NZ/Aotearoa: No vote for the Ruling Class!

An election this year means little to the real power: The international capitalist class. Governments whoever they are simply set the rules by which capitalism runs. In NZ, that is the Health and Education systems, and union rights, etc. The capitalist class has tamed parliamentary parties to its needs; none will deliver meaningfully for the working class. Some cater to the needs of international capitalism more than others (Labour, National), others to local capitalists (Maori Party). Most parties now pretend to be class blind because this serves the ruling class. Yet the Labour party claims to represent the organised working class. And the Mana movement claims to represent Maori workers.


Mana and Maori

The Mana movement is a Maori nationalist movement with some small capitalist influences. However, Mana has a strong record of fighting for working class issues, and on the side of colonised peoples. Mana has made attacks from the left on the Labour party, for Labour’s betrayal of working class needs generally, as well as Labour’s theft of Maori rights to foreshore and seabed resources. The Maori Party on the other hand is the party of the Iwi leadership forum, not Maori workers. It has already exposed itself as an outright capitalist party as supporter of the National lead government. Can we give critical support Mana’s deal with the Maori Party?

Mana has an electoral agreement with the Maori Party. They will not compete in each other’s electorates for the candidate vote. They will campaign for party votes. They will not criticise each other’s policies during the election campaign period.

However, this puts the Mana movement in a dangerous electoral truce with a capitalist party to try to gain seats in the capitalists’ parliament. It's a backward move because it abandons Maori workers and subordinates then to Iwi capitalists. After the election, the Mana movement says the truce is over (with the Maori Party) and everything will be up for negotiation. Mana promises to keep its political independence. But we say do not put any confidence in Mana not to join a popular front with the MP or any other party in an openly capitalist government. We say give a critical vote to Hone Harawira in Te Tai Tokerau but with no illusions that Mana will stick to its promise to represent working class Maori in parliament.

Labour as a Bourgeois Workers Party

Some workers believe that the Labour party promises to deliver more for the working class. Since the Labour party claims the name “labour”. They have a few affiliated unions: MUNZ, E tu, and NZNO, Meat Workers Union. The PSA is legally barred from affiliating with political parties but is inseparable from Labour.

The Labour party has already agreed to working with the Green party and together they released “budget responsibility rules”. These rules show the NZ Labour Party has tied itself to the capitalist system and the Green party. They promised to maintain a surplus (keep the government in profit), reduce government debt, reduce government spending to a 30% of GDP ratio. How will they give the increases needed to catch the health and education systems up to what they were before the National government? No chance because, in the fine print – there will be no change to taxation for the first term of government. They will gather a team of experts to advise them on progressive (fair) tax system. They don’t even have the backbone to suggest taxing the rich now - to pay for what workers need now. So, they are not even promising in the election campaign to do much to deliver what workers need.

Labour has stitched itself to a coalition with the Greens on a capitalist responsibility programme. It is already committing to a popular front that may also in include the openly capitalist NZ First and/or Maori Party in a coalition. They have already got capitalist (the class-blind Green Party) allies who they could blame for their failure to deliver for working class needs. They cannot be given critical support on this basis. Their betrayal of working class “labour” has been revealed before they take the parliamentary leadership. The Labour party in parliament gives crumbs to the union affiliates while working class wages and conditions are run down - including the “social wage” of health and education systems. Labour they have already signed an allegiance to the capitalist class and the Greens through the above agreement. That plan is blatantly capitalist.

Labour could have campaigned to run a minority government, without capitalist plans and without being tied to capitalist parties. Union affiliates, it is over time to split from Labour, as it has already shown it will not deliver what the working class needs not after this election or the 3 years following.

We always called the NZ Labour Party a “bourgeois-workers party”: because in spite of worker membership they have had a capitalist programme. The Labour Party has never challenged to overthrow the capitalist economic system. Labour party sells false hope – that they could deliver what workers need within capitalism. This means they serve to tie workers into capitalism, the parliamentary road does not lead to socialism. The task for revolutionaries then is to break working class from this false hope!

The tactic of Critical Support

In previous elections, we have tactically called for “critical support” for Labour (and in the past New Labour and Mana) – called on working class to put Labour into government – to show it up as failing to deliver for workers. We could say that this tactic broke some unions from Labour, after the 1984-1990 Labour government a number of unions broke (disaffiliated) from Labour. In the absence of revolutionary leadership, the maritime union is now back as Labour’s union affiliates. These unions continue to act as a pathway to suck working class into parliament.

So, in this coming election we do not give critical support for Labour. While it remains a bourgeois workers party, the tactic of critical support cannot work if Labour is tied to openly bourgeois parties - in this case the Greens and/or NZ First in a parliamentary coalition. This is because the rotten bourgeois leadership of Labour can hide behind the excuse that its partners in government stopped it delivering on its campaign promises for workers. Voting for Labour in the certain knowledge that it has already committed itself to forming a popular front with openly bourgeois parties would be to conspire with Labour to hide its class politics from workers. This would be a betrayal of our main strategy to break workers from the labour bureaucracy and from the bourgeois class enemy!

The main strategy is to build the working-class movement independent of parliament, that is our task. It is difficult when the unions are held by their leadership in a relationship with the Labour party and the idea that capitalism can be reformed to meet the needs of workers. Minor reforms in the face of major erosion of working class wages and conditions over the years shows how ineffectual reformism is. But every election year the union leaders say – vote Labour and we could get more of what we need. This takes the power of workers away from united action into a meaningless voting box.

Independent working-class movement

The only reason workers need bother with parliament is to use it as a place to speak and denounce parliamentary democracy as failing to deliver what we really need. We can only organise and take power outside of parliament with elected delegates, with councils of workers to run the towns and communities, strikes to force living wages from employers and occupations and running the businesses under workers control.

· For independent candidates of the working class. Any working-class members of parliament to use the place as a platform to speak and raise revolutionary politics and denounce the ruling class and all their parties!

· For working class candidates to stand against labour candidates in the general electorate seats and Maori seats, other than Te Tai Tokerau where Hone Harawira will be standing for Mana movement! Let’s see unions put up our own candidates in the electorates. Unionised workers are ignored and marginalised under Labour party rules and deals, take the fight outside the party!

· Revolutionary candidates only stand to use parliament as a platform to speak- the power of the working class is not held within parliament. Remember the capitalist class holds power outside parliament in the police and armed forces as strike breakers!

· There is a crisis of leadership of the working class, labour and the trade union leaderships have sold out the fight before we even start: build a workers’ revolutionary party!

· Critical support for the Mana Movement while it stays out of popular fronts!

· No Critical Support for the Labour Party in a popular front coalition with openly capitalist parties!

· No support for the other capitalist parties!

· Build an independent mass working class party capable of standing candidates on a Transitional Program to build workers councils and fight for a Government of the Workers and Oppressed!

Class Struggle 121 Winter 2017

 https://www.scribd.com/document/351314439/Class-Struggle-121-Winter-2017

Corbyn: A Partisan Revolution?

Best of luck to the 'non-partisan' Matt McCarten in revving-up the 'missing million' in NZ, he will need it. If there was any message in Corbyn's revival of the British Labour party it is his 'partisan' democratic socialist stand. Much has been made of the 'lessons' for NZ. Veteran class fighters Mike Treen and John Minto see the need to get rid of the Blairites. Most others seem to think it wasn't Corbyn's program that worked wonders but his appeal to non-voting youth. Bomber Bradbury even ranks all the political parties on their ‘youth appeal’ as if missing youth are a mere segment in the political marketplace. That is what happens when you replace class with generation as your main political motivator. Social class disappears and ‘youth appeal’ becomes the cue for the Blairites to once again accuse Corbyn of splitting the Labour Party.

It’s all about class

Speaking for the NZ Labour Party Blairites in the NZ Herald, Josie Pagani complains that Corbyn could have won a majority had he united with the hostile Blairites behind a more moderate program. These same Blairites who rejected Corbyn and his program as 'their' leader! And for Pagani, obviously NZ Labour's current centrist tack to reclaim the ‘middle ground’ from National is the way to go. And the 'non-partisan' Labour caucus endorses it. Here we can see how the fixation on youth appeal at the expense of socialist program leads to cross-class identity politics displacing working class politics.

The reason that thousands of young people flocked to Corbyn's 'parliamentary socialist' program was because they were inspired by it. As were many die-hard older Labour supporters despite decades of Blairism, and before that, decades of Labourite attacks on the working class. Why? British Labour, like NZ Labour is a class divided party. They were both created by the conservative trades union bureaucracy in the early 1900s to divert the class struggle from the workplaces into parliament when the unions found that their ability to fight for wages and conditions came up against the bosses' cops and Cossacks and when they really pushed hard, the military. Because...they were breaking the law.

When communists said there is one law for the boss and one for workers (Labour's leg-iron), the union leaders said, no, we are all subject to the one 'non-partisan' law for all so we have to obey the Labour Law and take the fight to parliament to reform the glorious law. So Labour Parties have in their DNA a class contradiction between workers who want Labour to advance their interests, and their leadership that has signed up to the bosses' law. This was true at the beginning of the 20th century and it remains true well into the 21st century.

That means there can be no 'unity' within Labour parties unless one or other class wins. Either the workers take their demands to parliament and get them all voted in because they have turned Labour into a mass workers party capable of leading a general strike. Or, the bureaucratic Labourite leadership suppresses workers’ demands and imposes the bosses' program of more austerity. Historically, the Labour 'left' has been confined to relatively small groups who have battled away against the bosses' program to make profits at the expense of workers living standards. Labour parties have been able to suppress the class struggle inside the party and divide and rule the class struggle outside. So long as the left inside Labour plays by these rules then there will always be the 'hope' of winning reforms in parliament and delivering the holy grail of parliamentary socialism.

Reformism Rules

This is the meaning of Corbyn's victory. It's all about class partisanship. Corbyn found his “missing million” by standing on a mild anti-austerity program. If he had stood on a full-on parliamentary socialist program, might he have won a majority? After decades of Blairism (both socialism and conservatism have failed, we need a new middle) Corbyn, who after a career as a backbench rebel was fortuitously (against resistance of the party establishment) propelled into the leadership. Then it exploded into a major revival of the disenfranchised left who could see the program working for them all, young (education, housing) and old (NHS, pensions etc) and all those in between (make rail run on time!). The disproportionate rise of disenfranchised youth was not a function of age but of a youth wasted by the decades of Blairite and Tory austerity. But the youth were not totally wasted and rose up in response to the hope of socialist reforms.

Against Josie Pagani, and all the 'non-partisans' in the NZ Labour Party, it was not the failure of unity in UK Labour that lost the election but the partisan class stand of Corbyn that won the seats of hundreds of Blairite MPs! Yes, had Corbyn not been already moderating his program (ignoring Brexit, voting for Trident, etc) to pacify his enemies in the party, and stood on a full blooded socialist program, Labour could have won and put the Blairites on notice. "Get behind our program or get out!" This would be the first step towards throwing them out and replacing them with MPs that represent the interests of the massive activist membership of around 800,000 - and rising.

Where to from Here

The Blairites will pull their collective head in, but continue to undermine and water down any Corbynite policies. They will claim his victory and their seats but conspire to dump him from the leadership. But first they have to remove the election of leader by the membership which was the only thing that kept Corbyn as leader. It remains to be seen how Corbyn will move from here. Will he become that Labour rebel who now fights to remove the bourgeois leadership and turns Labour into a mass democratic workers party? Or will he act as the Pied Piper who takes a new generation of young idealists into parliament only to destroy their hopes as he pulls back from a genuine working-class program?

Even if we assume the former, Corbyn cannot deliver what workers need without putting workers into power. Capitalism cannot deliver reforms when its terminal crisis demands the destruction of workers as a class. There is no way out on the parliamentary road. Corbyn can play a role in breaking the working class from bourgeois parliamentarism only if he empowers the Labour membership and turns Labour into a mass workers party. If he tries to form a minority government with the Scottish National Party and the Social Democrats he would be already selling his supporters out to a multi-class, non-partisan popular front with bourgeois nationalist parties to suppress the partisan membership.

However, if Corbyn now realises that he could have won had he stood for a red-blooded socialism, and if he mobilises his 100,000s of left wing supporters to take control of the Party, he can fight to bring down the Tories over their hard Brexit, rabid austerity and police state plans, and go to another election on a platform for a Socialist Britain in a Socialist Europe.

But to make this a reality, and withstand a Tory coup, Labour would have to be an openly partisan working-class party that has the strength to mobilise the masses outside parliament, reviving the unions as democratic fighting unions, and creating workers councils or soviets everywhere as the basis for a socialist revolution and a Workers' Government!