Ian Anderson (Fightback Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington) provides a broad overview of neoliberalism, a period of capitalism marked by insecurity and poverty wages.

Towards the end of Only Their Purpose is Mad, an account of the neoliberal offensive in Aotearoa/NZ, Bruce Jesson describes the effect on communities:

“[Some] freezing works existed for 70 or 80 years. Towns grew up around them, and with them a community and a way of life. Three generations of freezing-workers would do similar jobs, be active in the same union, play in the same rugby league or netball team, go to the same schools, drink in the same pubs and clubs and share the same memories. A community depends on continuity. Suddenly the sharemarket collapses, the company folds, the freezing-works closes and the town turns into a place of shiftless unemployed and go-getting contractors.”

In the last 30 years, communities have been shattered, social contracts broken, workers divided. For those of us under 30, unions are a novel (even unknown) concept, now covering around 10% of the private sector.

Some call this a ‘post-industrial’ period, yet industrial production has expanded globally; capitalists just have more ability to globally shop around for the fastest and cheapest deal. Some call it the decline of the nation state, yet repressive militarist measures keep expanding, finding new technological forms; in Bourdieu’s terms, the “left hand” of the state has retreated while the “right hand” of the state advanced.

The basis of stability has shifted. In the ‘Social Democratic’ heyday from the 1950s to the 1970s, capitalism in the imperialist core was stabilised through a corporatist deal between labour, capital, and the state. Since the neoliberal assault on organised labour, living standards have come to depend on credit; the housing market, credit cards, growing private debt.

For David Harvey, neoliberalism is a system of renewed “accumulation by dispossession,” through the expansion of financial markets. In Aotearoa/NZ the National Party’s supposedly ‘mixed’ policies, including the further privatisation of power companies, sale of state housing, and undermining of workplace rights fit this pattern.

UNITE General Secretary Mike Treen recently asserted that the current National government is “not a radical neoliberal government.” I would suggest the neoliberal offensive (or attack) of the ’80s and ’90s largely won, and we are in a period of entrenchment. Many of the more brutal attacks of the offensive period – mass redundancies, destruction of unions, slashing of benefits – are no longer necessary. None of the flagship policies of Rogernomics and Ruthanasia have been substantially reversed.

Market intervention to save the finance sector is nothing new, and has occurred where necessary throughout the neoliberal period (the ultra-right dream of stateless capitalism never existed). Yet the 2008 financial crisis rocked the confidence of the international ruling class.

Czech philosopher and socialist Michael Hauser (‘Europe in a labyrinth and the power of ideas’, OpenDemocracy) notes the gap between the rhetoric and reality of class rule in Europe, with neoliberalism collapsing in words but not in practice. A 2008 official document, on recovery in Europe, implied a move to the left:

‘The current economic crisis gives another opportunity to show that Europe serves its citizens best when it makes concrete action the touchstone. Europe can make the difference. In difficult times, the temptation is to feel powerless. But Europe is not powerless. The levers of government, the instruments of the European Union, the influence of intelligent coordination add up to a potent force to arrest the trend towards a deeper recession. A Europe ready to take swift, bold, ambitious and well-targeted action will be a Europe able to put the brakes on the downturn and begin to turn the tide. We sink or swim together. (…) The fundamental principle of this Plan is solidarity and social justice. In times of hardship, our action must be geared to help those most in need. To work to protect jobs through action on social charges.

Yet Europe would soon embark on a violent ‘austerity’ project that reduced government spending without addressing the root of the crisis. In the US, the story has become a cliché; Barack Obama, elected on a platform of “Hope” and “Change” in 2008, failed to deliver much in a first term with a Democratic majority.

Aotearoa/NZ was not shocked by the global economic crisis, in the same way as the US and Europe. We haven’t seen the extremes of austerity faced by Greece, facing 25% unemployment. However the long-term trends (declining real wages, retreating social services, declining home ownership and state housing) remain stready. A property bubble continues to grow, which both Forbes and local bankers predict will have to burst. National may make the occasional minor compromise, but of course they show no interest in reversing these trends.

Measures like the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) seek to further entrench this regime internationally. Because of this institutional entrenchment, we need a political andindustrial movement, a national and international movement more than ever.

Some argue that Aotearoa/NZ is facing neo-colonisation. It might be more accurate to say that Aotearoa continues to be colonised by New Zealand, the European nation-state that bloodily imposed capitalism and now asks that the most oppressed simply forget history.

Left nationalist Bruce Jesson contended that New Zealand is a ‘Third World nation,’ due to “our massive overseas debt, our high degree of foreign ownership and our dependence on primary exports.” However, according to measures of political allegiance and living standards, which are roughly correlated, New Zealand appears near the top of the global pyramid:

• New Zealand consistently ranks with the top 10 countries in the UN Human Development Index, which consists largely of European countries or colonised ‘neo-Europes’ like the United States and Australia.

• New Zealand is a member of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Formed in 1961 to promote “democracy and the market economy,” the OECD is essentially a Cold War bulwark.

• Of OECD countries, NZ’s standard of living is about average.

• New Zealand collaborates with the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), another Cold War bulwark.

For some left critics, New Zealand’s collaboration with US imperialism is unequal, exploitative. This ignores New Zealand’s relatively high standard of living and cultural affinity with other mainly white, English-speaking countries. The fact that a country with high rates of child poverty sits near the top of the global pyramid paints a grim picture of international capitalism. It also shows the importance of international solidarity.

Seeking a way out of this rut, we may learn from international examples. Greece’s Syriza was recently elected on an anti-austerity platform, and is currently contending with militantly austere eurozone ‘partners.’ Stathis Kouvelakis, a leading member of Syriza’s Left Platform, contended in a recent Jacobin article that even basic reforms are a challenge for neoliberalism:

“[Neoliberalism] poses an old dilemma in new terms, namely the division between reformists and revolutionaries. Well, reformism requires believing that some progressive reforms are possible — pro-labor reforms, the promotion of welfare, etc. — within the terms of the system.

But in neoliberal capitalism that’s not possible anymore. So even to get relatively modest reforms which at other times would have been perfectly compatible with the system’s functioning, we need to have major confrontations and conflicts on a large scale. And we’ve seen as much in Latin America: the countries like Bolivia or Venezuela or Ecuador that have left governments are not socialist, but even this partial break with neoliberalism required lethal struggles: blood was spilt for it to be possible for Evo Morales to be elected.”

This fight for basic reforms does not mean socialists should all fall in behind the Labour Party (Syriza emerged as an alternative to the old ‘centre-left’ party). In a sense, there are no reformist parties left in parliament – although the Greens and Labour certainly have reformist members and supporters. Whereas the early Labour Parties sought a reformist path to socialism, the Fourth Labour Government initiated neoliberal attack in Aotearoa/NZ, and the Fifth Labour Government maintained the bulk of these attacks. Even former Green Party co-leader Russell Norman infamously described himself as ‘more pro-market’ than the Nats. It’s no surprise that voter turnout has reached record-low levels (especially among marginalised groups), and it would be dishonest to fall in behind the Labour Party. Socialists may seek newrepresentation in parliament, but this can be perverted or defeated without a strong anti-capitalist movement in the community.

Although neoliberalism shut down old frontiers of struggle, like any oppressive system it also opens up new frontiers. Today the majority of union members are women, and the frontlines of union organisation are in casualised and low wage sectors. Campaigns for a Living Wage and against Zero Hour Contracts are gathering public momentum.

Recent years have seen a defensive struggle against casualisation in established union sectors like meatworks and the public sector, and an offensive struggle against casualisation in formerly unorganised sectors like service and hospitality (Socialist Perspectives for Aotearoa/ New Zealand, CWI Aotearoa/NZ). Members of Fightback and other socialist groups have played a major role in UNITE’s fight for job security.

The neoliberal regime polarises hours of work, with many underemployed (working less than 20 hours) and many overemployed (working more than 50). Conflicting and competing schedules do not lend themselves to collective organisation; in fact that is the aim of a competitive labour market. In light of this instability, socialists assert rights to stability and control. This means a universal basic income, jobs for all who are ready to work, with dignified work and guaranteed hours (say 20 hours a week across sectors).

Slogans calling for ‘stability’ may seem conservative to some. Here I agree with Ben Watson, a former member of the British SWP, in a reflection on the relationship between mental health and socialism

If real socialism is campaigning for crèches and demanding rights for mental health users and pushing for bicycle lanes and supporting a local strike, isn’t it a little dull and shabby and boring? Well, no, because the delight is how UTTERLY HORRIFYING our demands for simple human things is in the eyes of those whose careers depend on realising profits for capital.

The second Auckland Left Forum looks at the issue of the housing crisis in NZ. Speakers from Fightback, Auckland Action Against Poverty and others to be confirmed.

Wednesday, April 22nd, 6:30pm
Grey Lynn Community Centre (510 Richmond Rd, Grey Lynn, Auckland)
[Facebook event]

Maritime Union picket against contracting out

by Daphne Lawless (Fightback Tamaki Makaurau/Auckland).

According to the 2013 census, just over 15% of residents in Aotearoa/New Zealand report earning income from self-employment. This is about the same percentage reported for Britain, according to Richard Seymour in The Guardian, which is apparently “the highest level since records began”. Another British socialist, Chris Bambery, points out that over the last five years, the income of British self-employed workers have dropped by something like 25%.

What does this mean for those interested in socialist politics, workers’ power, and liberation today?Marxist theory has traditionally described the self-employed as “petit bourgeoisie” – in other words, as small capitalists, squeezed between big business and the working class. Such people are commonly stereotyped as conservative politicialy, obsessed with profit-making, somewhat anti-social and with a “not-in-my-back-yard” suspicion of social programmes. Perhaps the classic image in our culture would be the classic TV comedy character Basil Fawlty.

This is an image which leads many socialists to think that self-employment is a bad thing, in that it binds people to the system. Chris Bambery argues, for example: “One crucial effect of such precarious workers is to drive down wages and conditions for all and to make it more difficult to take any form of collective action.”

Everyone a contractor

Indeed, it’s true that self-employment has increasingly been “thrust upon” workers as part of an ongoing attack on wages and conditions. Jake Williams, a commenter on the revleft.com forum puts it like this:

a whole lot of people who are regarded as something like “self-employed” are self-employed in a sort of legalistic way that actually means they’re more exploited and fucked over by their real employers.

A classic local example would have been the former maintenance workers of Telecom NZ (now Spark), who were forcibly converted into “independent contractors” in 2009. The identity of the boss and their rates of pay remained the same; however, now they had to buy and maintain their own vehicles tools, and lost their rights to paid vacations, sick leave and other benefits of salary/wage workers.

The current major form which global capitalism takes, neoliberalism, is based on bringing “the principles of the market” – buying and selling for money – into every part of society. In a neoliberal economy, workers are expected to sell themselves, to see themselves as products or as “human capital” and market themselves accordingly. This breaks down all traditional social ties, and teaches workers to compete rather than cooperate with each other.

The ideal would be for everyone to become a tiny capitalist “contractor” rather than a waged worker, without those few rights that organized workers have won over the centuries. The right-wing property millionaire Bob Jones once said that, in his ideal society, everyone would be an entrepreneur – down to trash collectors owning their own trucks and competing among each other for business. It is doubtful that such a world would have much room for solidarity, respect for others or for the environment.

Freedom is a two-edged sword

Karl Marx himself, in his 1864 work on “productive and unproductive” labour, had this to say:

The self-employed labourer, for example, is his own wage labourer, and his own means of production confront him in his own mind as capital. As his own capitalist, he employs himself as a wage labourer. (old-fashioned sexist language in original)

In other words, the self-employed worker exploits his/herself , to earn a living in the market. Ash Ambirge, from the “snarky business advice” website themiddlefingerproject.org, puts it like this:

[B]eing your own boss is infinitely harder than having a boss… Gone are the days when you just take orders and go home at 5pmto your cozy little cottage to watch Desperate Housewives while shoving Twizzlers down your throat.

Being your own boss means a humongous fucking time investment.

Being your own boss means mega responsibility.

Being your own boss means that the work is never done.

Being your own boss means rules, regulations, taxes, paperwork.

Given that, why would anyone do it? Ambirge continues:

Because being your own boss also means freedom, of course.

As John Whiteside Parsons, the American rocket scientist and occultist, put it: “freedom is a two-edged sword”. The self-employed worker is free in the sense that a stray cat is free. The freedom from having to sell one’s labour-power to a boss is replaced with the necessity of selling one’s labour-power, or the products of it, to a host of different clients – the alternative, of course, being to starve.

Control over labour

But, as Ambirge puts it, this freedom is also “creative freedom… to be you in ways you’ve never been before.” A self-employed worker has autonomy over the process of work; they can decide when and how to do the job. To a telecommunications contractor, this possibly doesn’t mean much; for an immaterial or “creative” worker – for example, in software, publishing or design – it is quite important.

Even as neoliberal capitalism dumps workers into self-employment whether they like it or not, some workers find that they find that the upside of autonomy over the work process makes up for the downside of insecurity and the vagaries of market forces. This makes the increasing numbers of self-employed under neoliberalism a more complex political issue than to simply declare it a social evil. Cheerfully informing a freelancer that under socialism they’ll have a steady full-time job in a state enterprise may not be as enticing as some conservative leftists might think.

In a post-industrial advanced capitalist economy, where industrialisation is increasingly “outsourced” to low-wage and low-freedom countries, increasingly creative and intelligent young people will find the self-employed life to be actually preferable to having a steady job. But more crucially for socialists, they may also find new ways to organise.

Freelancers‘ Union

Sara Horowitz, a former union lawyer and organizer in New York City, founded the Freelancers’ Union in 2001. The main selling point of the FU was not to engage in collective bargaining with clients – partly because, under United States labour law, it is not actually recognized as a union. Rather, the FU specialises in providing collective access to subsidized health insurance – an absolutely vital social goal for workers in the pre-Obamacare United States. It also provides a Portable Benefits Network, where self-employed workers can keep their social benefits while moving between temporary assignments – another gain which is not usually available to low-paid US workers.

On the FU’s website, Horowitz and other writers enthusiastically extol the freelance lifestyle as “the way of the future”, with traditional workers’ unions described as “a moment in history”. In an article entitled “Welcome to the Quiet Revolution”, Horowitz links freelancing to other lifestyle changes which promote the ability to live better under neoliberalism:

It’s a revolution away from consumption and toward connection. Away from individual acquisition and toward collective action. It’s a million small choices that, together, add up to big change. …

We’re saving more — and putting our money in credit union instead of banks. We’re eating healthy and local — and shopping at local farmers markets instead of corporate chains. We’re buying our clothes at thrift stores and abandoning mass-produced mall stores.

We’re thinking about what each purchase means—for us and for our community.

The numbers back it up. Since the recession ended, spending by the richest 5% has risen 17 percent. The rest of us? Just 1 percent.

We’ve stopped looking for more. We just want enough. And better.

Freelancers know this best of all. When you get by on fluctuating income, you know you’ve got to plan for your low-times, not your high-times.

In another article “Freelancers Redefining Success”, she continues:

As the availability of the traditional 40-hour-a-week job wanes, so does its appeal. Who wants to “clock-out” at the end of the day when you can dictate your own schedule?

Many freelancers rightly see the standard workweek as a prison of the past. Managing your own time isn’t just rewarding–it’s practical and efficient. Parents don’t have to “leave early” to pick up their kids. The idea of “killing time” until the clock strikes 5:00becomes obsolete when that time is chiefly your own.

Time is a new currency, and successful freelancers manage, save, and spend it wisely.

In this regard, the Freelancers’ Union has a lot in common with Green politics – a narrative of both individual and collective lifestyle changes, which – while not challenging the big guns of corporate neoliberal society – “opt out of it”, to some extent. This is not a political project that the Marxist left thinks is adequate to bring about a new future. But it is a movement of workers seeking to better their lives collectively, by making horizontal connections among themselves. This is thus a kind of “reformism from below” – to re-purpose a slogan from the 1960s – that we should be paying attention to.

New ways of being workers

How should the Left react to this? Certainly, a freelancer who enjoys setting her own hours and choosing her own clients and working habits, and has learned to live with administrative overhead and financial precarity, will not be attracted to a socialist project which considers her lifestyle a pernicious artefact of neoliberalism. Chris Bambery again: “One of the problems facing the left is that they tend to focus on those who make up their core membership – older, fulltime workers who are active in trade unions and are overwhelmingly employed in the public sector.”

So the Left has to consider a way of relating to self-employed workers as workers, of finding a place for the self-organization of independents and freelancers within a project of workers’ power. In New Zealand, where we still have some kind of socialised health system, the main selling point of the American FU – health insurance – doesn’t have the same appeal.

But an argument could be made that, as joining or forming a union is the basic form for wage- and salary-workers to express their power, so joining or forming co-operatives or networks should be the way forward for the self-employed. Perhaps the structures of co-operation of the “open-source” software industry offer us a way forward.

But also, as Chris Bambery suggests, self-employed and other precarious workers can be appealed to on apolitical, rather than a purely economic, basis. “[They] are very likely to have taken part in other forms of social protest or to have accessed anti-capitalist views via social media, the internet or books. They are watching Gaza and are fuming, watching Ferguson and feeling sympathy.”

Photo from indymedia

Submitted to Fightback (Aotearoa/NZ) by reader Jojo (based in Germany).

On march 18, the opening ceremony of the new building of the European Central Bank (ECB) was held in Frankfurt (Germany). About 25.000 activists not only from Germany, but also many from Italy and other European countries came to protest against this symbol of austerity and the European crisis regime. Riots brought the protests to the headlines of the German news.

The ECB’s new tower is 185m high and 1,3 billion Euro was spent to build it, while at the same time, the ECB as part of the Troika is forcing austerity laws (which lead to the dismantling of health and social security systems) on countries effected by the Euro-crisis. When Blockupy, a broad left alliance that has already organized protests against the Troika in recent years¹, announced to blockade the opening ceremony, the ECB changed its plans. Instead of a big opening party with many heads of governments, it held a much smaller ceremony with ECB-president Mario Draghi, Hesse’s² minister for economy Tarek Al-Wazir (Green Party) and Frankfurt’s mayor Peter Feldmann (Social Democratic Party, the German Labour-equivalent). It also gave its employees a day off. So, already before the protests started, Blockupy had its first success.

In the morning of march 18, about 6000 activists set off towards the ECB in several fingers. While some hold blockades around the ECB, others started to attack the police and also other targets associated with the European crisis regime and capitalism as a whole, such as advertisements and windows of banks and big companies. Several police cars were set on fire and a petrol station was plundered. Activists built partially burning blockades out of rubbish bins and other stuff they found in the streets to stop the police. While some destruction might have been inappropriate, most actions were clearly political and had legitimate targets. The police’s response to the riots was teargas, clubs and water cannons. More than 200 protesters were injured, and more than 500 detained. One activist, Italian Federico „Fede“ Annibale, is still in prison. On the side of the police, there were 150 injured, 80 out of them were however injured by their own teargas.

In the afternoon, a protest march went through Frankfurt with about 25.000 participants. Famous supporters of Blockupy such as Naomi Klein, comedian Urban Priol, Sarah Wagenknecht (from the German party Die Linke, „The Left“) and Giorgos Chondros (Syriza), but also representatives of other leftist groups hold speeches. Naomi Klein put the riots (which were condemned by big parts of the media and the public, but also by parts of the Blockupy alliance) into a global context when she addressed the ECB with the words „You are the true vandals. You don’t set fire to cars, you are setting the world on fire!“.

March 18 was seen as a success by the Blockupy alliance and its supporters. Although it was a week-day, 25.000 people took part in the protests, a success of the mobilization that called for people to skive off work, university or school in order to come to Frankfurt (which is also a kind of strike action).

Nevertheless, there have been debates about militancy and the riots in the aftermath of the protests. In a press conference and a press release the Blockupy alliance criticized the actions that were outside of the action consensus (which included only peaceful blockades and stated that there should be no escalation from the activists).

“That was not all as we planned it in Blockupy, as we have agreed it”, said Ulrich Wilken from Die Linke. “I saw some things with dismay”. Other spokespeople found different words, that were not that harsh towards the militant actions and put them into a context of the violence of police and the structural violence carried out by the Troika, but still criticized them.

However, the alliance made clear that there would be no distancing from activists but instead more communication within the network.

On indymedia, some articles have been published that justified the riots as an expression of anger and as a political action against banks, big companies and the state.

While it should be clear to radical leftists that destruction or damage of police or corporate property is legitimate and not immoral, the question is when does it make sense strategically and when not. Some activists criticized that militant actions were carried out right next to peaceful blockades and thus threatened protesters who were not prepared for escalation. Hopefully, there will be a constructive debate within Blockupy and the left about all these points. This might also be the chance to make militant tactics more understandable for the moderate parts of the alliance.

To whatever this debate might lead, march 18 clearly showed that people in Europe are angry about the authoritarian and neoliberal responses towards the crisis and that social injustice leads to uprisings and riots.

There has also been some confusion about Neonazis taking part in the protests and about an alleged attack on an accommodating for under-age refugees owned by the catholic NGO “Kolpingswerk”. The latter was a fake report. A commercial hotel from the “Kolpingswerk” was attacked and not the accommodation of the refugees that was close to it. This still might not have been a very smart action, but it does make a huge difference. Neonazis had announced to take part in the protest march, but they were chased away as soon as they were discovered. Blockupy has a clear anti-fascist and anti-racist stance.

Blockupy will continue to fight austerity, neoliberalism and capitalism, and announced that it may target other institutions responsible for these politics like the EU commission in Brussels or the German government in Berlin in future action days.

As the Syriza government is struggling to fulfill its promises, a European left movement becomes increasingly important. It needs to support Syriza’s claims, e.g. the claim that Germany should pay back its debts from World War 2, but on the other hand it also needs to put pressure on Syriza to fulfill its promises and it needs to promote self-organization from below because only then can we build an alternative to capitalism. The last point is not shared by all participants of Blockupy, but the anti-authoritarian network “Beyond Europe” that also mobilized for M18 is strongly promoting it.

The situation of the European left might be strengthened again in December with the elections in Spain where Podemos has good chances.

The Blockupy homepage (also available in English): http://blockupy.org/

The campaign page “Free Fede” (the comerade imprisoned during the protests) on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Free-Fede/1522560364631427?fref=ts

By Ian Anderson (Fightback/MANA Poneke).

Ben Peterson (Mana Otautahi) recently submitted an article contending that MANA gained more than it lost from the Internet Mana campaign. As a fellow MANA socialist, I have some agreements and disagreements with this assessment that I’d like to flesh out. Ben’s article focuses heavily on voting numbers, and offers a methodological reason for this:

“While there is plenty of anecdotes of people not voting Mana to avoid Dotcom, all statistical evidence strongly suggests the opposite.”

There are many ways to kill a cat. According to polls, support for the campaign dropped off in the last week of the election – after Kim Dotcom’s ‘Moment of Truth’ event. We might argue that relative to Dotcom’s donations, each Internet Mana vote cost over $100. However, this is clearly crude; the central contention is over the nature of the project, its qualities not simply its quantities.

Apparently the project was threatening enough that the establishment parties, including Labour, ganged up to kick MANA out. This is not the first time Labour campaigned hard to unseat Hone, but the Maori Party’s choice to back Kelvin Davis was new and decisive. Despite Ben’s claims, it’s entirely conceivable that Dotcom’s association with Hone made Labour’s job of rallying support easier. A comment on Fightback’s website suggests:

If people REALLY want to find out why Hone didn’t get his seat in Tai [Tokerau], why aren’t they surveying, and asking the people who live in Tai [Tokerau] themselves?

Considering MANA’s explicit attempt to forge a nationwide left electoral project, on the basis that “what’s good for Maori is good for everyone,” I don’t think the question is limited to Te Tai Tokerau voters. However, this anonymous commentator is definitely heading in the right direction; if it gained or lost support, why? What were the qualities that attracted or repelled people? What social forces were brought into play, for what political programme?

A socialist approach to electoral work requires not just a numbers game, but an exploration of programme and alliances beyond the parliamentary sphere.

Where we agree

Elections are a site of struggle. A “syndicalism of protest” in Dave Renton’s words, which says street movements alone can bring revolutionary change, offers no future – Renton cites the example of Egypt, where leftists built the street movement but shied away from the political sphere, leaving space for counter-revolution. Power abhors a vaccuum; if workers and progressives cannot win power, conservative forces will step in. Only a combined struggle in the political, cultural and economic spheres offers any chance of success.

In Aotearoa/NZ today, the political balance of forces strongly favours the capitalist class. Even within Labour and the Greens, firmly pro-capitalist forces dominate. Many are dissatisfied, as record-low voter turnout attests – alongside thousands rallying against the TPPA, which is backed by both major parties. Rather than blaming workers for ‘apathy’, the challenge is to forge a political alternative.

An indigenous-rooted movement, breaking from the Brown Table and forging an alliance with tau iwi forces, on the basis of a social-democratic programme – this is not a formation socialists should merely dimiss.

Alliances between indigenous and tau iwi forces

In the second chapter of Maori Sovereignty, Donna Awatere outlines the need for “a restructuring of the white alliance”:

“Maori sovereignty has always been a thread of belief, commitment and desire, seen in the bloody defence of our land, in the Ringatu movement, Kotahitanga, Kingitanga. Set against our people has been the united strength of white people. The Maori now seeks to break that unity in the interests of justice for the Maori people. This concept challenges white people to examine their role in a system which to this day still treats us like dogs.

Gramsci’s concept of hegemonic consciousness has relevance to Maori sovereignty. In hegemonic consciousness, a class puts its interests with other classes at a national level and establishes alliances with them.

These alliances are necessary because changes cannot occur with the Maori on our own. White people have cut across class barriers to unite on the basis of white hegemony; that is, white domination of the Maori. To overcome this requires a restructuring of the white alliance.”

Awatere examines apparently progressive tau iwi forces (Pacific Islanders, white women, trade unions and the far left) and finds all wanting, too wrapped up in their own self-interest to meaningfully support Maori sovereignty.

Left nationalist Bruce Jesson has contended that tau iwi far leftists missed Awatere’s point; that she offered an alliance to pakeha willing to support Maori sovereignty. In any case, Awatere’s premise that the ‘white alliance’ must be restructured merits further exploration.

In 2011, MANA (as a force for rangatiratanga) tried aligning with pakeha socialists, standing Sue Bradford and John Minto in general seats. This failed to deliver votes; the left remains marginal among tau iwi. Although socialists remain free to voice our politics as a part of MANA, the leadership sought a new alliance in 2014. This is where Kim Dotcom and the Internet Party came in.

In rejecting the Internet Mana alliance, ISO’s Shoomi Yoon offers a caricature of Kim Dotcom:

“For all his “benevolence” Kim Dotcom’s politics are not to be trusted. His first political act was to donate to the far right racist John Banks. He collects WWII paraphernalia and owns a copy of an Adolf Hitler signed copy of Mein Kampf. He makes jokes about violence towards sex workers. He is, in other words, a thoroughly unsavoury character.

And, worst of all from a political point of view: he’s a boss. We want no truck with the bosses or their parties.”

In some ways this paragraph is a little absurd; if anyone honestly believes that Dotcom’s copy of Mein Kampf tells you anything meaningful about his politics, his nazism is surely far more of a concern than his profit from piracy. While Yoon’s article identifies that Dotcom is unsavoury and a capitalist, difficult points to dispute, the article doesn’t make a serious effort to locate Dotcom politically.

Dotcom’s donation to John Banks occurred before his house was raided; as phrased by Jacobin Magazine’s Gavin Mueller:

“It’s so easy to hate Kim Dotcom that you almost forget that the US convinced the New Zealand government to send in an assault brigade, bereft of a valid warrant but outfitted with automatic weapons and helicopters, to arrest a Finnish citizen at the demand of Hollywood studios.”

Or as phrased by Annette Sykes on the Internet Mana Road Trip, in terms invoking the Urewera Raids under the last Labour government:

“Families are destroyed when the cops come into your house with their guns. That’s what happened to Kim Dotcom. I must say that was the only thing about him, I don’t care about his money, that was the only thing that I really admired him for. Because when it happened he stood up for him and his kids and his family.”

Dotcom’s political affinity with the MANA Movement was forged around opposition to state repression, around democratic demands. The Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement, expansion of state surveillance powers, violent enforcement of copyright laws, are dividing lines separating Dotcom from most of the capitalist class. Considering Dotcom’s employment practices, racism and other glaring flaws it is debatable whether Dotcom and MANA initially had much more affinity than that.

Alliance can transform the nature of the allies – which can either strengthen or destroy political projects. As revolutionary socialist Rosa Luxemburg argued in her analysis of the Dreyfus Affair, in which socialists rallied to support a persecuted Jewish officer in the imperial army:

“We can’t act as indifferent witnesses to what goes on in the interior of the bourgeoisie, unless socialism could be realized outside of bourgeois society, for example through the foundation in each country of a separate colony. But since we haven’t thought of emigrating, as it were, from bourgeois to socialist society, but on the contrary of overthrowing bourgeois society by means created within that same society, the proletariat must make an effort, in its forward march to victory, to influence all social events in a favorable direction.”

At the 2014 MANA AGM, Sykes argued that a deal with any forces required clarity on policies and principles, what Leninists might call programmatic clarity. The ‘Internet Mana policy weave,’ negotiated as part of the deal, was broadly social democratic. The leading involvement of progressive women such as Laila Harre and Miriam Pierard was also promising, with Pierard and gender spokesperson Pani Farvid distancing the party from Dotcom’s sexism.

At the same time, there is a risk with such an economically powerful figure that alignment could lead to a sacrifice of independence. The campaign routinely stressed support for ‘entrepeneurs’ as an anti-poverty strategy, with Dotcom explaining how German state support enabled his rise. Ben suggests notions like ‘entrepeneur’ are open to interpretation, and aspects of the campaign were certainly vague. Dotcom’s class position is clearly more exploitative than the position of a self-employed worker. However, Dotcom sent a clear message; more state support means more opportunities to climb the capitalist ladder.

This entrepeneurial emphasis cannot patronisingly be reduced to ‘imperfect’ politics that don’t go far enough, as in Ben’s article. Veteran politicos like Laila Harre are capable of committing to strategic courses we may disagree with. In 2009-2010, Harre oversaw the loss of thousands of jobs as HR manager for the Supercity transition. In a Daily Blog entry during the Internet Mana campaign, Harre criticised the ‘polarisation’ of politics, the danger of getting stuck in ‘positional ruts’ rather than seeing ‘shared issues’, as if workers and progressives can simply find common ground with the owners and administrators who routinely destroy lives. Again, these are not the naive errors of a novice; Harre believes a negotiated class peace will deliver social justice.

Dotcom’s distinct qualities as a capitalist were double-edged; while he was more anti-regime than the investors who routinely donate to major parties, most donors have the good grace to fade into the background. MANA’s leadership had little ability to keep Dotcom in check, culminating in the Moment of Truth event (which MANA did not officially endorse).

Annette Sykes summarised her problem with the campaign at the national MANA member’s hui in November 2014; “If there are shared values, there should be shared control.” Dotcom’s machinery took over, with the MANA leadership having little to no say over the millions of dollars earmarked for the campaign.

Socialists had warned of the potential for a sacrifice of independence. This is where I agree with Shomi Yoon’s article on the Internet Mana alliance:

“If we had a revolutionary organisation with real roots in the workplaces, in trade unions, and on the campuses, we could put the pressure and priorities on a new left party.”

Ben cites Syriza (The Coalition of the Radical Left, which recently formed a government in Greece) as an example of what’s possible. Revolutionaries operate openly in Syriza, and the Left Platform challenges the leadership where necessary. In late February, Syriza’s leadership was forced to accept concessions to the Eurozone, and spun these concessions as a victory. Syriza’s Left Platform rejected the deal, with 45% of the parliamentary wing voting against it. This kind of internal pressure, combined with an extra-parliamentary movement, is necessary to avoid capture by ‘pragmatic’ institutional logics. Promisingly, the Greek parliament recently passed anti-poverty legislation despite EU opposition.

Although revolutionary socialists operated openly in MANA, we were too programmatically unclear and organisationally weak to translate our occasional successes into lasting organisation. From 2011-2014, the three major socialist organisations (International Socialist Organisation, Socialist Aotearoa, Fightback) failed to form any coherent current in MANA. There are some real differences between these groups – differences over challenging sexist and oppressive behaviour, over the importance of a homogeneous perspective on socialist history, over relationships to trade unions (and now MANA, with ISO leaving the project). There’s also a sectarian, competitive mindset in small socialist groups that prevents effective coordination. Most crucially, we don’t have the deep roots among tau iwi workers that the sovereignty movement has among Maori workers – with even prominent figures like John Minto and Sue Bradford failing to win significant pakeha support.

If we can’t build something serious, Dotcom is a more attractive prospect. For any misgivings leftists may have about the Dotcom alliance, the challenge comes back to the shallow roots of socialist and progressive forces among pakeha.