focus is on affordable, sustainable housing which includes more private ownership.

Mana offers to build many more state houses, but it will allow tenants to buy them! It also wants government to pay for cheap $200k houses for sale. Hone Harawira also seems to approve of Maori Trusts buying state houses in Tamaki and shifting them up to Kaitaia. So far this Trust has taken nine houses from Tamaki tenants. Hone got arrested for opposing the eviction of Tamaki state housing tenants. Is he now backing the selling off of state houses to Maori Trusts?

So it looks like there is no political party that stands on the principle of affordable state houses as a basic right to workers as part of a living wage. A major social gain that was won by workers in the 1930s depression is being destroyed and with it any possibility of workers achieving a living social wage.
What is the social wage?

NZ’s health, education, welfare and social services provided through the State are all part of the social wage. The social wage is heath, education and housing paid for out of taxation that supplements the market wage as ‘Working for Families’ does.

However, none of the political parties will tell you that the social wage is really just returning to workers part of the surplus value their labour power creates which is taken off them as profits and taxes. The buying power of the market wage plus social wage equals the real wage. So the sale of state houses is yet another cut to the social wage and therefore the real wage of NZ workers!

Social Housing providers – will be picking up the deferred maintenance and development that is required (by the state) to house the NZ population. We do not accept the “do gooder” social housing trusts taking over from the NACT government.

This divides the working class among those who are eligible under this trust scheme or that trust scheme, and those who miss out.

We say: No Sales! Not for $1 not for $0!
No social housing take-over! 
No tenants buying our houses! 
No dividing the working class!

The capitalist state is so bankrupt National is desperate to sell state assets to prop up the profits of the rich through another round of tax cuts. The temporary tax relief for the rich comes at the long term expense of the working class.

We must fight back against this asset sale and undertake to take back all privatised state assets built by the labour of the working class. For this we need a revolutionary workers’ party.

Mana movement is not that party when it leads the fight for state houses on marches to parliament, diverting the energy and resources of Mana (as a flax-grass roots movement) into the hot air and dirty politics of the parliamentary talk shop.

Our fight has to be based on mobilising those who refuse to move, and need support. We need to organise occupations in state housing areas - defend each house, each street, each neighbourhood. Build Mana as a movement on the streets and neighbourhoods – start with occupations of state houses.

Occupy! – defend and resist evictions!

Occupy! - build support for those willing to occupy against privatisation!

Occupy! - build solidarity of working class communities with trade unions ranks!

For a crash program to build state houses for rents pegged to the living wage determined by workers rent tribunals!

For the right of every working family to an affordable state house for life!

Fight Asset sales!

The NZ power network is a natural monopoly. The NZ state planned the development and effectively subsidised the capitalist farming & industry by providing access to use of cheap electricity. No individual capitalist in NZ’s history could have built this. NZs electricity system was built by the working class – an international working class at that, with migrant labour a central part of the construction workforce. Power utilities were paid for by the taxes of the working class - as well as producing the profits, (including the bosses’ taxes). The working class built these utilities and financed the Research & Development of two areas where NZ has special expertise, Geothermal and Hydro - electrical. There is massive social capital expropriated from the working class invested in infrastructure and intellectual property in the power SOEs. This is the stake that NZ workers have in state assets. We are against these assets being privatised and the monopoly profits going NZ or foreign capitalist ownership.

Capitalist asset grab
 
Capitalism rules NZ and the NACT government (National, Act, Maori Party and Peter Dunne) represents the interests of the capitalist class unashamedly. Already they have part-privatisated by increasing the debt levels of the power companies and solid energy (35% of their value is owed finance capitalism), and taken that bank debt as a government dividend (profit). The further transfer of ownership from the capitalist state to the capitalist class (the class of owners) takes place with these sales. This is the theft from the poor of the pretence of ownership (held by the state). This will be the continued exploitation of the working and unemployed poor, and power prices that extract profit margins well above and beyond the costs of power production.

Geoff Bertram has researched the price gauging of the SOE's who have acted as a cartel and put up the price of power at least 50% above real cost. That is monopoly rent which currently goes to the state as dividends. Monopoly rent equals super profits from natural resources, so it amounts to a transfer of profits from other capitalists to monopoly capitalists. The other capitalists have tried to offload this loss of profits with prices concessions and higher prices for private consumers. This is just screwing workers at both ends.

Why is the capitalist class stealing the power companies from the NZ state? When power services are sold the capitalist class will be able to take profits from their “investment” (that investment money is coming from the profits of the production of the working class in the first place). The capitalist system is so weak that capitalism is in search of “good investments” because their profit margins are falling. An electricity supplier is a guaranteed monopoly profit, because everyone uses electricity – so the capitalist is keen to get private ownership of the profits, a loss for all of us since it is a move away from the state dividends that can be reinvested in other infrastructure such as schools hospitals etc.

Their crisis not ours!
 
The global financial crisis was just the latest symptom of the failure of capitalism. Profits were low in productive sector and “financial” capitalism was promising bigger profits – however finance capital was unable to deliver on these as the many financial company failures proved. Capitalism is a stuffed system and their profits will continue to fall - Marx “Capital”). The capitalist class is in such crisis now seeking a “reliable” profit from exploiting the working class. The sale of power services will drive up the costs of electricity (which even a capitalist state can build and run more efficiently than a capitalist owner).

The capitalist crisis means that the bosses want to milk that monopoly rent directly and not see it spent on schools, houses, welfare etc. It is total cynical bullshit to say that the proceeds of the sale of 49% will be spent on these social amenities. 49% will go straight into the hands of shareholders, while the states shares of rent will go to subsidising big capital and farmers as the plans for roading, irrigation and “Public Private Partnerships” (PPPs) that guarantee private profit.

NZ workers have an historic stake in these assets. They are essential services to meet our need for cheap, reliable electric power to maintain our households. Take back control of power services and put them under the control of the working class and the power service workers.

Reclaim our power!
 
The language of the “asset sale” hides the fact that these are power services which provide an essential service to the whole NZ population. (99%+/ - anyone left off the grid?) It serves the working class by providing what has become a basic necessity for our living; keeping our food, water, clothing & ourselves clean and healthy, and communicating with each other. Electricity is now a basic need. Reclaim electricity as a need and a service!

The ‘market’ is by definition not designed to meet needs: it is all about profits. The description of power providers as “assets” hides the fact that they were built to provide an electricity supply throughout the whole country, including delivering electricity to the milking sheds, an integral part of NZs efficient milking production. Electricity services are best planned to meet the needs of the population and of industry (an argument for socialist planning) and the NZ state has done that planning and development. The creation of an electricity market has only lead to price increases and profit taking by the state – a burden on the working class through household electricity prices. The Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and current tools of imperialism will make it easy for imperialism rip off power super-profits, to concentrate capital in the crisis, e.g. Chinese dairying, and we will see these energy monopolies pass into imperialist hands.

Appeals to Parliamentary Parties a dead end
 
Labour in the 1980s set up these “State Owned Enterprises” (SOEs) the power companies, coal, and ran the first programme of privatisations / sell offs; BNZ, NZ Rail, Air NZ, etc. Labour MPs say they have learnt their lesson: but they did nothing in their 2000-2009 years in government to reclaim state control of the SOEs and reign in power prices. Labour’s failure to put the SOEs out of reach of sale is just an example of the Labour party’s commitment to capitalism. The “market” continued to price gouge from the working class as “residential customers” and subsidise big industrial users such as the bluff aluminium smelter.

Labour party continues to fail the working class because it includes both working people and a pro-capitalist program and leadership. The bureaucracy within Labour controls the party programme and so will never really challenge the capitalist class. Labour is so weakened by the bureaucracy within its own ranks that it cannot put up a real fight against the “asset sales”. They are all talk and no action. Most state assets were sold by the Lange Labour Government in the 80s. Shearer will not commit to buying assets back even until he sees if he’s got the money. The Greens will not commit to buying assets back either. The only parliamentary parties that have committed to buying back state assets are NZ First a centre right nationalist party, and Mana.

The Aotearoa is not for Sale Coalition is also weakened by its strategy of directing is protests at parliament. Parliamentary parties following capitalist programs take the resistance off the street and into petitions and votes for parliament. So long as Mana and Socialist Aotearoa put their energy into begging parliament to stop asset sales their opposition to sales will not win mass support for direct action. This type of coalition politics is a popular front that ties workers to pro-capitalist parties like Labour and the Greens instead of mobilising a mass movement to occupy the SOEs under workers’ control.

Occupy the SOEs and put them under Workers Control
 
The key demand that should be taken up by all groups opposed to assets sales is “Occupy!” This is the only language that the bosses’ state understands. They proved this by breaking the law to violently evict Occupy form its sites in Auckland in 2012. The NACTs are so determined to sell the SOEs that they are prepared to subsidise Rio Tinto’s Pacific Aluminium to stay at Tiwai Point under the pretext of saving jobs. This is because if Rio Tinto pull out of NZ the 12% of electricity it currently uses will be diverted to all other consumers creating an oversupply, falling profits and prospect for privatisation nil! This sort of total sellout of NZ workers to foreign monopolies cannot be answered unless by occupations and pickets to defend the stake of generations of NZ workers in state assets.

To protect the occupations workers will need to build solidarity the local community, call on sympathy strikes, mass pickets and self-defence squads. Then they need to put them under workers control. The workers who maintain and run our power services are in the best position to continue to run them. Maori who labour on the power services need to be represented in this leadership and by the right to caucus. The local working class and all workers who consume power services would form in alliance with the power service workers to plan production and service provision. Representation can be based in workplace democracy electing and recalling delegates to a workers council. The local workers council is the forum for making democratic decisions about planning to meet the needs of all. Local Maori from both the end user and production end of power services need to be represented on workers councils.

No compensation to the Capitalist Class
 
Buyers beware! Don’t line up to buy stolen property – these assets belong to working people. We will take them back with no compensation to the capitalist class. No compensation to the bankers, financiers, or grandma and grandpa investors who have a spare $1000. No compensation to the “institutional” investors or retirement funds. No compensation to any investors since they all gambled to make a profit from the congealed sweat of the generations of workers in the first place. No compensation whatsoever in any circumstances!

No compensation flies in the face of capitalism and imperialism through treaties such as the TPPA (Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement) would try to force compensation through international law. The TPPA will try to block renationalisation. So taking back the assets means breaking the free trade agreements. Socialising the assets is getting them back; it is expropriating back to the workers who built and paid for the SOEs in the first place. They are our assets and we will take them back to meet our needs.

Socialise our power services!
 
We are for the overthrow of the capitalist system, which hides the fact that workers are the creative force in capitalist society. Socialism means the end of this capitalist model of ownership and a move to social ownership - by all. State ownership is still capitalist ownership. This is shown by the fact that they are run to meet the needs of all capitalists by subsidising the cost of power as Bertram’s research proves. Rio Tinto is a classic case. Nationalised assets are easier to socialise under workers control than expropriating individual shareholders. We need to start now to win support for socialising all former state assets as well as the strategic assets of large NZ and foreign corporations.

We can do better than state ownership; we can throw capitalism out altogether and plan the whole economy to meet the needs of all. The meeting of the electricity needs of just part of one basic economic plan that needs to be implemented at a national level: Smash the capitalist electricity market. Plan to meet the electricity needs of all and for industry that meets our needs.

Stop the asset sales! Occupy our SOEs! Smash the TPPA!

Socialise all former state assets and all major NZ and foreign corporations!

For a Workers State to implement a national planned socialist economy!

NZ Labour Party: Changing the Guard?

David Shearer looks right, David Cunliffe looks left

The global capitalist crisis and NZs perilous economic situation has activated a class war inside the Labour Party such as not seen since the late 1980s over Rogernomics. The onset of crisis in 2007 and Labour’s defeat by a right-moving National -ACT-Maori Party Coalition in 2008 and 2011 has thrown the party into an internal crisis. The ‘old guard’ continue to ‘oppose’ the NACTs by competing for the same middle ground, while a ‘new guard’ has emerged dedicated to return Labour to its traditional parliamentary socialism. The scene is set for Labour to split between the ‘right’ and the ‘left’. We examine the significance of this impending split for the development of class struggle in Aotearoa/NZ.

Labour faces a right-left split

The split came into the open in the defeat of 2011. The party held contest for a new leader as Goff proposed to stand down. The ‘old guard’ never repudiated Rogernomics, still dominate the Labour Party caucus, and selected a relative newcomer to parliament, David Shearer, as candidate. The membership overwhelmingly rejected Shearer for David Cunliffe who was committed to returning Labour to its traditional values. They saw Cunliffe as the champion of a ‘new guard’ that would move left, repudiate Rogernomics, and raise policies benefitting the working class constituency. Nevertheless the old guard Caucus majority voted Shearer as Leader against the will of the big majority of LP activists.

Those activists then got major democratic changes adopted at the recent Conference that would allow more membership control of the MPs, the selection of Leader and in policy making. They got the resolution condemning Rogernomics. They got more control over policy. But most threatening to the ‘old guard’ was the new provision for a leadership challenge by 40% of Caucus that would see Caucus having only 40% of the vote for Leader, while the members had 40% and the unions 20%. This could come as early as February 2013. The ‘old guard’ could see a rerun of the previous leadership contest where Caucus could not overrule the membership and affiliates.

The Blairite ‘old guard’ immediately sprang into action. Having lost the vote to resist the changes to the Constitution, they rallied around Shearer and launched a pre-emptive strike to prevent a February leadership contest. Shearer demanded loyalty in a caucus vote or risk demotion. Despite 100% endorsement Shearer demoted David Cunliffe, then ranked No 5, to the backbench on the grounds that he was behind a leadership coup at the Conference. This was not the case as Cunliffe constantly stated his support for Shearer as leader. However because he would not guarantee his support in a February contest, Shearer took this to be disloyalty.

The ‘old guard’, aka the ABC (Anyone but Cunliffe) cabal, think that they have won the loyalty of Cunliffe’s supporters in Caucus so that he will not get the 13 MPs  he needs (including himself) to trigger a leadership contest. This may be true as the ‘old guard’ controls the parliamentary wing and can pressure, bully and bribe to get the 22 MPs Shearer needs to avoid a contest. Second, Shearer can probably manipulate the 20% union vote through control of the top officials in the Council of Trade Unions (CTU). Shearer has the support of Andrew Little, ex CTU President, and has promoted him to replace Cunliffe as economic development spokesperson. Helen Kelly, current CTU President, has publicly taken a position in support of Shearer, clearly advocating for the 20% CTU vote for him over Cunliffe. Third, the ‘old guard’ has the machinery to use Parliamentary Services to put pressure on the local LECs so that pro-Shearer resolutions are passed and delegates mandated to vote for Shearer. Some MPs, some union officials and many party members however are prepared to fight to challenge Shearer in February. It remains to be seen if these MPs, unionists and members allow the ‘old guard’ party machine to walk all over the new rules voted at Conference.

For Marxists this impending split in the Labour Party is a classic illustration of the fact that the it like all Social Democratic parties in the Western capitalist countries function to suppress a class contradiction in their internal organisation. They are led by a professional labour bureaucracy of union officials and MPs to impose a bourgeois program dressed up as parliamentary socialism onto a working class constituency. The classic line of the Labour Party leadership is that they are committed to ‘unity’ – a dead giveaway for the subordination of the working class constituency to the bourgeois program. Such parties all arose historically to divert the militant labour movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries away from industrial action onto the parliamentary road to socialism.

The Birth and Death of Labourism

The NZLP was formed in 1916 as part of a reactionary wave against the militant unions of the time. The Red Fed formed in 1908 built a militant union movement in the coal mines, railways, ships, timber and flax industries. Militant strike action culminated in the 1913 General Strike which was defeated when the military was mobilised. The war began soon afterwards. Industrial defeat and wartime jingoism saw a reactionary anti-militant sentiment sweep over the country creating the conditions for a Labour Party to be formed by moderate workers to steer socialists and syndicalists into parliament. Many militant union leaders of the prewar period became NZLP leaders.

The NZ economy was stagnant during the twenties and then plunged into depression in the 1930s. Growing support for the NZLP among workers, unemployed and poor farmers saw it elected in 1935 and stay in power until 1949. The myth of Social Democracy, or Labourism, in NZ, is based on this First Labour Government that claimed to have regulated and tamed the worst aspects of boom/bust capitalism. Coming out of the depression and war into the post-war boom entrenched this myth. In reality, Labour served to pacify the rising labour movement by taking over the management of the economy, particularly the war effort in support of British and US imperialism. Without Labour (and a tame Stalinist Communist Party) in power workers would have become much more of a threat to the social order.

Internationally the depression created widespread radicalism in the labour movement that failed to challenge capitalism only because the Social Democratic and Stalinist parties tied their supporters to popular front ‘unity’ with the ‘democratic bourgeoisie’. The embryonic socialist movement was too weak to break workers from the popular front. The war itself produced powerful partisan forces that could have taken power when the war ended without military occupations and the treachery of the Stalinist parties in Europe and the colonies were the imperialist powers continued the war to smash the partisans. Finally, the postwar boom that followed was not a progressive result of Social Democratic policies but the revival of capitalism as the result of the mass destruction of plant and machinery, and repression of the workers in war and in industry.

In other words capitalism survived WW2 not because of any victory for ‘democracy’, but because SD and Stalinism tied workers to the imperialist ruling classes. Instead of ‘uniting’ as one international working class to smash their own ruling classes, workers fought each other to defend their ruling classes, and when they finally broke free to fight for class power, they were divided and repressed by their capitalist masters.

Thus the mythology of Labourism in NZ prevailed in the post-war period until the Fourth Labour Government elected in 1984 undermined the foundations of the myth by deregulating and opening up the economy with neo-liberal economics -Rogernomics. Such was the working class anger towards Labour around a third of its membership split to form the New Labour Party (NLP) in 1989. This was a major tactical error since it removed the sharp point of the contradiction within Labour and left the Lange centrists and right Rogernomes in charge of the party. Most of Labour’s defectors returned by 1993 and even the NLP stalwarts (then in the Alliance) entered into coalition with Labour in 1999. The net effect was that the Fifth Labour Government under Helen Clark failed to repudiate its Rogernomic history and made only minor changes to reverse the social inequalities of the 1980s and 1990s.  The Clark Labour Government became widely seen as a ‘Blairite’ government that continued the neo-liberal (more market) policies dressed up as a new form of social democracy. The ‘old guard’ that has survived around Goff, Mallard, King etc are the survivors of the 1980s and the hard core of Labour’s Blairite legacy.

Crisis of Social Democracy

The onset of crisis and defeat in 2008 by a right moving NACT regime, has opened up a growing split in the Labour Party between the 'old' and 'new' guard. Laabour lost the 2008 and 2011 elections under the leadership of the ‘old guard’ steering the Party towards the centre or ‘middle class’, abandoning its traditional working class constituency. In 2011 over 800,000 voters in strong working class Labour seats did not vote bringing a massive defeat for Labour in both constituency and party votes. The ‘new guard’ in the party arose out of these defeats drew the conclusion that the party needed to to return to its core constituency, the working class. The only way to do this was for the members to take control of the party from the 'old guard' that was firmly oriented to the 'middle class'. The defeat of Cunliffe at the hands of the ‘old guard’ means that despite the NACTs facing a worsening global crisis and rising unemployment, the Labour Party will lose again in 2014 since competing with the NACTs for the ‘middle ground’ will mean continuing to ignore its mass power base among the workers who are paying the price of the global crisis.

What is at stake in the fight for the Labour leadership is not just the future of the party but of the working class itself. Under the 'old guard' Labour will continue to suck workers into ‘unity’ with the capitalist class and they will not be able to organise on an independent working class program. Many of the 'new guard' will opt for Mana or the Greens but these parties also subordinate workers to alien class agendas and the parliamentary system. The Greens are a middle class (or petty bourgeois) party committed to Green Capitalism. They promote social equality but also the utopia that capitalism can make this possible. Mana has not overcome the historic difference between pakeha and Maori workers. They won’t do it while championing for Maori in parliament alone. Mana, as we have said before, needs to fight outside parliament uniting Maori and non-Maori workers in struggle to prove that it is capable of becoming a mass workers party.

As the crisis deepens so will the resistance of the working class. Inevitably it will come into violent collision with the bourgeois austerity program and the capitalist state. Either workers in the Labour Party will kick out the ‘old guard’ and rebuild the party as a real Labour Party representing the workers who are suffering, or workers will split from the NZLP to form a new party alongside those who are frustrated by the Greens and Mana programs. There are big debates taking place around the world over the form and structure of such a broad working class party. The ructions in the NZLP signal the arrival of that crucial debate in Aotearoa.

Labour’s parting gift

The Labour Party will play a role in death that reverses that of if birth in 1916. In 1916 Labour was formed to divert workers from strikes and industrial actions into parliament. The global crisis of capitalism threatens no only the death of capitalism but of the planet. This potentially terminal crisis, combined with the looming climate catastrophe, means that we need a new Labour Party that unites workers and oppressed people in a struggle to overthrow capitalism. The Labour Party has exhausted its historical mission. It took settler capitalism from colonial farming and modernised it behind protective barriers in the name of economic nationalism and social democracy. It then betrayed that mission and deregulated the economy when global capitalism in crisis imposed its neo-liberal solution. Today it has exhausted its historic mission for capitalism. The 'old guard' who trap workers inside a neo-liberal Blairite party are under challenge from the 'new guard' and responding with typical bureaucratic repression. This means that the struggle for democracy in the party must result in a split that frees workers to form a genuine party of the working class that breaks with the bourgeois program and fights for socialist revolution. 

We can see Labour’s future already in the collapse of European Social Democracy, the most dramatic being that of PASOK in Greece. Driven to the right and rejected by growing numbers of workers, PASOK is now a rightwing rump that shares power with other centre and far-right parties. The workers who left it moved to join a new left party Syriza that is a fusion of old socialists from the Communist Party, Greens, feminists and other left parties. It came within a few votes of winning the last election. Syriza is not a party with a program to expropriate capitalism but it has been forced to take a stand against the neoliberal austerity measures because of its mass working class base. Once in power it will prove impotent against powerful German, French and British imperialism, and that experience will destroy any remaining illusions that Greek workers have in bourgeois politics. It will open the way for a mass revolutionary movement to put a Workers Government in power.

A similar scenario will pan out in Aotearoa. Labour left supporters will force a split from the right wing leadership. The Labour Left will form a Coalition with Greens and Mana to try to deal with the global crisis and climate catastrophe. In the process it will mobilise a powerful working class movement that realises that socialism is on the agenda and only a Workers Government in power, aligned to Workers’ Governments in other countries can avoid the collapse of the global economy and the risk of the extinction of humanity.

Stopping Asset Sales

Rally against Asset Sales, Auckland, April 2012

The mass marches against asset sales may be getting smaller, but the militant opposition is on the rise. The NACTs are speeding up their rip, shit, bust plan to re-colonise NZ. The TPPA signals this logic as it signs away almost all sovereign control over NZ assets. This means that the opposition to that barbaric future will only grow stronger and draw more and more into activity. The NACTs have no choice but to go for broke and they are breaking down everywhere.

For example, Operation 8 was a total failure to divide the nation against Maori ‘terror’. The big plans to ‘reform’ education have been temporarily shelved. Welfare ‘reform’ is kept in the headlines, with numerous incendiary statements from Paula Benefit, such as drug testing beneficiaries, as a diversion from the real fight over asset sales where the NACTs face a growing popular resistance.

The Waitangi Tribunal and Iwi corporate challenges to water sales have put the Power Co sales on hold. Yes, the iwi leaderships will be bought off by shares or compensation to grab a share in the privatised profits of public assets. They are openly admitting that to get anything from the deals they will have to capitalise their ‘spiritual’ values and their traditional view of ‘ownership’ into money-value. Te Whiti would be calling them 21st century kupapa.

Then, another sort of capitalist corporate, Rio Tinto, has seized the time to cut its power costs. It takes 20% of the total NZ electricity output so can effectively force the working class to subsidize its power costs.

These are challenges arising from disagreements among the bosses who are squabbling over the size of their cut from privatization at our expense. They all stand to profit from privatisation. They are not the allies of the masses whose only experience of ‘trickle down’ from asset sales is price rises to pay for the privatised profits.

The growing popular opposition to asset sales has already forced the NACTs to repackage its sales pitch several times and it’s now coming up against a worsening global depression, falling prices and devaluation of capital assets and living standards – a classic crisis of overproduction!

What makes the current resistance bound to increase and strengthen is the courage and political inventiveness of a growing youth movement who understand that their generation must lead the austerity the fightback against the attacks of the international banksters. When the capitalist system begins to eat its young, its days are numbered.

The Labour Party has a contradictory position on asset sales. It will not come out and state that it will re-nationalise all asset sales, let alone not pay compensation. It doesn’t want to be identified as part of a movement lead by anti-capitalists. The Green and Labour MPs who speak at asset sales rallies are careful not to steer the fightback outside parliament. They are on a losing streak. Because to stop the asset sales the movement has to go way beyond referenda and legal challenges to militant direct action which must come into conflict with parliament.

Mana is shaping up to lead that resistance and can do if and when it overcomes its historic tension between Maori Nationalism and the Pakeha left and unites the majority of the NZ working class. At the moment Mana is subordinating itself to the Waitangi Tribunal – that is the capitalist parliamentary system. It will only break from this when Maori workers realise that there is no parliamentary solution and that the iwi corporate leaders are Maori capitalists who want to exploit Maori workers to make a profit.

We look forward to the demos and direct actions when we see Mana banners and flags declaiming “Renationalisation without Compensation” and calling for “occupations of lands and dams” to unite the various left currents and campaigns.

The reason that NZ politics is being realigned is that Aotearoa/NZs economic sovereignty in the Pacific is being permanently sold-off under the NACTs to US imperialism. This political realignment will see a huge polarisation between the NACT rightwing and a growing left around Mana, a left Labour Party split, and a Green split along class lines that unites the left fragments like the ‘new left’ Syriza in Greece. Its agenda will be contested but open to those who want to defeat the right drift towards NZ as a locked down US neo-colony and fight for Aotearoa/NZ as a sovereign, socialist republic. That would be a good start.

Occupy the Dams!
Take back the power! Dump Rio Tinto!
Socialise all strategic assets under workers’ control!
For a Workers’ Government!
For a Socialist Republic of Aotearoa in a Socialist Federation of the Pacific!

Class Struggle #101 July-August 2012

Class Struggle #101

Aotearoa Sold Out | For a Socialist Pacific

The resistance to selling NZ assets reflects the growing public awareness that NZ has almost no assets left to sell, and that the profits from those assets are our biggest export. The leaking of the secret TPPA shows that the NZ ruling class is selling off total control over the NZ economy. Signing up to military relations with the US tells us that NZ is truly a neo-colony of the US. Now that the latest round of state asset privatisations is underway it’s obvious that NZ is fast running out of productive assets to be bought up by international capital. As if to prove that the cupboard is bare, John Key’s scheme to turn NZ into a Finance Hub aka tax haven for finance capital exploits NZs ‘timezone’ and contributes no added value to any asset anywhere in the world. Time for de-colonisation of Aotearoa!

Recolonisation of Kiwiland?

There is a foundation myth that New Zealand ceased being a colony of Britain and forged its independent identity at Gallipoli. Britain sacrificed NZ lives on the altar of empire, so NZ cut the apron strings. Nothing could be further than the truth. NZ began as an economic colony of Britain and its political sovereignty was always controlled by the Bank of England. Even the Fabian myth promoted by the Labour Party that it broke from Britain to abolish free trade an impose import and capital controls in the late 1930s was disproven by the British control of NZ banking and manufacturing up to the 1970s and the onset of the global structural crisis of falling profits.

The global crisis forced big structural changes to restore profits. This included Britain’s entry to the EEC and the end of NZs protected export market. NZ in turn was forced to diversify its markets. But it also diversified its colonial rulers. Australia, Japan and the US joined Britain as new masters of Aotearoa. The strongest relationship was with Australia, a junior imperialist country with its strength based in minerals. NZ became a subordinated as a virtual state of Australia. NZ banks, manufacturing and retail became dominated by Australian corporations. To a lesser extent, Japan, the US and since 2000, China, have become new owners of NZ assets many of them state assets sold off by both Labour and National governments in the 1980s and 1990s.

This seems to some to be a re-colonisation of NZ due to the onset of ‘neo-liberalism’ since it amounts to a end to NZs political sovereignty. It’s actually the logical continuation of Aotearoa’s long history as a dependent semi-colony or neo-colony. Neo-liberalism was the global capitalist response to crisis in the 1980s that forced semi-colonies like NZ to open up and deregulate their economies. Similarly, the latest round of assets sales taking place because of renewed onset of global crisis proves that NZ’s place in the capitalist world division of labour has always been that of a ‘rip, shit, and bust’ economy. The difference is that today NZ is being openly sucked dry of the remainder of its productive assets and is rapidly heading down the road of other semi-colonies that have had their assets ripped-off, their workers shat on, and are now heading for a big bust.

NACT’s asset sales  

Two things stand out about the asset sales. The NACTs are flouting massive opposition to these partial sales. The fact that they are partial, retaining majority state ownership (instead of wholesale flogging off as in the 80s and 90s) proves that public resistance is building. The NACTs have tried to spin the sales as paying off debt but failed to hide the fact that the debt was the result of tax cuts to the ‘rich’. It then changed tack and said it would put the money into new infrastructure. Finally, it dressed up the sales saying they would pay for health and education spending.A big majority still oppose the sales.

Second, the private owners of the state assets will demand price rises to return a profit. This after 20 years of massive price rises to private consumers compared with stable prices for business. This will prove that asset sales are another austerity measure to make working class consumers pay for the crisis of global capitalism.The fact that this will add to the risk of the defeat of the NACTs at the next election proves that international finance capital is dictating these asset sales and that the NACT government has no choice in selling state assets in the interests of global capitalism. Not only that, the privatisation of NZ's assets are being driven by the growing inter-imperialist rivalry between the US and its emerging global rival, China, in the Pacific.

TPPA: The War for the Pacific

The Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement is the most misleading and misnamed free trade deal ever conceived. For one thing, it is not 'Trans' since it excludes the elephant in the Pacific, China. Second, there can be no 'Partnership' when the US is imposing its hegemony on the Pacific as an economic and political weapon against China. Third, the economic rape by the US of its ‘partners’ is not won by an 'Agreement'. In any case there is no agreement between the peoples of the signatory nations since the 'Agreement' is being made in secrete.

The leaking of some of the terms of the secret agreement show that the US is imposing draconian limits to the sovereignty of its colonies and neo-colonies in the Asia/Pacific region to prevent national governments from giving preference to national corporations, or to put any controls over the free flow of profits and capital. These terms will be enforced to special courts outside the nations concerned. National sovereignty is openly sold out. To prove it Mexico is joining the TPPA like a rape victim suffering PTSD. Mexico since it signed the NAFA 1994 has been sued many times by corporations for daring to pass laws that limit the profits of US corporations.

What we see here is the US moving rapidly to legally bind its client states in the Pacific into the sphere of interest of US imperialism, targeted specifically at the growing influence of China. Once this US economic zone of influence is in place, it will be enforced by a beefed up US military presence including several naval fleets, new forces in Darwin and in the many bases that encircle China.

This explains why the NACT regime, representing the NZ comprador capitalists, is aping the US in every sphere of economy, politics, media and culture. It explains why NZ forces are now openly ‘cooperating’ with the FBI and US nuclear powered and armed forces in contravention to its long held nuclear-free policy. And if reinforces the reality that the politics of any tiny, dependent, Pacific nation is being determined by the growing rivalry of the two Pacific giants, the US and China.

A Socialist Pacific

Aotearoa/NZ is a US semi-colony and is about to lose what little it has of its national independence. There is no possibility of stopping NZ being locked into the US imperialist Pacific zone of influence under the NACT regime. A Labour/Green government will find itself unwilling and unable to break out of this Pacific lockdown. There will be no national sovereignty remaining that any government can exercise to assert NZs national independence. NZ will be at the total mercy of US imperialism just as Greece is at the mercy of the EU today. There is only one way of breaking out of NZ’s semi-colonial dependence and that is completing the national revolution by struggling to take that revolution towards a socialist republic and a socialist Pacific.

This will become clear as workers in all the Pacific countries face mounting economic austerity, political disenfranchisement and military domination. While fighting against imperialist control (e.g. TPPA and military alliances) of the Pacific, it is important to realise that this applies to both the US and China. Rather than the workers of Aotearoa and other Pacific nationals being drawn into wars between the US and China they will discover that they can only be free when they are part of a Socialist Federation of the Pacific.

This will allow Aotearoa and Australia as well as the smaller Pacific Island states to unite as one economy which is coordinated across the whole Pacific, but at the same time keep as much autonomy as is wanted to exercise political and cultural independence. For example Maori would have the right to assert their autonomy over ownership and control of traditional land and resources.

Joining Aotearoa with Australia and the rest of the Pacific states on these terms recognises the common interests of workers in all these countries to plan production to meet all our needs with the least necessary labour.

Rather than be part of a TPPA that extracts value from the dependent nations for the benefit of a tiny class of exploiters offshore or at home, that forces worker migration to wealthier countries to be exploited by the bosses, and drags us into inter-imperialist wars, workers would decide how these resources are to be used and the income distributed.

Those who say we are giving up on our national identity for some ‘socialist’ pie in the sky need to reflect on what defending that ‘identity’ is worth. Are they willing to die to defend their ‘national identity’ in some new Gallipoli fought in other peoples’ lands to allow one imperialist state to rule over others?

The working class has no country. Modern nations are inventions of capitalism to form a jurisdiction to protect their private property and profits. But nations long ago became barriers to capital accumulation so today bosses are internationalists. NZs ruling class are agents for international capital. They have no loyalty to NZ except as the bits of it they own as their share of the booty.

But as the biggest bits are already owned by Australia, US, UK, Japan and China, to expropriate them we need to ally with the working class in all of those countries. We can build defensive fights in NZ but we can’t win them without international working class support.

For example, if we want to expropriate the Australian banks we will have to be in an alliance with Australian workers. It has nothing to do with the attitude of the bosses towards workers or the industrial law etc, it’s about the size, combativity and genuine internationalism of the working class.

That’s why we need an international party of workers not only in the Pacific but the globe. When Greek, Icelandic, South American, South African and Pacific, Chinese and US workers unite their forces, and overthrow their ruling classes, no imperialist power on earth can stop the overthrow of capitalism and the creation of a global socialist economy that is under the control of workers democracy to produce to meet our needs in harmony with nature.

For an Independent Socialist Aotearoa!

For a Socialist United States of the Pacific!

For a World Party of Socialist Revolution!

From Class Struggle No 100, May-June, 2012