Wooing The Masses – A Green Fairy Tale?

Downloading The Deplorables: What Chloe Swarbrick is proposing to her Green comrades is a mass movement, but mass movements are driven by the interests of dominant majorities, not elites, and certainly not by the agendas of ethnic and sexual minorities. Working-class people, poorly-educated people, heterosexual people, Pakeha people: these are the New Zealanders the Greens will be required to accept on their own terms – which are most unlikely to line up with their elitist, anti-democratic, identity-driven political ideology.

CHLOE SWARBRICK has embarked on a brave, but almost certainly doomed, political experiment. She has set out to build a mass movement on the foundations of a political party that rejects majoritarian decision-making, and which, by elevating the particular above the universal, makes the social solidarity that fuels mass action impossibly difficult to achieve. If the transformational movement Swarbrick is hoping to build is ever to eventuate, then she will have to fundamentally remake her party.

Perhaps the best way to illustrate the difficulty of the task Swarbrick has set herself is to reverse-engineer the salutary fate of the Auckland chapter of School Strike 4 Climate. This was the organisation, composed mainly of conscientized middle-class secondary-school students, widely credited with mobilising upwards of 50,000 young Aucklanders for the struggle against global warming back in 2019.

Central to the success of School Strike 4 Climate was its correct assumption that mass support for their cause already existed among those aged 15-20 years, and that to mobilise that support all they needed to do was organise a time and place for them to demonstrate it. The leadership of School Strike 4 Climate was largely self-selected, but the organs of organisation they conjured into existence were open to all. The kids who produced one of the largest political demonstrations in Auckland’s history did not ask permission before proceeding. Instead, they took the advice of the Nike Corporation and Greta Thunberg – and just did it.

And what a price they paid for having the temerity to organise a successful political event without first proving themselves fit “allies” for the victims of white supremacy, colonial subordination and heteronormative oppression. In the months and years that followed School Strike 4 Climate’s 2019 success, its organisers and participants were systematically “re-educated” to the point where their casual exercise of white privilege “persuaded” them to disband their organisation and withdraw into silence. In a statement released in June 2021, Auckland School Strike 4 Climate, declared itself to be “a racist organisation”. Henceforth, the fight against global warming would be led by their systemically victimised comrades.

But, if School Strike 4 Climate’s fate was to start huge and be made small, Swarbrick’s problem is how to take an organisation whose political mechanisms are designed to keep it small, and make it huge.

The Greens insistence on consensus-based decision-making, or, failing that, requiring the support of 75 percent of those responsible for making decisions, is driven by a profoundly elitist approach to politics. Those who framed the constitutional arrangements of the Green Party of Aotearoa were mistrustful of majorities and the political behaviour best suited to generating them. They did not want demagogues, they wanted philosopher kings and queens – men and women whose demonstrable wisdom counted for more than their ability to sway a conference of delegates. Investing these wise elders, and their tight circle of supporters, with veto powers was considered preferable to allowing 51 percent of Greens to overrule the preferences of the remaining 49 percent.

The problem with this constitutional structure is that it not only empowers those gathered around the revered philosopher king and/or queen, but also every other minority with the political smarts to throw a spanner in the decision-making works until its own agenda items are ticked-off. Constitutionally and politically, the Greens could hardly be better suited to advancing the cause of “Identity Politics” which, almost by definition, is hostile to the claims of dominant majorities. So much so that any Green politician demonstrating an ability to enthuse, galvanise, and (most alarmingly) mobilise large numbers of people is bound to attract the suspicion, even the outright enmity, of those whose interests would be compromised by an influx of members advancing policies believed to represent the greatest good for the greatest number.

In her speech to the Greens’ AGM in Christchurch (27-28 July 2024) Swarbrick challenged her audience with what, in the context of Green politics, is a deeply subversive question:

“What would it mean to build the biggest Green movement that the world has ever seen? For me, that’s not just about more seats in Parliament. It’s actually not even just about holding the Government benches. It’s about a country of citizens equipped with the understanding and the time and the resources to actively participate in our democracy. To hold those who make decisions on their behalf accountable. Even and especially if that’s us. It’s tens of thousands more Green Party members – people choosing to wear their hearts and values on their sleeves, organising and practising those values to win transformative change. From our neighbourhood corners to the very fabric of our state, in record numbers. Those people can and must come from all kinds of different backgrounds and walks of life.”

What Swarbrick is proposing here is a very big tent indeed – one stretching sufficient canvass to cover the sort of numbers needed to transform societies, and rescue planets. But such a big tent – “the biggest Green movement that the world has ever seen” – could not possibly endure for more than a few months under the present Green constitution.

What Swarbrick is demanding of her Green comrades is a mass movement, and mass movements are driven by the interests of dominant majorities, not elites, and certainly not by the agendas of ethnic and sexual minorities hostile to people who “come from all kinds of different backgrounds and walks of life” – most of them radically at odds with their own. Working-class people, poorly-educated people, heterosexual people, Pakeha people: people the Greens will have to accept on their own terms – and whom they must on no account attempt to convert to their elitist, anti-democratic, identity politics.

It is unclear whether or not even Swarbrick grasps this central reality of mass, or, as most commentators prefer to call it these days, “populist” politics. Buried in her challenge to the Green AGM is a perplexing reference to “a country of citizens equipped with the understanding and the time and the resources to actively participate in our democracy”. Nowhere does Swarbrick explain how such a country could possibly come into being prior to the revolutionary changes she is seeking. Only after the revolution is it possible to envisage citizens with “the understanding and the time” to make eco-socialism work.

Could it be that the only people Swarbrick is capable of envisioning as co-participants in the construction of a better world are people exactly like herself? Does she not understand that those in possession of the resources needed to participate meaningfully in the processes of self-government will always, this side of the revolution, be those with the most to lose by its arrival. Doesn’t she “get” that those with the most to gain from revolutionary change are unlikely to evince the placidity and equanimity of philosopher kings and queens? Their willingness to join the fight for change will be born of anger and despair, and the certainty that they have bugger-all left to lose. You don’t tell these sorts of people what they should be looking for – you give them what they want.

This essay was originally posted on The Democracy Project substack page on Monday, 29 July 2024.

The Greens’ Minority Rules.

Poll Axed: What happened to James Shaw on Saturday, 23 July 2022 exposed the Greens’ minoritarian political culture for all to see. Once voters grasp the enormity of 30 percent of Green delegates to the Green AGM being constitutionally empowered to overrule the wishes of the 70 percent of delegates backing Shaw – an overwhelming majority – the party faces electoral death.

PERHAPS THE GREATEST SERVICE Jeanette Fitzsimons and Rod Donald rendered the Greens was making New Zealanders believe they were democrats. Their engaging personalities and considerable political skills masked the fact that Green politics has never been (and likely never will be) democratic. The whole ethos of the Green movement, here and overseas, is minoritarian. By concealing that fact, Jeanette and Rod made the Greens electorally viable.

What happened to James Shaw on Saturday, 23 July 2022, however, has exposed the Greens’ minoritarian political culture for all to see. Once voters grasp the enormity of 30 percent of Green delegates to the Green AGM being constitutionally empowered to overrule the wishes of the 70 percent of delegates backing Shaw – an overwhelming majority – the party faces electoral death.

But, why minoritarianism? Partly, the Greens loathing of majorities is attributable to the social milieu out of which the green movement arose, but mostly it is based on their unshakeable conviction that their view of the world is the only correct view, and that, unfortunately, most of the human species are simply too stupid to recognise the fact. Greens are elitists – and proud of it.

If challenged on this point, the Greens will point out that they were the ones who first recognised the existential threat posed by climate change – and that was long before the mainstream parties were even willing to fully acknowledge its reality. They will remind us that it was the Greens who first recognised how seriously corporate mendacity had compromised the fruits of genetic engineering. Who, they will demand, were the first to elect co-leaders and make their party te Tiriti centric? The list goes on and on. As Rod Donald was fond of reminding New Zealanders: The Greens are not on the Left, the Greens are not on the Right. The Greens are out in front.”

All very well and good – until the seers and prophets responsible for this farsighted vanguardism are presented with the practical difficulties of running a political party aspiring to electoral viability. At that point it becomes necessary to find a way to prevent the purity of the party’s principles and policies from being forced to endure the lowest-common-denominator arbitration inherent in the crude majoritarianism of democratic decision-making.

The Greens’ solution to this problem was the adoption of “consensus-based” decision-making. Superficially, this sounded super-democratic. Rather than allow 51 percent of the party to dominate the remaining 49 percent, the Greens would do all within their power to ensure that their principles and policies enjoyed the broadest possible agreement.

Few voters, however, bothered to follow the logic of the Greens’ argument right through. If they had, it would very soon have become obvious that “consensus-based” decision-making allows the faction composed of the party leadership and its hangers-on to exercise a veto over the party’s ultimate direction. Unwilling to embarrass or challenge the people in charge, party delegates could be prevailed upon to delay, postpone, or simply compromise out of all recognition, proposals supported by a clear majority of the membership.

Should the veto-wielding minority prove intransigent, however, constitutional provision was made for the blocking of consensus to be over-ridden by a supermajority vote of 75 percent + 1. Turn that around, of course, and you have conferred veto powers on 25 percent + 1 of the members and their delegates.

This is hardly a recipe for genuine consensus, more a guarantee of simmering resentments and ceaseless factional manoeuvring. It is also, presumably, the reason why the constitutional provision which laid James Shaw’s hopes low on Saturday was approved. If a minority leadership clique could exercise its veto over the wishes of the rank-and-file majority, then it was only fair that a rank-and-file minority of just 25 percent + 1 could negate the unopposed candidacy of an incumbent co-leader with upwards of 70 percent membership support.

That a constitution permitting such antics was entirely unsuited to a political party seeking genuine political influence – up to and including Cabinet positions – does not appear to have occurred to either the people who drafted it, or the members who voted for it.

What it does point to, however, is a party unwilling to embrace the brute realities of parliamentary politics. There is absolutely no point in making its MPs available for Cabinet posts, if a quarter of a party’s members are resolutely opposed to its MPs engaging in the delicate business of building cross-party support, accepting the compromises inherent in coalition politics, negotiating in good faith with those interest groups most directly affected by proposed policy changes, and otherwise engaging in the “art of the possible” that is democratic politics.

It is simply astonishing that James Shaw, who has demonstrated considerable political skill in securing the support of four out of the five parliamentary parties for the Government’s climate change legislation, could be treated so appallingly by an intransigent minority of the Greens’ membership for doing precisely what 70 percent of the party asked him to do.

Nor is it just the abusive conduct directed against Shaw personally that is astonishing. Even worse is the message sent by the 30 percent of delegates who voted to re-open his nomination. Clearly, they are not in the least bit concerned what the rest of the country makes of their actions. The single most important lesson of party politics: that disunity is death; has failed to sink in.

With most of Shaw’s opponents supposedly located in the “Youth Wing” of the Greens, it must be assumed that the example of the Alliance is too far in the past to offer these children any guide as to what happens to a small political party which very publicly attacks its leader and then proceeds to tear itself apart.

And it simply will not do to explain away the self-destructive character of their decision by referencing the anger and despair of the generations destined to endure the worst effects of global warming. If the urgency of the climate crisis has already passed beyond the capacity of parliamentary politics-as-usual, then come out honestly and say so. Let the Greens’ Youth Wing put it to their party membership that there must be no more coalitions, no more compromises, no more democracy. Let them ask the electorate instead for the equivalent of wartime powers to fight the greatest threat to human survival since the last Ice Age.

They should be prepared, however, for considerably more of the Greens’ membership than 25 percent to reject such a policy. More importantly, they should be prepared for something pretty close to 75 percent of the New Zealand electorate to signal their willingness to stand up and fight for democracy.

If the only reason “the Greens are out in front” is because nobody else is willing to go anywhere near them, then Rod Donald’s bold assertion is no longer a boast – it’s an epitaph.

This essay was originally posted on the Interest.co.nz website on Monday 25 July 2022.