The Other 9/11: It's Fifty Years Since The Coup That Toppled Salvador Allende on 11th September 1973.

 

Fifty years ago today, the democratic-socialist Popular Unity Government of President Salvador Allende was toppled in a military coup d'état led by General Augusto Pinochet, with the backing of the United States.

This fragment of a song is by the Chilean singer-songwriter Víctor Jara, who was shot to death by Pinochet's soldiers in the Estadio Chile, Santiago's soccer stadium, where 5,000 Chilean leftists were detained without charge and many murdered in the days immediately following the coup, it is recited by the late Pete Seeger.

May Jara's words recall to us the terrible events of this, the first 9/11 terror attack.

Music courtesy of You Tube

This posting is exclusive to Bowalley Road.

Passing The Torch.

Moving On From Neoliberalism: To hear Finance Minister, Grant Robertson invoke the memory of Ruth Richardson’s “Mother of All Budgets”: delivered 30 years ago as the final crushing blow against Mickey Savage’s welfare state; before announcing significant rises in social welfare benefits across-the-board; was to witness this generation of Labour politicians do what Clark and her colleagues either could not, or would not, do.

“LET THE WORD go forth from this time and place,” declaimed President John F. Kennedy on a freezing January day in 1961, “that the torch has been passed to a new generation.” Those words kept running through my mind as I listened to Grant Robertson deliver his Budget Speech to Parliament on Thursday. (20/5/21) Except, I thought, that torch is not being passed from my generation to his. The legacy Robertson and his colleagues have accepted from the past is not the legacy of Helen Clark and Michael Cullen but of Norman Kirk and Bill Rowling. The torch which the Baby Boom Generation refused to accept, has been grasped by their children.

To hear Robertson invoke the memory of Ruth Richardson’s “Mother of All Budgets”: delivered 30 years ago as the final crushing blow against Mickey Savage’s welfare state; before announcing significant rises in social welfare benefits across-the-board; was to witness this generation of Labour politicians do what Clark and her colleagues either could not, or would not, do.

Not only was Robertson honouring what he frankly acknowledged to be a moral obligation to the poorest and most marginalised New Zealanders, but he was also delivering a stimulatory spending boost to the entire domestic economy. This was democratic-socialism with Keynesian characteristics. The political love which, for more than 30 years, has dared not speak its name.

The love which David Lange, when it mattered, turned his face from. The love which Roger Douglas, Richard Prebble and Michael Bassett did everything within their power to convince New Zealanders was actually evil in disguise. The love which Clark and Cullen, overawed by the seemingly unchallengeable power of neoliberalism, could not look in the eye as they passed by on the other side. The love which Jacinda Ardern’s 30- and 40-somethings have, like dizzy Christian converts, let into their hearts. Determined, now, that by their deeds we shall recognise Labour once again as Labour.

I wish it had been different. I wish that the NewLabour Party, the Alliance and the Greens had been able to redeem the Boomer generation. That what the worst of us had done, the best of us had undone. That comrades like Matt McCarten, Laila Harré, Jeanette Fitzsimons and Rod Donald had rekindled the torch that the Fourth Labour Government extinguished. How I longed to see it blaze anew in the hands of the most fortunate generation in human history – ready to light the way to a better world for those who came after us.

But, the tragic truth of the matter is that there just wasn’t that much love in us. We Boomers ascended steadily the great ladder our parents had built to help us reach a future better than theirs. And then, having completed our free education and purchased our first house/s, we dismantled the ladder and threw the pieces down upon the heads of our children and grandchildren. Did we experience the pangs of conscience? Yes, of course. But we assuaged them by telling ourselves that the younger generations were a feckless bunch upon whom the freedom and prosperity we enjoyed would have been wasted.

But God and the Spirit of History are not mocked. The Boomers’ greed proved their undoing. With the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-09, the first cracks in neoliberalism began to appear. By 2017, even an old tusker like Winston Peters could see that free-market capitalism was failing. His last, great, exculpatory gift to New Zealand was “Jacinda”. And then, as if to reinforce Peters’ gift, History gave Jacinda a global pandemic to vanquish.

And so, there they sat: this majority Labour Government, as Robertson rolled out a genuinely left-wing budget. A budget inspired by Labour’s original economic and social principles. Giddy on the champagne of genuine radicalism: finally aware that the only permission their generation needs to govern New Zealand is their own; they lifted high the torch that now was theirs, determined not to rest easy on what their country has given them, but to give something back to their country.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 21 May 2021.

No Place for Democratic-Socialists in the Undemocratic Neoliberal Government of the Auckland Supercity.

A Thorn In Their Side: As Chair of the Auckland Regional Council, Mike Lee made sure Auckland’s municipal resources remained in Aucklanders’ hands. Not surprisingly the neoliberal powers-that-be (in both their centre-left and centre-right incarnations) hated this last truly effective standard-bearer for democratic-socialist values and policies.

MIKE LEE is the closest Auckland has come to a socialist leader since Mayor “Robbie” (Sir Dove Meyer Robinson) back in the 1970s. As Chair of the Auckland Regional Council Mike made sure Auckland’s municipal resources remained in Aucklanders’ hands. Not surprisingly the neoliberal powers-that-be (in both their centre-left and centre-right incarnations) hated him.

It is most unlikely that their opinion of Mike has changed – not since his recent revelation that, since its formation in 2010, the Auckland “Supercity” has transferred roughly $10 billion from the pockets of residents and ratepayers into the bank accounts of mostly foreign-owned corporations.

As Mike rightly points out, it was to facilitate just such a colossal transfer of wealth that the Supercity was created. Its whole structure was carefully designed to disconnect as far as possible the Council’s democratic components from its day-to-day decision-making machinery – the stuff that really matters. In particular, the pivotal “Council Controlled organisations” (CCO’s) were deliberately and elaborately insulated from “interference” by Auckland’s elected representatives.

This left the City’s twenty councillors with nothing much too do except read policy papers penned by city bureaucrats, attend interminable committee meetings, and bank the $100,000+ per annum they “earn” for representing their fellow citizens. No, that’s not a mistake. Winning a seat on Auckland’s “Governing Body” immediately puts you in the top 5-8 percent of income earners.

Is it any wonder – given the financial reward – that it is not really in the interests of Auckland city councillors to be seen to do either too much, or too little. Indeed, it could be argued that councillors’ re-election chances are enhanced if the voters struggle to recall them doing anything at all. Certainly, a propensity to do nothing is what the Supercity prizes most highly in its political leadership. Councillors are not supposed to do anything. Councillors are there to disguise that fact that the people who do everything haven’t been elected by anybody.

That the Supercity would effectively neuter local democracy was pointed out to Aucklanders at the time of its creation. It was calculated that people living in the Greater Auckland area would go from having roughly one councillor for every 15,000 residents to having one member of the “Governing Body” for every 70,000 residents! This did not, however, appear to bother Auckland voters unduly. Local government just wasn’t sexy. In fact, it was so unsexy that only around half of those eligible to vote in Supercity elections bothered to return their postal ballots. That their indifference might be facilitating a colossal transfer of public wealth into private hands gave them not the slightest pause. So long as their rates didn’t rise too sharply, they simply didn’t care.

Suggestions that the maintenance of infrastructure and the provision of services and amenities (water, waste disposal, public transport, libraries, art galleries and other cultural experiences) would all be improved by a radical democratisation of the Supercity were met with a near universal “meh”. So deeply ingrained is the idea that public ownership is always less effective and efficient than private provision, calls for more politicians, taking much more responsibility for the delivery of Supercity services, were dismissed as batty. When it comes to politicians, the broad public consensus is – the fewer the better.

Very few New Zealanders are aware that large cities overseas are governed by councils made up of 50, 60, sometimes as many as 100 councillors. Bodies of this size allow the people’s representatives to accept responsibilities that, in New Zealand, have long since been farmed out to local government bureaucracies. Overseas, powerful council committees are able to hold bureaucrats accountable for their failures. In cities like Paris and Berlin, complaining to your local councillor actually works. Try complaining to a member of the Governing Body of the Supercity and all you can be assured of is mounting frustration.

Unless, of course, you were lucky enough to know Mike Lee. Some years ago, my daughter had a problem with Auckland Transport. I immediately got in touch with Mike, at that time one of the two Councillor-Directors seated on the CCO’s Board. Within hours I had action – from the CEO, no less. When it came to effective and efficient, Mike was the man. I was bitterly disappointed, but not a bit surprised, that when Phil Goff was elected Mayor of the Supercity, one of his first acts was to remove Mike from the Auckland Transport Board of Directors.

Nor was I surprised when the supposedly “centre-left” City Vision fielded a candidate against Mike in the 2019 Supercity elections. The Labour/Green apparatchiks behind City Vision had grown tired of being shown what a real democratic-socialist looks like. He was defeated.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 15 April 2021.

Jacinda 2.0 is "Licenced To Govern" - But Not By, Or For, Us.

Government By Permission:  That phrase: “a licence to govern” brings into sharp focus so much which has been unclear to the tens-of-thousands of New Zealanders who voted Labour-Green in confident expectation of ushering-in a period of much-needed, but long-delayed, change. It explains why – in spite of her outstanding communication skills and empathy – Jacinda Ardern finds it impossible to follow the examples of Mickey Savage and Norman Kirk. 

WHAT HAS HAPPENED to Jacinda Ardern? What has become of the woman who promised to “transform” New Zealand through the “Politics of Kindness”? Where is the woman who forged a team of five million and coached it through the Covid-19 pandemic? Why is the woman who won 50.1 percent of the Party Vote refusing to respond to the needs of the poorest New Zealanders. What in the Blue Blazers is going on?

Contrast the present Labour Government’s refusal to give the poor a happy Christmas with this little vignette from Labour’s past.

“Shortly after his election as Labour Party leader in 1961, Arnold Nordmeyer was asked by the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation to recall for its listeners ‘My Most Memorable Christmas’. He spoke movingly of the first Labour Government’s decision, in December 1935, to advance the equivalent of an extra week’s relief payment to all the unemployed as a “Christmas Bonus”. That single act of state generosity, he said, sent ripples of hope and goodwill through thousands of destitute families and hundreds of cash-strapped communities. By Christmas, its effects were evident across the whole of New Zealand.”

Alternatively, there’s the extraordinary interview conducted by David Frost with New Zealand’s newly-elected Prime Minister, Norman Kirk, early in 1973. About 3 minutes into the interview Kirk talks about the letter he received from a disabled woman, thanking him for the special Christmas payment he made to all social welfare beneficiaries in December of 1972, and telling him what the extra money had made possible. Here’s the link. 

Jacinda Ardern is rightly celebrated for her communication skills and for her demonstrations of empathy, but set her performances alongside Kirk’s in that interview and the huge gulf that separates the current Labour Government from its predecessor of 1972-75 is immediately apparent. Yes, the world has become a very different place, and the conduct of centre-left politics has changed dramatically. But human compassion and political authenticity are just as easy to spot in 2020 as they were in 1973. Something has been removed from our political leaders, something important. What is it? And who took it?

The answer – appropriately enough – lies in the turbulent history of the 1970s. At the heart of that history was Capitalism’s ruthless fightback against what its intellectual leaders regarded as the unwarranted, and increasingly uncontrollable, inflation of democratic expectations.

Capitalism’s problem, in a nutshell, was that too many people wanted – and were demanding – too much. Across the industrialised West, decade after decade of rising prosperity had freed ordinary people, especially young people, from the relentless pursuit of bread and butter. Having secured their freedom from raw material deprivation, people were seeking the freedom to become something more than an employee, more than a consumer. Working-class men; women of all classes; people of colour; gays and lesbians: all of these groups were demanding the right to be considered – and to become – fully human.

Nowhere is this phenomenon better described than in Ariel Dorfman’s seminal book on cultural imperialism – The Empire’s Old Clothes. In the first chapter of the book, Dorfman recalls being approached by a young woman from one of the shanty-towns that encircled Chile’s capital city, Santiago. Professor Dorfman, and some of his students, had come to help the shanty-dwellers repair the damage wrought by a recent flood.

“She came up to me and asked quite frankly if it was true that I thought people shouldn’t read photo-novels”, Dorfman writes – alluding to his crusade against the “industrial products of fiction.” Comics, soap operas, westerns, radio and TV sitcoms, love songs, films of violence: “you name it”, quipped Dorfman, “I had it under scrutiny.”

“So I stopped digging and answered her. It was true. I thought that photo-novels were a hazard to her health and her future.*

“She did not seem to feel any special need for purification. ‘Don’t do that to us, companerito,’ she said in a familiar, almost tender way. ‘Don’t take my dreams away from me.”

A few years later, about the same time David Frost was interviewing Norman Kirk, Dorfman was in the same shanty-town for the opening of a new community centre – one of the many thousands of collective initiatives funded by the socialist government of Salvador Allende – when he encountered the same woman:

“I didn’t recognize her at first, but she remembered me. She came up to me, just like that, and announced that I was right, that she didn’t read ‘trash’ anymore. Then she added a phrase which still haunts me. ‘Now, companero, we are dreaming reality.’”

For nearly 50 years now, this is the dream/nightmare that has driven the politics of the Capitalist West. How to prevent ordinary people from making their dreams real through collective action. Certainly, it is no accident that the “cure” for too many dreams began in Chile. After the USA had “made the economy scream”, and General Augusto Pinochet’s troops had gunned down Salvador Allende in his Presidential Palace, it was to Chile that the “Chicago Boys” – the followers of Milton Friedman – came to show the world how Capitalism could be kept safe from Democracy.

And the “lessons” from Chicago just kept coming. Across the Tasman, Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s government was deposed in a bloodless coup by his own Governor-General (and CIA asset) Sir John Kerr. Fortunately for ordinary New Zealanders, Norman Kirk’s untimely (and extremely convenient) demise in August 1974 obviated the need for such a dramatic intervention here. (Although the CIA did help out the National Party by facilitating the production of some killer campaign ads for the 1975 general election.) Then, of course, there was the plot to topple UK Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson in 1976, and the final coup de grace against the very possibility of democratic socialism – the capital strike against the French socialist government of President Francois Mitterrand in 1981. If the Left ever wanted to govern again, then it would have to lower its sights – and its red flags.

Back in the 1980s, there was a story, probably apocryphal, about Mike Moore and the powerful Australian television series The Dismissal – which dramatized the sacking of Gough Whitlam’s Labor Government in 1975. According to the story, Moore was determined to remind his colleagues about the dangers that lay in wait for Labour governments.

What Moore wanted his colleagues to appreciate was the overwhelming power that could be brought to bear against a government that threatened the interests of the people who really mattered. How vital it was to keep business on your side. How much damage the news media could inflict upon a political leader it didn’t like. How dangerous senior public servants could be if their ministers refused to accept official advice. Most importantly, he wanted to remind them of the risks posed to labour governments by stubborn idealists: politicians who refused to be guided by principled pragmatism and common sense. So Moore sat all his caucus colleagues down and made them watch every one of The Dismissal’s six, hour-long, episodes.

Was Moore on to something? Had he drawn the correct lessons from the fall of so many democratic socialist politicians and governments? More importantly, had other centre-left politicians, in other countries, reached exactly the same conclusion? Is that why the world ended up with Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Gerhard Schroeder, Francois Hollande, Helen Clark and Kevin Rudd? Or, turning the question around, is that why the campaigns of genuine leftists like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders so consistently come to grief?

The beginnings of an answer may be found in the following passage, taken from a speech delivered to the prestigious Wellington Club on 3 November 2020 by the veteran political journalist, Colin James:

“With National weak, Jacinda Ardern has political space to push real reform. Will she? Can she? Will Grant Robertson? Can he?

“Grant Robertson has stuck to fiscal and monetary orthodoxy. Jacinda Ardern told me back in 2018 that earns Labour a ‘licence to govern’, that is, tolerance by business and other sceptics. That is a clue to their cautious mentality.”

A clue, says James. Surely it’s something a little more definitive than that? A key, perhaps? Yes, a key.

That phrase: “a licence to govern” brings into sharp focus so much which has been unclear to the tens-of-thousands of New Zealanders who voted Labour-Green in confident expectation of ushering-in a period of much-needed, but long-delayed, change. It explains why – in spite of her outstanding communication skills and empathy – Jacinda Ardern finds it impossible to follow the examples of Mickey Savage and Norman Kirk. Those leaders believed the only “licence” a party needed to govern was the one given to them by the voters in a general election. Forty-eight years on from the Labour landslide of 1972; forty-eight years after that young shanty-dweller proudly informed Ariel Dorfman that she and her comrades were “dreaming reality”; Jacinda Ardern knows better. To drive a capitalist economy, it is first necessary to obtain a licence – from the capitalists.

But, securing the “tolerance of business and other sceptics” is not an easy thing to do. There are so many self-denying ordinances one has to offer-up: no capital gains tax; no wealth tax; no return to universal union membership; no restoration of the unconstrained right to strike; nothing to empower or embolden that reserve army of labour we call beneficiaries; nothing that might upset the business community, dairy farmers, or the fishing industry; and certainly nothing to combat climate change which in any way threatens the capitalists’ sacred right to make a profit. Nothing, in short, that could possibly upset the status-quo.

The most frustrating aspect of Jacinda’s “licence to govern” proposition is that in both historical and practical political terms she is, almost certainly, correct.

It is important to remember that both Ardern and Robertson were working in the Beehive during Helen Clark’s first term as Prime Minister. They would have heard the stories about the grim “Winter of Discontent” that followed the creation of the Labour-Alliance coalition government in the early summer of 1999. How the New Zealand capitalist class threatened to “put away their cheque-books” if there was even the slightest hint that some of the Alliance’s left-wing policies were about to be enacted. How the Finance Minister, Michael Cullen, had to abase himself before the nation’s “business leaders” at the Auckland Club. How Helen Clark felt obliged to swear that Laila Harré’s employer-funded child-care would only be introduced “over my dead body”.

The old Marxists may rail against Ardern’s and Labour’s “incrementalism” but when challenged to come up with an alternative strategy for operating safely under neoliberal capitalism, the system which, for nearly fifty years, has decreed anything more ambitious than piecemeal and largely inconsequential legislation verboten, they generally mutter something about “revolutionary action” and head for the bar.

They’re right, of course. Neoliberal Capitalism, by declaring democratic socialism and social-democracy out-of-bounds in the 1970s and 80s has, wittingly or unwittingly, left revolution as the only viable option. Not only when it comes to once again making it possible for the wretched of the earth to “dream reality”; but also when it comes to rescuing the only planet we know of in the entire universe where ordinary people’s dreams of becoming truly free and fully human can be realised.

* It would be interesting to know what Ariel Dorfman (who is still alive) makes of the sort of communications hardware and software that has become ubiquitous in twenty-first century societies. So much more powerful and compelling than the photo-novels and comics of the 1960s and 70s, our PCs, lap-tops, tablets and cellphones have made the corporations who manufacture and control them masters of the planet. The “industrial production of fiction” which Dorfman complained of back then seems quaint when compared to the scale of contemporary cultural imperialism’s reach and power. That capitalism has placed a portal to its material and imaginative production in virtually every hand on the planet should give us pause. Perhaps, like the young shanty-dweller, we will only be able to start “dreaming reality” when we throw the masters’ “trash” away?

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 13 November 2020.

Governing For All Of Us.

The Kind Colossus: There are those on the Left who fear that Jacinda’s attachment to the centre will prevent her from doing what so urgently needs to be done in housing, welfare, child poverty, industrial relations and climate change. They argue that the only people she and her government will respond to are the owners of businesses large and small. My own feeling is, that Jacinda will do as much as we compel her to do. As much as – now that she need ask no other party’s permission – the mood of the electorate urges her to do. And, given how incredibly skilled she has become at creating a mood, that could be quite a lot.

WHAT ARE YOUR OPTIONS when half the country has just voted for you? How should you respond to such a resounding vote of confidence? Jacinda Ardern has undoubtedly been giving this question considerable thought for several weeks. I say “weeks” because her party’s pollsters and their focus-group moderators have been making it clear to her for months that a Labour win of historic proportions was on the cards. From the tone and content of her gracious Saturday night victory speech, it soon became clear that, from the options on offer, Jacinda had already made her choice. She would lead a government “for all New Zealanders”.

It’s a promise that works as well for those on the bottom of the socio-economic heap as it does for those at the top. Indeed, it will be interpreted by both groups as applying particularly to themselves. For beneficiaries, the unemployed, and the working poor struggling to pay the rent; Jacinda’s words will be taken to mean that their needs will not be forgotten. For the rich and the very-rich, the Prime Minister’s speech brings reassurance that their wealth is safe. For the rest of us, it just sounds right: what sort of Prime Minister would set out to govern only for her supporters?

Part of the reason for Labour’s landslide win on Saturday is just how easy National Party leader Judith Collins and her colleagues made that question to answer. Throughout the campaign, it was made abundantly clear that National’s policies were intended to advantage its friends, allies and supporters – and virtually no one else. Time and again, when questioned about the huge disparity between the tax relief being offered to those in full-time employment on generous salaries, and those working two or three minimum-wage jobs, National’s finance spokesperson, Paul Goldsmith, talked of hard-working Kiwis on the average wage – as if everyone else were shiftless wastrels who deserved nothing better.

It’s precisely this dog-eat-dog attitude that New Zealand turned its face from in this election. If Covid taught New Zealanders anything, it’s that selfishness is a potentially deadly affliction. We learned how dangerous those who insist that “protecting the economy” be accorded the highest priority – ahead of the lives of elderly and vulnerable New Zealanders – truly are. We also learned the virtues of collectivism: rediscovering the simple truth that the well-being of each of us, and the well-being of all of us, are goals that can only be achieved by working together. It was her steadfastness in advancing this simple proposition that made Jacinda unbeatable.

That is not a rhetorical flourish. From the moment New Zealand went into Level 4 Lockdown, National found itself shut out of the election conversation. Individuals close to the party report campaign operatives telling them that the voters were screening their calls. Focus-group moderators quizzed their subjects relentlessly, desperate to find the words and phrases that would trigger former National voters into answering their phones. But, it was no good, nobody wanted to talk to politicians who thought it was a good idea to criticise, nit-pick, or in any other way undermine the nation’s determination to “stamp out the virus”.

National’s desperation was etched for all to see on the increasingly distraught features of Judith Collins. It was reinforced by her frenetic visits to the party’s rural and provincial heartland. It was as if any thought of reaching out beyond National’s electoral base no longer made any sense. It had become, in the metaphor so beloved by political journalists, a simple matter of “saving the furniture”.

Except, it didn’t work. In every South Island electorate the Party Vote was won by Labour. Rangitata fell. East Coast fell. Wairarapa fell. New Plymouth and Wanganui fell. Unbelievably, Ilam – Gerry Brownlee’s leafy Christchurch redoubt, the bluest of National’s blue-ribbon seats – fell. The furniture was burning.

Labour has ceased to frighten National voters. The class enemy turns out to have a kind heart, a toothy smile, and a special knack with ginger-cake. Their own leader, sadly, looks more and more like a fruitcake.

Mickey Savage performed the same trick back in the 1930s. My father liked to tell a story from his childhood about the old dairy farmer he often helped-out after school. The 1938 general election was fast approaching, and politics was on everybody’s lips. One evening, the hard-scrabble cow-cocky, perhaps aware that Dad’s father, the local GP, was a firm ally of the Labour Government, observed: “Well, Tony, it looks as though we’re going to have the socialists again!” As my father told the tale, the farmer did not say this with bitterness, but with a wink and a smile. A few days later, Labour romped back to power with 55.8 percent of the popular vote.

There are those on the Left who fear that Jacinda’s attachment to the centre will prevent her from doing what so urgently needs to be done in housing, welfare, child poverty, industrial relations and climate change. They argue that the only people she and her government will respond to are the owners of businesses large and small. My own feeling is, that Jacinda will do as much as we compel her to do. As much as – now that she need ask no other party’s permission – the mood of the electorate urges her to do. And, given how incredibly skilled she has become at creating a mood, that could be quite a lot.

When confronted by urgent and indisputable need, Jacinda and Grant Robertson were willing to spend scores of billions of Reserve Bank-created dollars to keep the lights on. The Prime Minister is not afraid of breaking the rules of neoliberalism if that is what the situation clearly requires – and what the voters are urging her to do in numbers too great to be ignored. Far too many on the Left are unwilling to acknowledge that the only kind of socialism that endures is democratic-socialism. Or as Jacinda puts it: “Change that sticks.”

We must not be frightened of the Prime Minister’s pledge to govern for all New Zealanders. It is not a formula for centrist betrayal. It is just another way of saying that she will continue to look after “The Team of Five Million”? And hasn’t Jacinda already shown us how well she can do that?

Isn’t that why she won?

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 20 October 2020.

The Day Labour Came Home.

Home Boy: "We can also draw the lessons of the past as to what not to do in response to a major economic shock. In this case Mr Speaker I can draw on the experiences of my own life. As the economic carnage of the 1980s and 1990s wreaked havoc in our communities, I saw that up close. It was based on a tired set of ideas that the market would save us, that if government sat on the sidelines all would be well. Well, it didn’t work out that way and lives and livelihoods were lost." - Finance Minister Grant Robertson, Budget Speech, 14 May 2020.

THIS WAS THE DAY my old comrades Bruce Jesson and Gerry Hill never got to see. Grant Robertson’s reaffirmation of Labour’s democratic-socialist principles, the Budget Speech they never got to hear. That I have lived long enough to see this day and hear that speech is something for which I am truly thankful.

What am I talking about? This is what I’m talking about:

“We can draw on the lessons of the past as to how to deal with [the challenges of the Covid-19-generated economic crisis]. The answers lie in the great traditions of the First Labour Government who rebuilt New Zealand after the Great Depression. It was a time when they understood a genuine partnership between government and the people. That each and every person in this country deserved the right to take up the chances afforded by being lucky enough to live in, as my predecessor Peter Fraser called it, this green and pleasant land. They built houses, rail and roads, they created the welfare state and a strong public health system, and they backed shopkeepers and manufacturers. We are taking those principles into the modern era.

“We can also draw the lessons of the past as to what not to do in response to a major economic shock. In this case Mr Speaker I can draw on the experiences of my own life. As the economic carnage of the 1980s and 1990s wreaked havoc in our communities, I saw that up close. It was based on a tired set of ideas that the market would save us, that if government sat on the sidelines all would be well. Well, it didn’t work out that way and lives and livelihoods were lost.

“That will not happen again, not on the watch of this government. We know that we must work in partnership with iwi, business, unions, community groups, every one of the team of five million to make sure we all not only get through this, but that we thrive on the other side.”

Nearly forty years ago, I was present to hear my old history professor, John Omer-Cooper, debate the ethics of the 1981 Springbok Tour with one of his post-graduate students, a young fellow by the name of Michael Laws. For a good part of his life Omer-Cooper had lived in Africa – an advantage he put to good use against Laws who grew increasingly exasperated as the mild-mannered professor methodically dismantled his arguments. The pro-Tour firebrand’s final shot was to accuse his opponent of attempting to pass off expediency as morality. Omer-Cooper’s reply, calmly but firmly delivered, I have never forgotten: “There are occasions, Michael, when the expedient thing to do, and the moral thing to do, are the same thing.”

I would offer Omer-Cooper’s observation to all those who dismiss Robertson’s remarks as boiler-plate Budget Day rhetoric. “Words are cheap!”, they object – which is certainly true. The point I would make in response to such cynicism, however, is that in the 35 years since Roger Douglas delivered his paradigm-shifting 1985 Budget Speech, no other Labour Finance Minister has felt either willing or able to speak such words. Until today.

Are Robertson and the Prime Minister referencing Labour’s democratic-socialist traditions because in the absence of such a transformative vision the numbers quoted in today’s Budget Speech will crush all hope of their government’s re-election? Of course they are. And doesn’t that constitute sheer expediency on their part? No, not “sheer” expediency: not when their joint repudiation of Rogernomics is genuine. Not when the idea of making the most vulnerable members of our society bear the burden of economic misfortune is one they sincerely consider objectionable. To seek to inspire New Zealanders with hope for a better future on the other side of this once-in-a-century crisis may well be the expedient thing to do in the run-up to a general election, but it is also the right thing to do.

All of which leaves us with a decision of our own to make. How should we respond to the extraordinary words spoken by Jacinda and Grant over the course of the last 48 hours? For what it’s worth, my personal opinion is we should take their words at face value. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting we simply overlook the clear deficiencies of the 2020 Budget: the absence of tax increases for the wealthy; its lack of further financial assistance for beneficiaries; but neither should we allow the best possible budget to become the enemy of a bloody good one. In a nation that has suffered 35 years of relentless neoliberal sloganeering, discretion just has to be the better part of political valour.

What’s more, if Bruce Jesson and Gerry Hill had been here to witness the day Labour came home to itself; had they, too, heard Robertson repudiate Rogernomics; then I’m pretty damn sure that they – and every one of our dear departed democratic-socialist comrades – would say the same.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 15 May 2020.

“Lord, give us Democratic Socialism – but not yet!”

Not Now, Not Ever, Never! The problem with Labour's leading activists is that there is never a good time for democratic socialism. Never. They are like Saint Augustine who prayed to the Almighty: “Lord, give me chastity and self-control – but not yet.” In the case of Labour's "junior officers", however, the prayer is a little different: “Lord, let the Labour Party give New Zealand democratic socialism – but not yet.”

IT PAINS ME to ignore the Prime Minister’s advice, but it’s time to kick some Labour Party butt. As the saying goes: “Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind.” And, no, I’m not talking about putting another boot into the tragic posterior of the Minister of Health. My beef is with the junior officers of Labour’s army. These are the folk who should be the most aggressive in the fight for social justice. The ones willing to take the risks necessary for victory. The ones with their eyes firmly fixed on the democratic-socialist prize. Unfortunately – and frustratingly – this is not what we’ve got.

On display is the sort of military prowess that saw a gaggle of chinless, baggy-panted British toffs hand over Singapore to a near-exhausted, numerically inferior and utterly astonished Japanese army in February 1942. Rather than delighting Labour’s allies and supporters with bold and imaginative contributions to the debate on how best to wrestle down the looming Covid-19 recession, Labour’s junior officers are offering nothing but orthodoxy and caution. Even worse, they are expending what little energy they can summon-up on upending buckets of cold water on every radical idea that comes forward.

Why do they always do this? How did dreary pragmatism become Labour’s default-setting? A full explanation would require a book-length answer. Suffice to say that once a party embraces the fundamental tenets of neoliberalism, anything other than orthodox and cautious policy responses will be treated as the political equivalent of upending a can of petrol over your head and striking a match. To be considered a credible contender for bigger things (an electorate seat or a high position on the Party List) requires constant proof that one’s hands are nothing if not “safe”.

Hence the following snippy little comment from lawyer, Greg Presland (The Standard’s “Mickey Savage”) responding to my criticism of his casual dismissal of the suggestion that Kris Faafoi should’ve rescued the best of New Zealand’s magazines by accepting Bauer Media’s offer to sell its entire stable to the Crown for $1.00:

“Gee Chris. In the middle of a pandemic when the country’s collective health and economy are under major threat and possibly a third of businesses are going to the wall do you really think the Government should be sweating about saving the Listener?”

Yeah, Greg, I do. I really do. Because even Blind Freddie (and The Spinoff’s Duncan Grieve) can see that Bauer’s ruthless cutting of its losses is about to be replicated across the entire media industry, and that only the Crown has the resources (not to mention the responsibility) to keep our news media alive and kicking against the pricks. Unless, of course, Greg’s desired outcome is actually the more-or-less complete collapse of this country’s independent media – with an all-powerful state media monopoly the last man standing. That there is absolutely nothing “social” or “democratic” about such a “solution” should surprise no one.

And lest any reader feel tempted to nod in agreement with Greg’s heartfelt concern for “possibly a third of businesses” poised to go “to the wall”: please, just stop and think it through. Is he suggesting that while the Government cannot afford to “sweat” about saving this country’s magazine publishing industry, it can afford to – and fully intends to – save all the others? Can the nation’s small and medium-sized enterprises now breathe a huge sigh of relief, secure in the knowledge that the same ministers who refused to lift a finger to shore-up the foundations of our democracy will nevertheless work like Trojans to rescue their little businesses?

Isn’t it more likely that the only New Zealand businesses with any reasonable hope of being bailed-out by the Crown will be the ones which are, in that memorable phrase from the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-09, “too big to fail”. Remember that Newsweek cover proclaiming “We are all socialists now”? Published the same week Barack Obama nationalised the auto industry.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Obama was right to take over General Motors. Nationalisation is what you do in a crisis – especially when the industry your saving is vital to the future of your country. And that’s the amazing thing, Greg. That you still don’t get that. But don’t feel too bad, because no one in a position to make a difference in the Labour Party has had an intelligent thought about the New Zealand media since the government of Norman Kirk!

So, if the Government is not going to be in a position to rescue every small business in New Zealand, and if up to a third of those small businesses could “go to the wall”, in Greg’s none-too-felicitous phrase, then wouldn’t this be the very best time to introduce a Universal Basic Income? Especially when the ability of the MSD to process and monitor tens-of-thousands of additional beneficiaries promptly, efficiently and sympathetically is just a teeny bit questionable?

Nope. Wrong again. According to Andrew Little’s former Chief-of-Staff, Neale Jones:

“I cannot think of a worse time to implement a UBI than in the middle of this economic crisis. Some of us are doing fine. Others need unprecedented government support just to stay afloat. UBI would spread that support thinner, or quickly spend 10s of billions we may need later.”

Meaning Neale has no grasp at all of Keynesian economics. No understanding of the crucial importance of keeping up the level of aggregate demand. No historical grasp of the crucial role spending plays in lifting a nation out of an economic slump. Nor does he understand the practical and moral efficiency of universal, as opposed to means-tested, state support. The massively positive effect of telling every Kiwi: ‘You are important in your own right, not because you’re in need of charity but because you are a citizen of New Zealand.’ Everyone keeps telling us that “we’re all in this together” – a UBI would prove it.

But, no. Neale says that being in the middle of a once-in-a-lifetime economic crisis is actually the worst time to consider a payment to every citizen to keep them and the economy afloat. The worst time.

The problem is, Neale, there is never a best time for you guys. Never. You and Greg remind me of Saint Augustine who prayed to the Almighty: “Lord, give me chastity and self-control – but not yet.” In the case of you two junior Labour officers, however, the prayer is a little different:

“Lord, let the Labour Party give New Zealand democratic socialism – but not yet.”

Not yet.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Thursday, 9 April 2020.

The Response - Not The Call.

The Equal And Opposite Reaction To Bernie: Call yourself a “democratic socialist” and everyone who feels threatened by democratic-socialism will mobilise against you. The anti-Sanders mobilisation has taken some time to resolve itself into a single challenger, but former Vice-President Joe Biden’s, runaway victory in South Carolina has finally cleared the centrists’ path to the nomination.

WATCHING THE SLOW descent of Bernie Sander’s campaign is a depressing reminder of democratic (and Democratic) political realities. The most brutal of these is that Newton’s Third Law of Motion applies with equal force to politics as it does to physics. “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

Call yourself a “democratic socialist” and everyone who feels threatened by democratic-socialism will mobilise against you. The anti-Sanders mobilisation has taken some time to resolve itself into a single challenger, but former Vice-President Joe Biden’s, runaway victory in South Carolina has finally cleared the centrists’ path to the nomination.

No matter how thrilling Sanders’ wins in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada may have been, the brute arithmetic of the primary process remained constant: the combined strength of his opponents was always greater than his own. As the captains and the kings of the Democratic Party centre depart, with Pete Buttigieg leading the way this afternoon (2 March 2020) the inevitability of a single opponent standing athwart Bernie’s path to the nomination is now clear.

“Super Tuesday” (Wednesday, 4 March NZT) will winnow the field with even more force than South Carolina. The departure of Amy Klobuchar and (probably) Mike Bloomberg, will leave the field clear for Biden’s folksy homilies. Elizabeth Warren will likely remain in the race, drawing votes from Sanders in expectation of being rewarded with the Vice-Presidential nomination. At some point well short of the Democratic Party Convention in Milwaukee (July 13-16) Sanders’ campaign will falter and fade away. Many on the left of the Democratic Party will settle for the half-loaf that is Biden-Warren – especially if it means driving Donald Trump from the White House.

“No! No! No!”, the Sandernistas will cry. “That must not be allowed to happen!” But the angry protests of these young, idealistic progressives will not avail them. At some point in electoral politics, the moment comes when you must remove your fingers from your ears, open your eyes, and take in the terrifying spectacle of your enemies’ tanks rolling towards you. Whether you believe in it or not, the Third Law of Political Motion is very, very real.

Why is the Democratic Party leadership so terrified of Sanders becoming the nominee? Because they know the size and ferocity of the forces his nomination for the Presidency would unleash. Sanders supporters rail against the Democratic establishment – accusing them of doing everything within their power to undermine their candidate. And that’s true. They are. Not because they’re against Medicare For All, or even the Green New Deal, but because the billionaires Bernie denounces, whose enormous power and wealth are directly threatened by his policies, will move heaven and earth to keep him, and them, out of the White House.

Democratic Party stalwarts, the people who have spent years navigating the treacherous waters of the United States’ political system, have priorities very different from Sanders’ most vociferous supporters. They are only too aware that even if, by some miracle, Bernie won the White House; the Almighty is most unlikely to add a second miracle to the mix.

Yes, a President Bernie Sanders could achieve some important gains by Executive Order, but he couldn’t deliver Medicare For All, or a Green New Deal, or the writing-off of student debt, or any of the other radical measures he is promising, without solid majorities in both the House of Representative and the Senate. Truth to tell, securing the passage of such radical legislation would be a long shot even with substantial majorities in both houses of Congress. Without them, however, Bernie’s programme is a pipe-dream. As unrealistic as expecting the God of History to deliver the Democratic Party not one, but two, political miracles at the 2020 elections.

Stripping away all the ideological bunting, there is only one unequivocally popular prospect the Democratic Party can hold out to the American electorate: a White House cleansed of Donald Trump and all his evil brood. But, bringing together an electoral coalition powerful enough to secure Trump’s defeat in the Electoral College will not be easy. Far from offering voters the bitter rhetoric of class war, the Democratic Party’s candidate will need to speak the language of inclusion, reconciliation and national renewal.

The sentiments of America’s Founding Fathers should be turned against the constitutionally illiterate Republican incumbent. Recalling for voters all the great and redemptive moments of American history, the Candidate should then invite them to contrast the moral strength of America’s best leaders with the abject moral squalor of its worst.

Bernie Sanders and his followers have done the United States the inestimable service of bringing together all the planks necessary to construct the most progressive Democratic Party platform in a generation. To implement the Sandernistas’ progressive dreams, however, the voters of United States must first be persuaded to abandon the ruin of unreasoning and mutually destructive partisanship. First and foremost, America needs a healer.

If History has taught us anything, it is that revolutions inevitably open up new wounds – even in those rare instances when they succeed in closing up old ones. Always, the true believers cry: “Let Justice be done – though the heavens fall!” But what sort of justice has ever emerged from the ruins of paradise?

Let the equal and opposite reaction to Donald Trump’s hate be love. Allow him to initiate the action that will bring his administration down. The Democratic Party can only win in November by being the response – not the call.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 3 March 2020.

The Trick Of Winning Power Under Capitalism.

“Power resides where men believe it resides. It’s a trick. A shadow on the wall. And a very small man can cast a very large shadow.” - Varys to Tyrion in Game of Thrones.

CORBYN’S DEFEAT, and the defeat of the Labour Party his leadership made possible, is a defeat for the Left everywhere. All over the western world social-democrats are pointing to the British Labour Party’s electoral catastrophe and saying: “See? This is what happens when you try to sell “Democratic-Socialism” to those not already convinced that it’s a good idea.” What happened to Labour’s “Red Wall” will be used to undermine AOC; batter Bernie Sanders; and demoralise Elizabeth Warren. Closer to home, it will be used as a prophylactic against the merest hint of Corbyn-style thinking inside the New Zealand Labour Party.

The question is: What lessons should democratic-socialists, themselves, draw from the Corbyn Labour Party’s historic defeat? Because the UK General Election has more lessons to teach us than Dominic Cummings has wickedly clever ideas. Not the least of which is that you receive fewer scratches when you pat a cat from its head to its tail, rather than from its tail to its head.

It is one of the great paradoxes of radical left-wing politics: that the people who rail most uncompromisingly against the evils of capitalism are genuinely shocked and horrified when capitalism unleashes a fair old swag of those evils against them.

Jeremy Corbyn was unfairly pilloried in the media, they complain. Every major media outlet was against him. The guy couldn’t get a break – not even from The Guardian and the BBC!

Well, duh! What the hell did they expect? That the leader of a party promising to restore the trade unions’ right to engage in “secondary picketing” was going to be given a fair shake by newspapers owned by billionaires? That Rupert Murdoch, the man who broke the power of the print unions in the 1980s, was going to say: “Come on in, Jezza! Sit down and tell me how I can help you devise the sort of inheritance tax that will break the power of families like my own forever.”

If you accept the proposition that we are all living in a capitalist society, then, surely, you must also accept that anyone posing a genuine threat to that society will be subjected to unrelenting political attack? And, doesn’t that oblige you, as the democratic-socialist leader of a serious electoral party, to offer the capitalist press the smallest possible target? In fact, wouldn’t the smart move be to convince the mainstream media bosses that you weren’t any kind of democratic-socialist at all?

Come to think of it, wouldn’t it mean doing exactly what Tony Blair did? Making the pilgrimage to Rupert Murdoch’s corporate lair and convincing him that from you and your “sensible” Labour Party he had absolutely nothing to fear? That way, when the election campaign got rolling, The Sun could come out and endorse you, and urge its readers to vote Labour.

Obviously, I’m not saying that Tony Blair was any kind of democratic-socialist. What I am suggesting, however, is that if you are a Labour leader who genuinely subscribes to the principles of democratic-socialism, then it would probably help a lot to keep your true ideological colours under wraps. Tactically, at least, it would make more sense for the powers-that-be to see you as a reasonable moderate – not a scary radical. Impress the electorate with your economic wisdom; demonstrate your deep understanding of, and sympathy for, the hopes and aspirations of your core working-class supporters. Speak with pride and passion about the contribution their party has made to the nation’s history. Whatever you do, don’t refuse to sing God Save The Queen. It would also probably help if you refrained from meeting with representatives of terrorist organisations – especially those hostile to the State of Israel!

A democratic-socialist leader possessed of a sophisticated strategic sense would understand that election manifestos are best restricted to promoting policies that the electorate actually wants – not policies his (or her) comrades believe the electorate should want. Let the drift of events – economically and socially – propel the party in directions which the capitalists may not like, but which they no longer feel able to redirect. Most importantly, identify the one reform most likely to undermine the institutions upon which their opponents’ rely most heavily for protection. Implement it early, fast, and without compromise.

Think of Jim Bolger, Bill Birch and the Employment Contracts Act. Radically reducing the reach and power of the trade unions – the working class’s most effective defence against exploitation and declining living standards – was the one reform most likely to enhance and entrench the power of capital. The moment it became law, everything else National and its backers wanted to do was made ten times easier.

It is worth recalling that the unprecedented scope and radicalism of the Employment Contracts Act had not been signalled to the electorate prior to National racking-up a massive majority in the 1990 General Election. Bill Birch had reassured New Zealand workers that their hard-won industrial rights – guaranteed hours and penal rates – would not be affected by the changes National was proposing. By the time the draconian provisions of the bill became clear, the leaders of the trade unions had lost all confidence in their ability to prevent its passage. This loss of confidence was crucial to the National Government’s success. A successful democratic-socialist government should be similarly positioned to demoralise their capitalist opponents.

Perhaps, then, that is the exercise democratic-socialists around the world should now be undertaking. Quietly identifying the single reform that would effectively disarm the capitalists and fundamentally diminish their ability to effectively resist the introduction of further progressive economic, social and environmental reforms.

As Varys in Game of Thrones so wisely tells Tyrion: “Power resides where men believe it resides. It’s a trick. A shadow on the wall. And a very small man can cast a very large shadow.”

It’s high time the Left learned the trick of winning power under capitalism: positioning a very big man in such a way that he casts a very small and non-threatening shadow – until he doesn’t.

Jezza, old son, they saw you coming!

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 17 December 2019.

Some Thoughts On Socialism As Jeremy Corbyn Loses The UK General Election.

Forlorn Hope: When the call came down to make Corbyn unelectable, the Establishment's journalists and columnists rose to the challenge. Antisemitism was only the most imaginative of the charges levelled against the old democratic-socialist. There were many more and, sadly, they appear to have worked. Boris Johnson may not be much liked or trusted, but he’s more liked and trusted than Jeremy Corbyn.

WHAT BETTER DAY to assess the latest contribution from The Daily Blog’s resident Marxist than Election Day in the UK? I’m pretty sure Dave Brownz will be as gobsmacked as I most certainly will be if Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party ends the day with the makings of a majority in the House of Commons. Should the impossible happen, however, the issues raised in Dave’s post will take on a new urgency. The question of whether socialism and democracy can operate successfully together will instantly, in the UK at least, cease to be a matter of academic debate.

The essence of Dave’s argument is that any attempt to introduce socialist policies, while all the core institutions of the bourgeois capitalist order are still standing, is doomed to fail. According to this argument, every socialist reform attempted by a Corbyn-led government of the UK would end up being thwarted. Either, Labour’s changes would be welcomed as a much needed intervention on behalf of Britain’s beleaguered capitalists. Or, if Corbyn’s reforms did, indeed, strike at the heart of UK capitalism, his government would be deposed. Peacefully, if possible. Violently, if necessary.

Dave’s (and Marx’s) way out of this no-win situation is to call for “the dictatorship of the proletariat”. In place of the social forces which currently run, justify and benefit financially from capitalism, set up an entirely new system operated by its victims. Only then, say the Marxists, can socialism have the slightest chance of surviving and flourishing.

There is a grim logic to this position. Certainly, a socialist government surrounded by capitalist institutions will very swiftly find its room for political manoeuvre shrinking. The courts will intervene on behalf of those affected by its most radical policies. Senior public servants will leak its transformative plans to the capitalist press. Right-wing middle-class students take to the streets in protest. Foreign corporations will threaten to seize the nation’s overseas assets in the event of inadequately compensated nationalisations. Hostile capitalist powers will impose sanctions in order to “make the economy scream”. Dave’s argument: that if all these forces are not first swept away by the revolutionary masses, then they will conspire to strangle an infant socialist government in its cradle; is pretty compelling.

To date, Corbyn’s fate lends credence to Dave’s case. In the four years he has led the British Labour Party he has been the target of an unrelenting campaign of personal vilification and political destabilisation. With hindsight, it is clear that the Labour Party has, for decades, been kept “fit for office” through a combination of destruction and creation. The careers of potentially successful Labour left-wingers have been destroyed, while the reputations of those considered a “safe pair of hands” have been enhanced – mostly by Capitalist Britain’s well-positioned defenders in the security services and the news media. Corbyn’s success was a slip-up – a big one. Exactly how big is indicated by the sheer viciousness of the campaign set in motion to destroy him.

It has, however, been an extremely costly exercise for “The Establishment”. To “get” Corbyn, the supposedly left-wing Guardian newspaper was forced to reveal its unshakeable allegiance to the “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie”. When the call came down to make Corbyn unelectable, the Guardian’s journalists and columnists rose to the challenge. Antisemitism was only the most imaginative of the charges levelled against the old democratic-socialist. There were many more and, sadly, they appear to have worked. Boris Johnson may not be much liked or trusted, but he’s more liked and trusted than Jeremy Corbyn.

The temptation to subscribe to Dave’s critique of democratic-socialism’s contention that liberal capitalism can be dismantled and reassembled without sacrificing its “progressive” features – such as Freedom of Expression, the Rule of Law and Personal Liberty – is very strong. Especially once it becomes clear that, as I used to tell my fellow trade unionists back in the 1980s, “all the rights we possess as citizens of a democracy are given to us on just one condition – that we never use them”. But, to move from this bleak realisation to the Marxists’ wholesale embrace of proletarian dictatorship strikes me as a step too far. It requires us to pretend that the terrible events of the twentieth century never happened. That the exigencies of dictatorship – regardless of whose particular class interests it is established to serve – do not lead inevitably to censorship, concentration camps and mass executions.

The trick, it seems to me, is to so conduct yourself as a democratic-socialist government that the capitalists are insufficiently motivated to overthrow you. There is, as alluded to above, a high price to be paid for exposing the iron fist of fascism inside liberal capitalism’s velvet glove. Nevertheless, convincing the Powers-That-Be that your left-wing government has more to offer them alive than dead isn’t easy. It requires a mixture of political wisdom and cunning not often found among the men and women of the Left. Harold Wilson almost had enough to achieve his goal of fusing the interests of British capitalists and British workers in “the white heat of technology” – creating thereby a “producers’ alliance” that would overpower the City of London and “Put Britain First”. Had he been Prime Minister at any other time but the Cold War, who knows, he might have succeeded.

Could Corbyn have made a similar case for a “producers’ alliance” to restore Britain’s waning economic fortunes? If he had somehow contrived to link Wilson’s project to the economic and cultural frustrations fueling Brexit – maybe. A democratic-socialist European Union: offered to Labour voters as an alternative to the present, bureaucratic, neoliberal monstrosity; now that might have been worth voting “Leave” to achieve. Barring some sort of miracle, however, it’s too late to make that case now.

No doubt Dave Brownz will shake his head at such naivety. But, even as Labour goes down to yet another defeat in the UK, I refuse to abandon the hope that one day we’ll find the right person at the right time. Because, in the end, if your socialism isn’t democratic, then it’s not worth having. No one ever said achieving social justice and freedom would be easy, but then, as my dear old dad used to say: “Nothing worthwhile ever is.”

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 13 December 2019.

Adrian Orr – The Reserve Bank’s Revolutionary Governor?

New Zealand's Underarm Banker: It bears recalling that the “independence” of the Reserve Bank Governor was for decades held up by neoliberal capitalists as the most compelling justification for passing the Reserve Bank Act. Interesting, is it not, how the ruling class’s support for the Bank’s independence lasted no longer than its Governor’s first attempt to regulate (albeit modesty) the behaviour of Australasian capital?

I’M BEGINNING to suspect that Reserve Bank Governor, Adrian Orr, is, at heart, a revolutionary. The decision of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand to nearly double the “Big Four” Australian banks capital requirements – from 10.5 to 18 percent – has deeply shocked financial communities on both sides of the Tasman. What Orr has triggered in the minds of the Australian bankers is a truly fateful question: “At what point does our involvement in the New Zealand finance sector become unprofitable?” It’s a question fraught with potentially revolutionary implications for New Zealand’s economic sovereignty.

The reaction from the Right confirms the boldness of Orr’s move. The consensus among those opposed to the Reserve Banks’s decision is that it will make it harder for the Australians to perform to their shareholders’ expectations. In other words, Orr stands accused of reducing the Australian banks’ profitability. New Zealanders are being warned that they will have to endure higher interest rates on their borrowing, and lower rates for their savings, as a consequence of Orr’s actions. National’s Finance Spokesperson, Paul Goldsmith, is predicting a substantial hit to the country’s growth prospects:

“The two primary effects of today’s decision will be higher borrowing costs than would otherwise have been the case and businesses and farmers will find it harder to access the funds they need to grow.”

The NZ Initiative (the successor organisation to the dark knights of Business Roundtable) echoes Goldsmith’s fear:

“The RBNZ’s decision to increase the capital banks are required to hold will have adverse effects for borrowers and the wider economy. The effects are likely to be felt most acutely by high loan-to-value borrowers, the rural sector and small-to-medium-sized enterprises.”

Exposed in these statements, however, is a reality which both authors would undoubtedly prefer to keep hidden from New Zealanders. Namely, the degree to which we have become slaves to the financial power of Australia. Not only that, but how little – if anything – our ruling class is prepared to do to defend (let alone rebuild) New Zealand’s economic sovereignty.

A party calling itself “National” might have been expected to applaud the Reserve Bank Governor’s decision to protect New Zealand depositors from the worst effects of a catastrophic financial collapse. Instead, we have its finance spokesperson chiding the Bank for daring to twist the Kangaroo’s tail. Meanwhile, the front organisation for the country’s biggest capitalists mutters darkly about the need to curb the Reserve Bank’s powers.

It bears recalling that the “independence” of the Reserve Bank Governor was for decades held up by these same neoliberal capitalists as the most compelling justification for passing the Reserve Bank Act. Interesting, is it not, how the ruling class’s support for the Bank’s independence lasted no longer than its Governor’s first attempt to regulate (albeit modesty) the behaviour of Australasian capital?

For those few adherents of “democratic socialism” (still the official ideology of the NZ Labour Party BTW) who continue to soldier-on, the reaction of big capital is extremely instructive. It points the way to how the Australian banks might one day be “persuaded” to relinquish their dominant position in New Zealand.

Way back in the early-1990s, when Jim Anderton’s Alliance was considerably more popular than the Labour Party, I remember being contacted by one of the Alliance’s policy activists with an intriguing question. He wanted to know, in practical terms, how one might go about re-nationalising privatised public enterprises without the legally required compensation payments bankrupting the nation.

Whew! That was a poser! Where to begin? Why not with a country that had already confronted and solved the problem? How did the largest surviving communist state – the People’s Republic of China – deal with/to the private sector? The answer proved to be both remarkably shrewd and surprisingly simple.

What the new communist government of China did, in the early 1950s, was to pass a law requiring all existing capitalist businesses above a certain size to make the Chinese state a 25 percent shareholder in the enterprise. Naturally, such a large shareholding would also entitle the state to be represented on the enterprise’s board of directors. As the years passed and the new regime consolidated itself, the legislation was amended constantly. Year by year, the state’s shareholding in the enterprise was increased – along with the number of its directors.

Unsurprisingly, the value of these enterprises’ shares plummeted. Seeing which way the wind was blowing, all those Chinese capitalists with a lick of sense offered-up their business’s remaining shares to the state. The latter generously agreed to take these off their hands – albeit for a handful of cents on the dollar. In this way, China’s largest capitalist enterprises were legally, peacefully – and cheaply – acquired by the state. As an added bonus, most of the by-now-former capitalists took what was left of their money and ran – to Taiwan, Singapore and the United States.

So, that was how you did it. By deploying the state’s legislative and administrative powers against the entrenched economic power of private enterprise. Far from sending in the revolutionary guards to seize, in the name of the people - and without compensation – the banks, insurance companies, department stores and factories, a democratic-socialist government would send in … its lawyer.

Like the ruthless, clear-eyed hero of the television series McMafia, the state’s representative will patiently explain to the people who used to be in charge, the new rules of the game:

“From now on” he’ll quietly inform the Chairman and his CEO, “your bank will be obliged to meet a capital requirement of 18 percent. In two years’ time that will rise to 25 percent. Three years after that the Reserve Bank’s CR will be 33 percent.”

“But that will ruin us!”, the Chairman and the CEO of the Aussie bank will wail. “We will have nothing to offer our shareholders.”

“With respect to that”, the young, clear-eyed lawyer will respond, with just the flicker of a smile, “the Minister of Finance has authorised me to make you the following offer …”

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Friday, 6 December 2019.

Why Isn’t JA Channelling AOC?

Red Star Rising: A very similar set of perceptions fuelled the rise of both Jacinda Ardern and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In the case of "AOC", the twenty-something, student-loan-burdened, former-waitress from Brooklyn, who proudly proclaims herself to be a “democratic-socialist”, has come to stand for everything that the contemporary Democratic Party is not – but urgently needs to become. In Jacinda's case, however, the radicalism is more apparent than real.

WHY ISN’T JACINDA ARDERN channelling Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC)? This is not a frivolous question. Labour found itself swept into a winning position at the end of 2017 almost entirely on the strength of Jacinda’s extraordinary appeal – especially to voters under 40.

Central to Jacinda’s appeal was the widespread perception that Labour’s new leader represented a definitive ideological break: not only with the Labour Party of Roger Douglas, but also with the woman who did her best to clear away the worst of the mess Rogernomics had made, Helen Clark.

A very similar set of perceptions has fuelled the rise of AOC. This twenty-something, student-loan-burdened, former-waitress from Brooklyn, who proudly proclaims herself to be a “democratic-socialist”, has come to stand for everything that the Clinton-dominated Democratic Party is not – but urgently needs to become.

So far, AOC hasn’t put a foot wrong in the complex dance routine that must be executed to secure a hearing for the aspirations of her locked-out generation. Her energetic sponsorship of a “Green New Deal” for America has made it impossible for House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, to nudge the radicalism of AOC and her newly-minted congressional comrades into the long grass. In similar vein, the young Brooklynite’s outspoken call for the USA’s wealthiest citizens to be taxed at 70 cents in the dollar on all income in excess of $250,000 has given Overton’s Window a much-needed shove to the left.

A politician of Jacinda Ardern’s acute sensitivity can hardly have failed to notice the bright red glow currently pulsing from the heart of the zeitgeist. She would have watched in awe as Bernie Sanders’ “Children’s Crusade” forced Hilary Clinton to call in all her favours (and Super-Delegates) to head the old socialist off at the pass. But that awe would have turned to horror as Jeremy Corbyn’s socialist revival rolled up Blairism like a threadbare carpet and set the crowds cheering at Glastonbury.

Suddenly, Jacinda’s carefully scripted lines about being a “pragmatic idealist” seemed likely to have a very limited shelf-life. Certainly, her “politics of kindness” trope continues to inspire, but the problem with throwing around such kindly words is that, sooner or later (and preferably sooner!) they have to be matched by kindly deeds. Helping with the barbie at Waitangi looks good on the six o’clock news, but more is needed. Much more.

Does Jacinda get this? Does she understand the huge political potential – and risk – posed by the “surplus consciousness” of tens-of-thousands of young adults laden-down with professional credentials and student debt but denied the security and status attached to well-remunerated employment and a solid career-path? The precarious position of young people in the labour market is amplified even more pitiably for them in the marriage and property markets.

These voters are too well-educated to find solace among the angry populists of the Alt-Right, but they are signing up in droves to the system-challenging – and changing – agenda of democratic socialism. After all, what favours has neoliberal capitalism ever done them?

It’s one of the great mysteries of this government that, on the night the Labour-NZ First coalition was announced, Winston Peters got this – and Jacinda didn’t.

Then again, maybe not. One of the first big political gigs offered to Jacinda was an internship in Tony Blair’s Cabinet Office. It’s hardly the sort of ideological grounding to generate a surge of enthusiasm and support for Bernie Sanders or (God forbid!) Jeremy Corbyn.

Nor should it be forgotten that Jacinda was for a good portion of her life a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. One has only to recall the shining eyes and broad smiles of those Mormon missionaries on your doorstep, or tipping you that friendly wave as they ride by on their bicycles, to remember suddenly where you have seen Jacinda’s political style before.

Those familiar with Jacinda’s CV will object that her stint as President of the International Union of Socialist Youth (IUSY) equips her even more impressively than AOC for the struggle to advance democratic socialism. A little more is required of a true democratic socialist, however, than the ability to call people “comrade” with a straight face. Nor is the IUSY quite the bastion of radical socialist internationalism that its name might suggest. Any organisation that welcomes a far-right CIA stooge like Venezuela’s “Interim President”, Juan Guaido, into its ranks, has some explaining to do!

Finally, there is the problem of the company Jacinda has trained herself to keep. Throughout her entire political career she has surrounded herself with – and been surrounded by – right-wing social-democrats. Blair’s New Labourites; Clark’s incrementalists; Cullen’s DNC-endorsed economic policies; and, most recently, Grant Robertson’s “Budget Responsibility Rules”. She was an enemy of David Cunliffe and, by implication, the hopes and dreams of the thousands of Labour Party members who supported him. And, lastly, it’s a pretty safe bet that, like Labour’s current president, Nigel Howath, she has no time at all for that bane of Blairism, Jeremy Corbyn.

No. Jacinda may envy AOC’s extraordinary political savvy and covet her social media skills. She may even decide to crib some of her best lines about saving the planet and soaking the rich. But anyone anticipating an Ardern-led shift towards democratic socialism (which is still, ironically enough, the official ideology of the NZ Labour Party) is bound to be disappointed.

Democratic Socialism, as practiced by AOC, will be DOA in Jacinda’s NZLP.

This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog of Tuesday, 12 March 2019.

Vision And Creation – Or Fiscal Restraint?

Fatal Obsession: It was Gough Whitlams' Minister for Minerals and Energy, Rex Connor, whose lifelong dream of "buying back the farm" (nationalising Australia's mineral and energy resources) led him into the coils of an American-inspired conspiracy featuring the shady Pakistani banker, Tirath Khemlani, that precipitated the infamous dismissal of his Labor government on 11 November 1975. Every reforming Labour government should have Connor's name tattooed over its heart - as a warning.

THERE’S ONE NAME that should be tattooed over the heart of every Labour Party politician: Rex Connor. It was Connor’s determination to “buy back the farm” – i.e. deliver Australia’s mineral wealth into public ownership – that set in motion the sequence of events which persuaded the Australian Governor-General, Sir John Kerr, to dismiss Gough Whitlam’s Labor government on 11 November 1975. The lesson for all subsequent Labor (and Labour) governments was clear: never let the policy commitments of a single minister deepen to the point where they drag an entire government down to defeat.

Connor was an old-time Labour socialist and economic nationalist who was fond of quoting the American poet, Sam Walter Foss:

Give me men to match my mountains,

Give me men to match my plains,

Men with freedom in their visions

And creation in their veins.

When the Australian Treasury persuaded Connor’s Labor colleagues that his plans to borrow $4 billion (a colossal sum in 1974!) were economically and legally reckless, the bluff old socialist went behind their backs and attempted to borrow the money from Middle Eastern potentates, who, following the dramatic oil price-hikes precipitated by the 1973 Yom Kippur War between Israel and its Arab neighbours, were awash with “petro-dollars”.

With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the United States government, alerted to Connor’s intentions, laid a trap for him. A shadowy Pakistani banker by the name of Tirath Khemlani was able to ensnare Connor by promising to arrange a loan large enough to make all of the Minister for Minerals and Energy’s dreams come true. It was the Liberal Opposition’s exposure (undoubtedly with American assistance) of the “Loans Affair” which sparked the political crisis culminating in Whitlam’s dismissal.

Why are political events which occurred in Australia more than 40 years ago being rehearsed in New Zealand in 2018?

The memory trigger, in this case, was pulled by the National Party Opposition’s Transport spokesperson, Judith Collins. In a media release issued on Tuesday, 16 January, Collins castigates the Minister of Transport, Phil Twyford, for raising the possibility of diverting motorist-derived revenues from the National Land Transport Fund for the purposes of developing Auckland’s light-rail network.

“This desperate grab for more taxes is the result of this free-spending Government realising how much it’s going to cost to build its pet rail line from Auckland’s CBD to the Airport”, argued Collins, “so it’s looking to divert funding from regional roads as a result.”

Collin’s criticisms were echoed in a release from the right-wing lobby group, The Taxpayers’ Union, which enjoined Twyford to keep his “hands off motorists’ piggy bank”.

Now, this is a very long way from Khemlani’s false promise to provide Rex Connor with the wherewithal to “buy back the farm”, but every doomed journey begins with a single step.

Phil Twyford has staked his own reputation – and that of the Labour-NZF-Green Government – on fulfilling not only their commitment to end Auckland’s traffic gridlock, but also, and more importantly, to have Labour’s “KiwiBuild” affordable housing initiative well underway by the 2020 election.

The $4 billion question is: are there sufficient financial resources available to permit the government to meet these (and many other) policy commitments? The answer, of course, is yes. All governments have the power to beg, borrow or steal whatever resources are needed to implement their plans. In the case of this government, however, the matter is more complicated.

Jacinda Ardern’s Cabinet contains many men and women with “freedom in their visions” and “creation in their veins” but, unfortunately, on his performance to date, her Minister of Finance isn’t one of them. Grant Robertson’s determination to keep his government within its self-imposed “Budget Responsibility Rules” is presently on a collision course with ministers’ determination to keep their promises.

If the Prime Minister allows that collision to occur, then the chances of someone doing a Rex Connor will increase spectacularly. Whitlam’s fatal error was to refuse to make a choice between vision and creation, and the budgetary restraint necessary to keep the confidence of the Australian people. Ardern’s challenge is to decide what sort of government she intends to lead. Will it be a government of vision and creativity? Or, a government which refuses to abandon its commitment to fiscal rectitude.

If it’s the latter, then Jacinda needs to sack her Rex Connors – now.

This essay was originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 19 January 2018.