Wednesday 9 August 2017

Friends In High Places: Will Jacinda Be Swept Into Power By Another “Revolution From Above”?

People Power: Unlike David Lange in 1984, Jacinda Ardern cannot rely upon the overt and covert assistance of a strategically located ruling-class faction. If she is to be swept into power on a mighty wave of change, then its energy will not come from those who scheme and plot upon the heights, but from the anger of those no longer willing to suffer silently in free-market capitalism’s abysmal depths.
 
IN 1984 the smartest and most ideologically driven members of the New Zealand ruling class were willing Labour to win. In the upper echelons of the Treasury and the Reserve Bank that preference was already being translated into action. Likewise, in the news media, where New Zealand’s leading journalists were already in open and eloquent revolt against “Muldoonism”. In Labour itself, nearly all of the party’s most effective politicians had been similarly converted to the “free market” ideology. Like all the other players, however, they knew that before the new free market era could be ushered-in, Muldoon’s old order had to be brought down.
 
Thirty-three years on, are we witnessing the stirrings of a similar top-down revolution? Is there an equivalent determination among a frustrated fraction of the ruling class to do something about the present National Government’s all-too-obvious inadequacies?
 
New Zealand capitalism is in urgent need of a reboot. The agricultural sector is offering nothing more imaginative than more (and more!) of the same: more cows, more milk powder, more massive irrigation schemes, more befouled waterways. The road transport industry is swallowing a disproportionately large amount of New Zealand’s limited investment capital. Our civil service is not only displaying alarming levels of inefficiency but also outright corruption. The health and education sectors have been deliberately run down to the point where they are now holding back the entire economy.
 
The question is: has the level of dissatisfaction with the current National government’s performance reached the critical mass attained by the enemies of Muldoonism in 1984? Is there rebellion in the ranks of the Reserve Bank and Treasury? Are the leading newspapers full of ideologically-driven critiques of the incumbents’ economic and social policies? Is there a crucial bloc of Labour MPs just aching for the chance to put these new ideas into practice?
 
Certainly, there has been a great deal of “policy work” undertaken by the Labour caucus over the past nine years. What’s lacking, however, is any sense that the leading lights of Labour’s 2017 caucus are as confident as their 1984 predecessors that their policies will be implemented without resistance from the Powers-That-Be. Roger Douglas, Richard Prebble and Michael Bassett knew that Treasury would do everything within its power to facilitate Labour’s blitzkrieg of “reform”. There is simply no sense that Grant Robertson, Phil Twyford or David Parker expect their programme to be received with equal enthusiasm by today’s bureaucrats and businessmen.
 
In summary, the current balance of political and ideological forces is very different from that which prevailed in 1984. Thirty-three years ago, the great neoliberal wave was still gathering momentum. Its inherent contradictions and manifold inequities were not yet apparent to its ideological cheerleaders in the bureaucracy, the business community, the news media and, of course, the NZ Labour Party. Even thirty-three years later, with the inadequacies of neoliberalism laid bare by the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, there is no broadly accepted alternative to our entrenched free-market system.
 
Jacinda Ardern cannot, therefore, rely upon the overt and covert assistance of a strategically located ruling-class faction convinced that they have seen the future – and that it works. If she is to be swept into power on a mighty wave of change, then its energy will not come from those who scheme and plot upon the heights, but from the anger of those no longer willing to suffer silently in free-market capitalism’s abysmal depths.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Monday, 7 August 2017.

7 comments:

  1. Yup, still waiting for the high skill high wage economy that adds value instead of exporting raw materials and unfinished products. Been waiting since Roger Douglas promised it 30 odd years ago. All I can conclude is that

    a. Douglas was lying – wouldn't surprise me, but wouldn't surprise me if he believed his policies were going to have that affect either, because he is a true believer in the Eric Hoffer mould.
    b. They don't actually care, because they and their voters are doing okay.
    c. They actually believe their policies are producing or have produced it. In which case they are basically blind.

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  2. Everyone is affected by the poor state of our waterways and a powerful motivator for action. It will be interesting to see how many farmers along with councils and industry in general are willing to truly clean up the waterways. The free-market capitalism’s abysmal depths are pretty murky. If Jacinda can achieve broad acceptance on Labours clean water policy and get the powers that be around the table then that is a massive start.


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  3. ' free-market capitalism’s abysmal depths' ?

    Chris, do you read anything about the world, or only the history that supports your world view.

    One question: what do you think is at the heart of Venezuela's current capitulation to the abysmal depths?

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  4. Nope, National are just too far ahead in the polls. Dream on Sir, your queen will not be crowned. She is young and silly, hardly PM material. Go Bill, there may be two terms for him yet!

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  5. Mark – you read anything about the world, or only the history that supports your worldview. You have a whole laboratory in the US to look at. Here are four articles, I'm sure you could find more. :) Abysmal depths indeed.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOj94m9eUTI

    http://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/yael-t-abouhalkah/article58549653.html

    https://www.texasobserver.org/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-freest-little-city-in-texas/

    http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-great-kansas-tea-party-disaster-20141023

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  6. So you think you can persuade 'm Chris. Or , more to the point, Her. That's all I can take from this. An out-there point of possibility. The Empress decides in our favour.

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