TONGA: The National Democratic Revolution stalls

Protests of ordinary Tongans at the inequity of nobles’ wealth and mass poverty built up to riots in June 2006 when the King reneged on reforms. This has forced the rulers into constitutional change to keep a lid on the movement for democracy. In the recent election the rule by a feudal king and system of lords who self select a parliament has had a face-lift and more seats were elected by commoners (17), than the nobles (9), total =26. The King still gets the power of veto, including the power to sack the government! The Nobles can still bloc with Commoner MPs to keep control of parliament. So what has changed?

Constitutional reform is the legal surface appearance of the ruling class, under which the capitalism maintains its exploitative class relations. Tonga is a tiny Pacific state, dominated by not only the US via its regional allies, Australia and NZ, but increasingly influenced by China. The Tongan economy is capitalist which uses more traditional labour forms based on the family to produce exports of agricultural goods - fish, coconut, vanilla. Yet Tonga's main income is from the thousands of Tongan workers who live offshore, in countries like Australia, U.S. (west coast) and New Zealand, and who send some of their wages home. The Tongan working class is the main export of Tonga, and its strength is outside Tonga. The IMF and World Bank consider Tonga a poor country; 40% population lives below their "poverty line"; and at high risk of failing to pay government debt.

The newly elected government of Tonga may represent a change from a capitalist feudal semi-colony to a capitalist parliamentary democracy (an elected time-limited dictatorship), but it remains a capitalist semi-colony. Semi - as in having the appearance of independence, while a colony in terms of the ruling class acting as a compradors or agents of imperialism, and dependence on a division of labour which sees Tonga export of basic items/raw materials to imperialist or other intermediate countries and a dependence on the import of capital goods (machines etc) and consumer goods from those imperialist or intermediate countries.

The new parliament which includes more 'commoners' is no threat to the rule of capitalism within the constitution. The King and nobles as the capitalist ruling class retain the ability to control parliament and prevent any popular democratic challenge to their class privileges, and the subservience of Tonga to imperialism.

Thus while Akilisi Pohiva and the Democratic Party of the Friendly Islands (DPFI) won all 12 of the 12 seats which they contested, 5 independent candidates won the other 5 of the 17 general election seats, and 9 nobles were voted in by 54 nobles. See Matangi Tonga.
The DPFI were never going to rule alone, since they only had 12 possible candidates in a government of 26 members. Even had the DPFI been able to unite all the commoners to get Pohiva elected, he has committed to working within the constitution. However, since Pohiva has long been a thorn in the backsides of the King and nobles, the nobles bought the loyalty of the 5 so-called ‘independent’ commoner MPs to elect Lord Tuivakanō as Prime Minister by a vote of 14 against12 for Pohiva.

Whoever is ruler of Tonga, as such they can only manage capitalism on behalf of a few local owners and the many international capitalist interests. Their ability to manage capitalism and to meet the needs of the working people who voted for them comes second to keeping the King and Nobles in the wealth to which they are accustomed, and continuing to export unemployed workers to Australia and NZ as a reserve army of workers in those countries to be returned home when they are no longer needed.

Thus to keep the profits of international capitalism flowing, ‘democracy’ in Tonga limited as it is, is nothing more than a taro leaf covering the nakedness of the hypocrisy of the ruling class. The economic conditions which leave the masses impoverished and their sons and daughters migrant workers will continue. Wages and conditions will be cut in Tonga to balance the books for international capitalism, and force the next generation to migrate to low paid jobs in Australia and NZ.

Evens if the DPFI had won all 17 commoner seats and a majority for ‘democracy’ it would be forced to rule on behalf of the ruling class and imperialism and expose ‘democracy’ as a fraud before its own supporters. There is no freedom under capitalist rule. Democratic capitalism in Tonga will be as bad as 'feudal capitalism'. Only socialism will bring true democracy and end Tonga’s servitude to imperialism.

For a socialist Tonga as a member of a Socialist Federation of the Pacific!

Aotearoa: No TPPA! Break down imperialist borders!

Already NZ, Singapore, Chile have set up and signed off what they called the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA). Now the USA has moved to join and fast-track this agreement. John Key is overjoyed with the promise of blood for butter. What is behind the US deals with these Pacific nations, and what of the opposition to the TPPA? How do we organise a working class solution to US imperialist trade war?

It is significant that the USA is joining in the discussion. As the world's largest economy the US needs to protect its interests. We predict that the USA would try to use the TPPA to contain the expanding imperialist force that is China. Since China has emerged from the cold-war and used party control of workers property to control development. China has harnessed foreign capitalist investment and kept enough capitalist profit in China, to emerge as an imperialist power. That is China is now investing its own capital internationally. The resources of the Pacific region are of interest to imperialist powers, as US investments wane China emerges.

Already the largest export destination of Australia's exports is now China (from previously being the US).

US imperialism wants to limit China's trade and investments, and protect its own. The US will push its own military and security agenda. NZ govt is following US agenda with Security laws going through parliament.

The TPPA is an economic tool to push "free trade" agreements, similar to other FTAs but under today's imperialist conditions. Similar, since all "free trade" within capitalism means that imperialist will super-exploit the colonies/semi-colonies for cheap labour and raw materials. Under today's conditions the rate of profit for capitalism continues to fall, as shown in the 'financial crisis', which was a symptom of the falling rate of profit in capitalist production. The TPPA looks to open new opportunities for capitalist expansion and to restore their profits e.g. to force govt privatisations and allow monopoly firms to strip resources.

NZ and Australian economies have not been hit by the capitalists' crisis as much as European and US economies because of expanding China has created a huge demand for raw material exports to China. China has passed the US as Australia's biggest trading partner. NZs recent FTA with China has continued to open up trade between NZ and China to which NZ supplies raw materials - wood, steel, coal, milk powder, wool, etc.

The NZ state is openly subordinated to Australian, US and Chinese imperialism and becomes a mere manager for foreign investment, and the force for social control - defending capitalist property and imperialist interests.

The Trades Union bureaucracy won’t stop the TPPA

Who will stop the TPPA? Not the trade union bureaucracy! The so-called TU mobilisation against the TPPA is not about fighting imperialism but dragging workers into the bosses’ agenda of exploiting the economic nationalism that links the ruling class from right to liberal left and the union bureaucracy to negotiate best terms with US and China.

Where has there been any discussion in the unions over what position to take on the TPPA? The CTU leadership is simply taking the longstanding position of economic protectionism to protect NZ jobs and of course the top union officials’ jobs. This is an ‘economic nationalism’ that claims that each nation should retain its economic sovereignty and thus to ensure that all classes benefit as a result. It is a strictly a utopian reformist program. It fits well with the national populist program of the left bureaucracy in the unions which sees China as a progressive force allied to the Bolivarian regimes in Latin America, much as the Green Left in Australia does.

It ignores the reality that NZ is a weak and declining semi-colony, subordinated to Australia and the US and increasingly China. The race to the bottom won't be stopped by joining forces with nationalist organisations that promote reforms to protect NZ’s so-called sovereignty in the face of global capitalist crisis. Despite and because of nationalist policies endorsed by the union bureaucracy, no political party can impose this through parliament.

The pathetically weak ‘centre-left’ Labour Party, and the rightward moving Greens are all in sucking up to the weak NZ bourgeoisie to negotiate the terms of 'our' national sovereignty which barely exists. There are already virtually no limits to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in NZ, capital flows in and out without any borders. Attempts to stop FDI appeals to national chauvinism as the recent opposition to Chinese buying farmland showed, and in the racism and discrimination directed at migrant workers. The real danger is that this nationalism and racism morphs into fascism and becomes the basis of uniting rightwing workers with a bankrupt middle class behind the NACTs wars against Islamic ‘terror’ (already happening in Afghanistan) and Chinese ‘communism’.

So the only way to stop the attacks which the TPPA means for workers is to reject any campaign based on the program of the nationalist bosses which is to rally the unions, labourites and left academics like Kelsey into a cross-class, legalistic, ultimately parliamentary opposition. That's a popular front and makes workers servile to a weak fraction of the national bourgeoisie which barely exists.

Class Struggle to stop the TPPA

Rather we fight FTAs by working class methods, we oppose privatisation by calling for nationalisation by mobilising union fight backs, occupations etc i.e. ‘socialisation’! That's what we mean by a workers united front.

That means that the content of what is 'national' is not defined by the bosses or their agents, but by the working class. Of course most of the working class are infused with nationalism and in a semi-colony like NZ much of that is directed at imperialist countries that profit from our labour.

But 'nationalism' is a barrier to uniting workers across borders in a proletarian ‘internationalism’. The defence of 'nationalism' that is based on resentment towards foreign ownership has to be put on a class footing otherwise it becomes the basis for fascism. So nationalisation of a company for example must always be done not the basis of 'nationalism' to defend NZ jobs etc., but an internationalism that recognises that most firms are already multinational and that defence of workers’ rights and living standards demands the expropriation of imperialist and national companies without compensation and under workers control. So we must demand the socialisation of multinational firms by building a campaign among workers in all countries where this firm operates.

The approach of the rank and file in the unions should be to mount industrial action to get rid of this NACT government and to put demands on Labour to adopt policies that meet the needs of workers. Our purpose is to expose the failure of reformist social democracy to fulfil those demands. We do not support new reformist parties on the left putting pressure on Labour. We support rank and file unionists putting up candidates on a program to deliver what workers want. Not just minimal demands for jobs, wages, houses etc paid for by a transaction tax, or even the Greens’ capital gains tax. Parliament cannot meet these demands.

A new Workers’ Party would use parliament only as ‘sounding board’ to expose its bankruptcy and to mobilise workers to organise independently of parliament and the state. Instead of locking workers into parliamentary legislation for minimum wages, etc., workers need to revive the unions as democratic, fighting unions to impose their demands in the workplace. To do this, it is necessary for strikes, occupations of workplaces facing closure and sackings, occupations of vacant state houses, the occupation of state SOEs under threat of privatisation, and the expropriation of the banks and formation of one state bank, all under workers control. That is, a new Workers’ Party must raise not just a minimum program for immediate reforms, but a transitional program which maps out the road to socialism.

Within the unions it is the job of revolutionaries to raise these demands in a transitional form and explain that to get them we have to take power and what that means and how to do it. The first principle of a transitional program is that it must be international and geared to the current world situation. Isolated actions (even on a pan Pacific basis) around FTAs are part of a much bigger struggle against a global capitalist crisis and mounting inter-imperialist rivalry. The TPPA is really about the US reclaiming the Pacific to prevent China from making further inroads.

So what is behind the TPPA is the growing rivalry between the US and China. NZ workers have to reject NZ nationalism as nothing more than pulling workers into a reactionary nationalism to go to war as an ally of the US in the coming fight with China. Workers have to refuse to fight in such wars and reject the NZ national bourgeoisie and its subservience to the US (all the current political parties), break from their agents in the unions (the bureaucracy), and join forces internationally with workers in all of the Pacific countries and in particular, China and the US.

The real issue for workers is not to oppose free trade as such, (or FDI which already exists since capital doesn’t recognise borders, or even against privatisation by ‘foreign’ firms), on the basis of protection of NZ jobs and living standards, but rather the fight for class independence and proletarian internationalism. Opposing the TPPA then has to be by working class methods, mobilising the unions to stop privatisation, resisting all of the NACTs attacks on workers, defeating the NACTs, putting demands on Labour to expose it by raising a working class program, reviving the unions, building strike actions and strike committees and defense committees to prepare for a general strike and for a Workers’ Government.
 
Therefore revolutionaries in the unions should be opposed to the TPPA as one of many measures sucking NZ workers into a national alliance with the US to fight China. We put forward a workers international program to defend jobs, wages and rights, and to advance workers organisations to do it, in particular to break from their own bourgeoisies and their agents, everywhere in the Pacific without borders, especially China and the USA. 

For a Socialist Federation of Pacific Republics!

Aotearoa/NZ: CTU vs Red Fed

Rodney Hide, leader of the ACT Party, far right neo-liberal coalition partner in Government.

New Zealand is facing a worsening world crisis of capitalism. The end of the recession is a myth as capital has not returned to profitability. Despite being bailed out to the tune of Trillions by workers, we are headed for a global recession. Big capital has to attack workers much harder to force concessions to restore its profits. In NZ we can see this National Government, supported in power by the extreme right ACT and petty bourgeois Maori Party, making attack after attack on working class living standards and political rights to boost profits. Unemployment is up, public servants under siege, bosses are locking out workers, GST is going up to 15%, the minimum wage is declining in real terms, ACT wants youth rates to be restored. The bosses have got cuts to their ACC contributions in preparation for privatisation, tax cuts, law changes to give them access to mining in national parks, toll roads, Auckland city is being handed over to bosses to grab land, water, transport, the port etc. Both Health and Education are being privatised under the form of PPPs (public, private partnerships). 

As we warned before the 2008 election, National in power in a world crisis has to make the working class pay for the bosses crisis. How do we fight back? The most pressing task for workers is to organise to revive rank and file democracy in the unions as a platform for resistance the bosses offensive. Only strike action by a united working class can stop the bosses plan to turn NZ into a quarry of cheap raw materials and cheap labor for international capital.

The CTU

The NZ Council of Trade Unions conference was in October last year. As far as leading working people in a struggle for better lives it may as well not exist. We could call it Dead Fed because all it does is push for changes in labour law to make it easier for the union officials to keep the membership of the unions contained within the bosses' law. Thus the CTU president (Helen Kelly) says the four areas unions need to get better in are 1) Make collective bargaining more accessible 2) Make union membership more available 3) Developing union leadership 4)Better resourcing for unions. She forgot to add: get out and get support for Labour to win the next election.

It's not as if the CTU is that important for the bosses' any more. Union coverage of the whole workforce is at 22%, but mostly in the state sector: only 9% of private sector workers are union members. But what they cannot count on is that in a crisis when workers are under attack and youth unemployment is around 30%, youth rates likely to be re-introduced to hold down wages, the minimum wage increased by 50cents and hour, the 90 day fire at will likely to become 180 days etc, then workers may blow the lid off the industrial law and do what the bosses are now doing with impunity – breaking the law by locking out workers. For every threatened lockout we need a wildcat strike. Lockouts are the bosses locking workers out of the workplace very often in breach of the law. A wildcat is a workers strike or occupation that is not controlled by the bureaucracy and does not confine itself to the labour law. Because the bosses' know such fights are coming as their crisis deepens, the CTU is preparing itself for the role of strike-breaker.

There is another way and that is to revive the unions as fighting, democratic organs of the working class. Some hopeful signs are there. Unite! union has begun to mobilise non-unionised workers. We need to develop this fight. We need to fight to gain more than collective agreements that give members something more than a negotiation system and union apparatus. For example instead of just a union financed publicity campaign to get a referendum to get parliament to raise the minimum wage; fight now for every union to raise the bottom wage rate in every collective agreement to $15 an hour, now! -And increasing to $16 on the day GST increasing - if/when that kick was to happen. But the only way to make this a widespread working class movement is to unite all sectors of the working class, particularly employed with unemployed around a decent minimum wage and benefit. But to do this we need to take back the unions from the bureaucracy and impose rank and file democracy. We need to aim for a new Red Fed.

A Red Fed

Back in the early 20 century a number of militant unions broke out of the Industrial, Conciliation and Arbitration Act (IC&A) which was the equivalent of today's ERA (Employment Relations Act). They took wildcat strike action between 1908 and 1913 and became known as the Red Fed. The unions were mainly those in mining and transport the most concentrated work forces in the colonial economy. This federation was based on rank and file union democracy and fought the 1912 Waihi strike and the 1913 General Strike. They rightly indentified the bosses' employment law as a "leg iron" on the working class, and deliberately worked outside of that law. This scared the shit out of the ruling class who had to call out the farmers as special police 'Cossacks' as well as the army to fight the unionsed working class on the picket lines. The union bureaucracy moved to form the Labour Party to divert the militant working class into parliament where they could be contained and pacified.
 
Since that time the NZ working class struggle has been repeatedly mislead into the ruling class’ parliamentary circus by union leaders / Labour party promises. Both the official union leaderships and the Labour Party have undermined the independence of the working class from the state by tying workers into a “better deal” from a labour government. This has effectively dis-armed working people from the experience of taking independent action to force the bosses to meet our needs.

We want the development of rank and file workers, ordinary members becoming union activists, for participation and democracy in the unions, and for solidarity in practice – on the picket lines. Not just solidarity in words at conference sing-a-longs. What sort of leadership does the CTU develop? – by their current example they produce candidates for the Labour Party and vote gatherers for the Labour Party (or any other Parliamentary Pack that promises to maintain basic democratic rights for unions to co-exist within capitalism). The CTU is the life support system of the Labour Party and so long as it runs the unions workers will be forced to keep voting for a Party that constantly betrays the working class. It is the CTU that backs the Labour Party, and argues for working people to support it as a "lesser evil" to the National Party.

We say union resources should be based on the membership – and accountable / responsible to the membership. Take the resources straight from the employer by fighting for more from collective agreements. The danger of handouts (with strings attached) from government training schemes or education allowances is the strings attached – and the impact if the money was cut. Democratic unions must be based on maximum independence from the ruling class and their government.

All of these directions from the CTU extend and protect the interests of unions – without necessarily doing anything at all for the workers - membership! It takes the fight of ordinary union members to put the working class solidarity into the unions.

Stop ACC cuts

We want to stop the capitalist cuts to ACC, but ask the Union leadership how and they reply - by electing the Labour Party! This is what the officials endorsements / backing of a publicity campaign and token protests amounts to. Publicity that "it was better under Labour". Really the quality of service ACC provided was getting lowered under the Labour government as well, when ACC like every Public Service (social wages) had been getting a thousand tiny cuts. The Labour government was still trying to restore profitability to the capitalist class by effectively lowering ACC premiums.

Dump National Standards

The capitalist attacks on education (less education – more achieving "national standards") the union leadership is not talking about fighting these: only talking about a time of trialing of them. Teachers are trained to learn the needs of the kids in the classroom and to teach according to the most relevant educational goals. We say dump national standards! Real union leadership is going to have to come from ordinary teachers - union members – demand mass stopwork meetings to debate national standards - and to vote on industrial action to boycott / ban any work about testing or reporting for National's Standards.

Again the Labour Party as government was little better than the National standards party, they had already forced teachers into more testing and less education through the NCEA (National Certificate of Educational Achievement) system. The leaderships of education unions need to measure the amount of time wasted of testing and marking and to guard against this being expanded – and in fact fight to roll back the losses of educational contact time (and preparation time).

Jobs for All

Rather than fighting for full employment and jobs for all; in the last CTU conference, they big noted the redundancy protection legislation, a pathetic measure from the Labour Party. While the Labour Party argues with the National government over the percentage of unemployment – the union leaders have with no plan to end unemployment.

We say reduce the working week with no loss of pay (4 days work). Introduce penal rates for anti-social hours and for more than 32hrs worked. This would take international working class solidarity to achieve these goals – improving wages and conditions internationally, and realistically it would take working class control of production to keep: Socialism!

Since the Trade Union Federation (TUF) unions reunited with the other unions in the Council of Trade Unions this united trade union leadership has been unable to offer any real leadership for workers in struggle. These leaders of the working class point to the Parliamentary Labour Party as the solution to all working class struggles. They offer no leadership but the Labour Party.

The CTU is as rotten as the Labour Party that they continue to support. Rotten since they both are parasites on the working class, giving as little to workers as they are forced to, while keeping their real role for the bosses – as the brakes on working class struggle.

MUNZ Back in Labour Fold

The Maritime Union NZ is back in the parliamentary paddock/ sheep pen. They have renewed their affiliation to the Labour Party, with a conference remit extending MUNZ parliamentary blinkers to any other 'left' ally for Labour. MUNZ members should know well enough that pickets and direct action win fights to protect workers – not courts or circus acts at the beehive. It is the lack of leadership from union officials to take direct action in solidarity of workers in struggle, which leaves parliament looking like the only option.

The union movement might have re-united in the CTU, but only to be the union rump of the Labour Party and to continue to mislead workers into the parliament. That is, voting fodder for the Labour Party and its parliamentary illusion of reforming capitalism. The false hope that it is possible to reform capitalism; to put some 'better' rules on capitalism, to stop those naughty finance capitalists. The leadership of the working class as represented by the union leadership has shown that once again it only works to reform capitalism when capitalism cannot be reformed accept as a result of militant struggle when bosses are forced to make concessions to stay in power.

More Wildcats!

A revived Red Fed would create the working class base for the formation of a new workers party based on Trade Union militants and workers councils that would contest the Labour Party in as many seats as possible and under MMP challenge Labour from inside parliament as well as outside. As the NZ economy reverts back towards a giant farm and mine the only unions that will have any real power are those that run transport and communications. They rather than service workers can bring the country to a halt. But much work needs to be done to unionise this workforce as it has been turned into a subcontracted workforce where workers are forced to compete with one another. MUNZ members have gone along with this subcontracting as much as any union. The rot has to be reversed starting with rank and file democracy!

Marx pulled apart the workings of capitalism and described the economic forces within capitalism that drive it into crises, wars and attacks on the working class. We cannot reform this capitalist beast: we need to overthrow it by taking control – for workers control of all production including the financial system (we might still need some way of accounting). Revolutionaries fight for such as program inside the unions and any working class party that emerges from the struggles ahead. We call this a Transitional Program of immediate demands such as freedom of expression and assembly (against Search and Surveillance etc) through demands such as jobs for all on a living wage with a sliding scale so that hours are reduced without loss of pay until all those who want to work, can work (30 hour week to start). But capitalism cannot do this, so the fight for such basic needs to survive brings workers up against the need to take power and form a workers government to plan production for human need and not profit.

• Form worker activists networks as a left wing within the unions. 

• For a Red Federation of Labour.

• Turn lockouts into strikes, and strikes into occupations of worksites, and set up workers control of each worksite, through elected ( and recallable) worksite leaders.

• For Workers Councils: local councils of workers to run the towns and cities. Made up of representatives elected (and recallable) by the local worksites.

• For a Workers Government to plan a socialist economy. (Only by the above three demands being met can a real workers government be formed – ie. not through a vote every 3 yrs).

• For a socialist federation of the Pacific.

• For world socialism.