Pushing Past the Illusions

Capitalism unmasks itself: John Key's most serious blunder is allowing us to glimpse the brutal reality beneath the benign illusions of his administration.

RUSSELL BROWN has written an excellent summary of the Department of Labour research paper on the impact of the 90-day "Fire at Will" legislation. His entirely justifiable indignation at the skewed nature of the investigation will no doubt be shared by most of his readers. How is it possible, they will ask, that a supposedly responsible state agency could embark on such a study without consulting the New Zealand citizens most directly affected?

Meanwhile, over at Red Alert, the Labour MP for Wellington Central, Grant Robertson, has posed another vexing question about the study. How was it that copies of a highly contentious departmental report were being openly circulated at a political party conference hours before its official public release?

Partisans of blogosphere journalism would no doubt add that if CTU President, Helen Kelly’s, sources were sufficiently well-placed to tip her off about the paper’s unauthorised release, then why weren’t the mainstream media similarly well-informed? Why was it left to Grant Robertson to alert the public to a flagrant breach of State Services protocols? Why was it Russell Brown at Public Address, rather than the New Zealand Herald’s John Armstrong, who crunched the report’s numbers on our behalf?

It’s only when we start to ask questions like these that the true character of society’s core institutions begins to emerge from the veils of illusion in which they are normally shrouded. And we only feel impelled to push past them when it’s clear that the citizens they're supposed to protect are not being adequately defended. At such moments we learn to our astonishment that the illusions of neutrality, even-handedness and rationality which these institutions have so assiduously nurtured can be jettisoned in an instant if the interests of the dominant social classes require it.

In feudal societies these latter would be the landed aristocracy, the senior clergy and the wealthiest city merchants. In capitalist societies like our own the dominant social classes are made up of employers, financiers and managers, senior civil servants, and that modern equivalent of the medieval church hierarchy – the corporate news media.

When these dominant groups decide to strengthen their collective hold over subordinate social groups (such as workers and/or beneficiaries) and intensify the overall rate of their economic exploitation, they do not hesitate to enlist the aid of society’s core institutions. The Department of Labour will be tasked with seeking out the views of employers – but not of workers. The news media will frame an overt attack on the rights of employees as a benign attempt to get marginalised workers into jobs. Journalists and commentators will vigorously condemn a little harmless pushing and shoving outside the National Party Conference venue, but ignore entirely the much more damaging economic violence inflicted upon working people who have first been stripped of all legal protection and then arbitrarily deprived of their livelihoods.

When class conflict on this scale is unleashed it is vitally important that as many citizens as possible push past the illusions of neutrality, even-handedness and rationality created by our core institutions and find the courage to describe what is actually taking place.

In this regard the lawyer, Max Whitehead, deserves our special commendation. His statement that the extension of the "Fire at Will" legislation to cover all new employees means that "workers have fewer right than murderers under the 90-day trial period" clearly irked the Prime Minister, who described Mr Whitehead’s claim as "ridiculous".

But the employment lawyer’s statement is very far from being ridiculous. In fact, Mr Whitehead’s claim is quite correct.

A citizen accused of murder is entitled to the presumption of innocence and the Crown is required to advance sufficient prima facie evidence of the charge to warrant the accused being sent to trial. If brought before a court the Crown must prove the accused’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt – or set him free.

Workers accused by their employers of not being up to the job, or of being party to an employment relationship that "just isn’t working" have virtually no rights. They are presumed to be guilty of the failings attributed to them by their employers, who are not obliged to advance the smallest piece of evidence for their claims. The dismissed workers are denied access to any kind of impartial tribunal, their employer being, in effect, their prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner.

Mr Whitehead’s stark comparison is disconcerting and alarming precisely because it tears the veils of illusion surrounding the National Government’s defenders to shreds. We find it deeply shocking – almost unbelievable – that working people can be treated in this way because in normal circumstances these veils of illusion shield us from the harsh realities of our class-divided society.

And this, ultimately, may prove to be Mr Key’s most serious blunder. He has allowed us to catch a glimpse of reality, and reality is always deeply, deeply subversive of our masters’ most cherished illusions.

Unleash Hell!

The Fury of the Goths by Paul Ivanowitz

I’VE always considered the first ten minutes of the movie Gladiator to be some of the finest work Ridley Scott has ever produced.

The brutal engagement between the formidably armed Roman legions and the wildly undisciplined but unquestionably brave Gothic tribesmen is a fantastic piece of cinematography.

Russell Crowe’s "Maximus", the Roman commander, issues the grim order: "On my signal, unleash Hell." His well-trained centurions do not disappoint.

"On my signal, unleash Hell."

Scott’s design of the battle, I’ve always thought, owes a tremendous amount to a 19th Century painting entitled The Fury of the Goths, executed by the now long-forgotten Austrian artist, Paul Ivanowitz.

I’ve been an admirer of Ivanowitz’s masterpiece ever since, as a little boy, I encountered a reproduction of the painting in an illustrated encyclopaedia. As soon as I laid eyes on the opening sequence of Gladiator, I just knew I’d seen Scott’s battle scene somewhere before.

Of course a pan-German nationalist like Ivanowitz was not about to celebrate some unrecorded victory by Marcus Aurelius’ legions over a rogue Gothic tribe. No, The Fury of the Goths celebrates the much earlier defeat of the Roman General, Varus, by the proto-nationalist German war-leader, Arminius, in the Teutoburg Forest.

Ambushed as his line was strung out along the narrow forest trail, Varus and his approximately 20,000-strong army was utterly annihilated. A small expeditionary force, sent in by Caesar Augustus a few years later to learn the fate of "Varus’ lost legions" discovered a battlefield literally covered with the whitening bones of their butchered comrades. The terrified legionaries buried them where they had fallen, and fled.

At Teutoburg it was the "Goths" who unleashed Hell.

All of which will, I hope, serve to preface the following critique of the NZ Council of Trade Unions’ (CTU) lamentable failure to anticipate and respond forcefully to the new National Government’s first assault upon the rights of New Zealand workers – the so-called "Fire At Will" Bill.

It is several months now since I had dinner with the President of the CTU, Helen Kelly, but I clearly remember practically begging her to have the trade union movement in readiness for the National Party’s inevitable sneak-attack, and to – please, please, please – learn from and avoid the critical strategic error committed by Ken Douglas and Angela Foulkes in the first few months of the fourth National Government.

It was the CTU leadership’s failure to answer the Bolger Government’s introduction of the Employment Contracts Bill with massive industrial resistance by the organised working-class, that saw the level of union density in the private sector workforce fall from close to 60 percent, to around 10 percent. Their point-blank refusal to sanction and lead a General Strike destroyed, practically overnight, New Zealand workers’ faith in the trade union movement. It was a defeat from which the Left, in general, and the working-class, in particular, never really recovered.

Nine years later, and just as the New Zealand working class was lifting itself up off its knees, the CTU has, once again, failed to meet the Tory challenge. In spite of the fact that they knew the 90-Day Bill was a key element in the National Party’s manifesto, and in spite of the fact that the introduction of the Bill, under urgency, was an obvious tactic for Key’s Government to adopt, the trade unions were caught napping.

A CTU that had learned the lessons of history would have planned for just such a contingency. It would have prepared a campaign as comprehensive as Maximus’s punitive expedition against the unfortunate Goths. Most importantly, they would have let Key know that, should he attempt to begin again where Bill Birch left off, they were ready to give the signal to: "Unleash Hell".

But what did the trade union leaders actually do in the 30-day period between National’s victory and the introduction of the 90-Day Bill? They spent their time billing and cooing with the newly elected government, and debating whether or not the Maori Party should be considered a progressive force.

Instead of being ready to pour their affiliated members into the streets, and to rally the tens of thousands of potential members targeted by the legislation to the CTU’s banner, the best they were able to organise was a pathetic (and constitutionally suspect) petition to the Governor-General – urging him not to sign the Bill into law.

With courage and imagination, this past week could have been National’s Teutoburg Forest. Instead, it has turned out to be yet another victory for right-wing ruthlessness.

In 1991, more than 100,000 unionists marched and rallied against the ECB. That this vast mobilisation of working-class anger was never translated into a General Strike was a true tragedy.

In 2008, it was a few hundred e-mails to the Governor-General.

As Marx said: "the second time as farce".