Ian Anderson

In April, Victoria University of Wellington Students Association (VUWSA) launched its “Fairer Fares” campaign, lobbying the council to reduce public transport fares for students. VUWSA has conducted well-attended student forums on the issue, and the campaign has received coverage on TV One’s Seven Sharp.

Salient, Victoria’s student magazine, ran a debate on the campaign. Critics argued that the campaign “stinks of elitism and privilege” and that students should pay their “fair share,” while campaign head Rick Zwaan responded that students are “among the hundreds of thousands who are struggling” and pointed out that 90% of students are entitled to a Community Services Card. By Zwaan’s logic, arguably anyone with a Community Services Card should have subsidised fares.

Public transport is not just a student issue. Rising petrol costs, the necessity of ecologically sustainable transport solutions, and the commercialisation of public transport are key issues for workers and progressives generally.

Subsidised fares for students is an achievable goal. However, the wider issue is a privatised or commercialised public transport sector that regularly increases prices, cutting back access for low-income workers, beneficiaries and students. Council spends around 70% of its budget on public transport, much of it subsidising private business in its profit-gouging.

VUWSA has recently come under fire for campaigning on “non-student” issues. Conservatives criticised the organisation’s support for same-sex marriage rights, which won around 80% support from students – ironically this policy was introduced at the same time as VUWSA restructured its executive to abolish the Women’s, International and Queer Officers. Students associations are pressured to play an increasingly managerial and mediating role, especially in the context of Voluntary Student Membership (Voluntary Student Membership – A Socialist Perspective, Joel Cosgrove, December 2010 Spark).

Although universities act in large part as training for the managerial class, and production of research for market purposes, most students are indebted and work part-time. Public transport fares affect students as members of a wider community of workers, not simply as students.

Students cannot limit ourselves solely to sectoral issues, “student issues” (although action on student issues is important). A broader campaign for free or affordable, improved public transport could build solidarity with the wider community. Ultimately to address the underlying problem of “fairer fares,” public transport must be made truly public, placing it under community control.

Daphne Lawless will present on Ecosocialism at our upcoming conference, Fightback 2013.

It seems to be common sense that socialism and green politics go together. “Green is red”, wrote English socialist Paul McGarr more than ten years ago. On the other side of the aisle, the Right often refer to the Green Party as “watermelons” (that is, red on the inside – secretly socialist). The Green Parties, for their turn, like to deny this connection, often declaring themselves “neither left nor right but out in front”. And many Marxists don’t want to have anything to do with this supposedly privileged middle-class movement for that very reason.

However, ecosocialism is – in brief – the idea that you can’t have green politics without red politics. That is: that you can’t have an environmentally sustainable society under capitalism and its almight profit motives. And you can’t have a socialist society which ignores ecological sustainability and quality of life in favour of producing mass quantities of consumer goods. I want to argue that, while ecosocialism has been for the last 25 years or so “the wave of the future”, it is now very much the wave of the present.

Marx and Ecology

Ecosocialism is the descendant of a Marxism which comes from “bottom up” – a Marxism which takes as its start and end point the lived experience of human beings on this planet. Marxism, as a philosophy which seeks to liberate humanity from alienation, is most widely known as the theory of how capitalism alienates the working class from the produce of their labour. But Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels also discussed how it alienates human beings from nature.

The American socialist writer John Bellamy Foster has shown that Marx’s early writings are very clear that capitalism creates a “metabolic rift” between social systems and ecological systems. Through the town-country division of labour, natural resources, including the plant and animal kingdoms, waterways and space itself, become seen as inert objects waiting to be transformed into goods for profit. And of course this applied also to the workers themselves – the worker is not valued for her or his humanity, but only as a source of potential profit for the boss. Capitalism is a system of exploitation of all of nature – including people.

The increasing push for resources under industrial capitalism leads to both environmental damage and heightening of capitalist competition. For example, in 19th century England farming was transformed by the increased use of chemical fertiliser – but the increasing yield of crops led to soil degradation. Meanwhile, imperialist wars were fought over tiny islands rich in guano (bird droppings) which could be used to make fertiliser.

However, this also has an effect on human well-being. The growth of industrial cities led to an urban environment fouled and polluted as much as a rural environment – especially for the working masses who flocked to these cities from the country. We can see a very similar process (the wearing out of the countryside under exploitation combined with the growth of tenement cities) in modern China. Foul, cramped, soulless working and living conditions are as much a product of capitalist alienation as the expropriation of surplus value. [Read more…]

Welcome to the May 2013 issue of Fightback, newspaper of Fightback (Aotearoa/NZ). Fightback is a socialist organisation with branches in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington and Christchurch.

Over Queen’s Birthday Weekend, the 31st of May to the 2nd of June, Fightback will be holding its annual public conference in Wellington. Turn to the back page or visit fightback.org.nz for more information.

In April, thousands rallied across Aotearoa against attacks on public schools. Fightback member Rebecca Broad covers the background of the dispute and argues the need for industrial action to defend and extend public education.

The campaign against further privatisation of power companies has also won some apparent victories lately, with the petition for a Citizens-Initiated Referendum achieving its goal of a non-binding referendum and with the Labour-Green opposition announcing a policy of bulk-buying power to reduce consumer prices. Fightback member Daphne Lawless argues the need for abolition of for-profit “State-Owned Enterprises,” introduced by the fourth Labour government, in favour of democratic community control.

In late March, racist group Right Wing Resistance were outnumbered by an anti-racist rally in Christchurch. Fightback member Byron Clark discusses the role of mainstream racism in fostering racist views.

In the April issue of Fightback, we covered the “peaceful revolution” in Iceland, (http://tinyurl.com/cu694hy) arguing while it has received little coverage in the capitalist press, it has conversely been exaggerated in some circles concerned with economic justice. Fightback reader Jessica Ward submitted an article for this issue, commending the inspirational nature of the struggle in Iceland. Fightback member Ian Anderson responds, contending that while the people of Iceland have won important concessions, international supporters have distorted the realities on the ground, the capitalist state in Iceland retains a monopoly on violence, and there are no “peaceful revolutions.”

On April 17th 2013, a bill passed its final reading in parliament extending marriage rights to same-sex couples in Aotearoa/NZ. This was the result of decades of struggle by supporters of queer rights. In an article reprinted from Scoop, Anne Russell discusses the limitations of this reform for dispossessed queers, while acknowledging that it can act as a spur to further action.
Sexism (like other forms of oppression) is deeply embedded in the daily lived realities of capitalism. Fightback supporter Robyn Kenealy discusses the role of everyday humour and irony in both reinforcing, and undermining sexism.

We also print two obituaries in this issue. Byron Clark explains the background behind celebrations of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s death; her devastating attacks on the working class, repression of resistance, and backing of violent counter-revolutions internationally. We also reprint a piece by MANA leader Hone Harawira, paying tribute to our comrade Mike Kyriazopolous, a unionist and Fightback member.

2013 May Fightback