This piece was submitted to Fightback by Ben Peterson (Mana Otautahi) and represents his personal opinion. Fightback publishes it for discussion rather than endorsement.

For those on the left last years election result was bitterly disappointing. Not only was John Key and the National Party returned to power with an increased majority, but the Mana Party lost its sole MP Hone Harawira. In the wake of this let down it is important that those on the left takes serious and sober lessons from the InternetMANA experiment. But while we need to reflect, it is important to not let our disappointment cloud our judgement.

The false consensus

Since the election there is an analysis of the InternetMANA experiment that is shared (with some variation) by most political actors. From those on the right to members and organisation of the radical left, the narrative is essentially the same. This popular consensus goes as follows: Hone Harawira and the Mana movement had built a relatively successful organisation and kaupapa around fighting for the rights of maori, the poor and dispossessed. Enter Kim Dotcom. Seeing the opportunity for Dotcom’s millions, Hone rammed through an opportunistic political alliance, which watered down and distorted Mana’s kaupapa. Now discredited, InternetMANA was unable to generate any momentum, and its support dwindled to the point where Hone lost his seat in Tai Tokerau. The lesson being that it was a mistake for Mana to make such an opportunistic deal, and they were punished for it.

This consensus is wrong. It is entirely factually inaccurate.

While it is predominantly driven by mainstream commentators and the media, it also dominates discussions on the election by those on the left. This false narrative distorts discussion for leftists, and thus limits the the lessons the left can take from this experience. We need to peel back the myths, and start from reality.

Myth- Kim Dotcom cost MANA support

The central point of the false consensus is that ‘deal with Dotcom’ cost Mana supporters. This is demonstratively false.

Most obviously- the vote for InternetMANA increase by roughly 50% from 2011 to 2014. From 24,168 in 2011 to 34,094 votes in 2014, an increase of just slightly under 10,000 votes. This total would have been enough to bring in a second MP, had Hone held Te Tai Tokerau. Given that, and that the entire motivation for the InternetMana campaign was to strengthen their voice in parliament, it would seem that the party vote campaign was actually successful.

The second, and more nuanced, version the same argument is that while the vote increased in the general population, it wasn’t enough to counteract a loss of support amongst Mana’s base in Maori seats. Again- this is disproven when looking at the election results.

In 2011 the MANA vote in the Maori electorates in total was 25,889. In 2014, this had significantly increased to a total of 29,207. The Mana vote increase in 4 of the 7 maori seats, and only slightly dropped where it didn’t improve.

Interestingly and importantly, even though Hone Harawira failed to carry Te Tai Tokerau, it was not because the Internet deal cut into his base. Hone’s vote in the north actually increased from 8,121 in 2011 to 8,969 in 2014. Ultimately what defeated Mana in Te Tai Tokerau was the forces againstMana, not being abandoned by supporters.

Some will argue that we will never know what would have happened had Mana never made the deal with Dotcom, and that Mana’s vote may have been even higher. While on a certain level this is true (we will never know what could have happened), there is no indication that this is the case. In particular, looking at opinion polling before the Internet alliance showed Mana receiving less than 1% of the vote. After the alliance was announced, and during the early parts of the election campaign, this increased, briefly reaching 3.5% before dropping to between 1-2% of the vote. While opinion polls are not 100% accurate it strongly suggests that Mana’s vote increased with the collaboration between it and the Internet party.

At the end of the day, the assertion that the deal with the Internet Party cost Mana support is not supported by any available statistical evidence. While there is plenty of anecdotes of people not voting Mana to avoid Dotcom, all statistical evidence strongly suggests the opposite.

Myth two- The sell out

Even though there is no evidence that the Internet Party alliance cost Mana support (and evidence suggests the opposite), some may still argue that the deal was a breach of the political kaupapa of the Mana movement.

Some argue that making an alliance with a party established by a billionaire was incompatible with the spirit of Mana as a fighting movement, so even if its support was not immediately affected, the organisation has changed and ceased to be a vehicle for change.

For this to be the case at least one of the following needs to be shown:

• A clear rightward change in Mana policies and platform.
• A clear change in strategic direction of the Mana movement (away from a movement of activists)/The alliance being formed on a totally unprincipled basis (sharing no common kaupapa, membership and support being fundamentally opposed)

A step to the right?

There is no compelling evidence of Mana turning to the right or becoming conservative during the election campaign. Arguably, Mana was more clearly left in 2014 than in 2011. In 2011 Mana was ambiguous on equal marriage rights, and Hone’s personal position was opposed. Through internal campaigning, Mana was won to a positive position.

Mana has key members who have some religious affinities with the state of Israel, however during the election campaign central leaders came out strongly in support of Palestine- hardly the actions of a group trying to placate a new coalition partner.
Policy announcements during the campaign showed no sign of a clear move to the right. Some critics voiced concern over the full employment policy, which pledged to use a portion of ACC (state insurance) reserves to fund a massive full employment scheme aimed at providing money to small community based groups and enterprises. The critique centers on two points: one, that the ACC reserves should be invested back into providing better sickness benefits and coverage, and two, that this is a right wing policy in that it pledges to give money to small businesses. These arguments are not compelling.

In the first instance, critics have identified a contradiction in some policy, rather than a rightward slide. While there was a conflict between the stated ACC policy of Mana, and the new employment policy that used ACC reserves to spur employment- this wasn’t accompanied by walking away from any of Mana’s other policy platforms (drastically expanding health care, increasing tax on the rich and corporations etc).

The second instance unnecessarily injects negative meaning into the ambiguities in the policy. The policy does talk of ‘entrepreneurs’, social enterprise and self startups. It does not however define what these are. Whatever these are, and however imperfect the language used, it is clear from this policy that it would result in a massive pouring of wealth into poor communities where unemployment is rife.  While it is imperfect, and the left can and should critique and push for this policy to go further, it is clear that the practical implication of such a policy would be a massive transfer of wealth into working class communities.

At the very least, such ambiguities are not a departure from existing the existing Mana policy platform, which included market mechanisms in other policies.

A strategic shift?

So while there was no rightward change in the policy platform, that does not automatically exclude a change in strategic direction. Since its inception, Mana had consciously built itself around being a party of activists, with a radical vision for society. I do not believe that there is any evidence of a break with Mana’s existing strategic approach. Rather the reaching out to the Internet Party was consistent with the existing kaupapa and practice of the movement.

If the primary reasoning behind the outreach to the Internet Party purely to access Kim Dotcom’s millions, then this would be a serious departure from Mana’s practice. While there were certainly Mana members who were keen to get their hands on these ‘rivers of gold’, this was not the motivation put forward by the central leadership of the movement.

Both before and after the internet deal, Hone Harawira outlined how he came to think about the Internet Party. When talking to some youth up north, one of the younger Mana members asked him if it was ok to step down from Mana and join the Internet Party. After some initial discomfort, and some investigation, Harawira came to the conclusion that it was worth investigating if collaboration is possible with the Internet Party.

It was not the attraction of money, but the prospects of reaching out and involving young people who were attracted to alternative politics that was of interest to the Mana leadership.

This is consistent with the strategic vision of the Mana movement since its founding. It has always undertook to explore ways build out from its base in the maori world and link up with people fighting for systemic change, such as Sue Bradford, Mike Treen, John Minto and the socialist left. The attractiveness of the Internet Party was reinforced by the political evolution of Kim Dotcom in response to the police raids on his mansion. While still hardly a socialist, Dotcom’s vocal criticism of the surveillance state had and has a certain resonance with potentially radicalising young people.

Finally, the Mana movement did not just accept the Internet party as it presented itself, but actively contributed to its formation, playing a decisive role in getting Laila Harre appointed as leader of the party, and other prominent leftists on its list.

Linking up with the Internet Party was not a departure from established practice, but a continuation of it. Exactly the same impulses that lead to Mana working with the socialist left, led it to seek to work with the Internet Party. Mana has always sought out allies to develop its kaupapa and fight for a fairer society. This was just another attempt to do so.

So then what went wrong?

So far this piece has outlined how the vote for Mana actually increased, and that there was no break from existing policy or strategic direction. If this is the case, then why and how does Mana find itself without a voice in parliament?

Mana lost the election less because of the decisions of its leadership. It lost due to the decisions of its opponents- namely the Labour Party. Despite Mana being committed to a change of government, the Labour party pulled out all stops into smashing Mana. Instead of putting resources into defeating sitting national members, or articulating an alternative message for the voting public, the labour party did all it could to smash an alternative to its left.

In Te Tai Tokerau this meant that all parties (except the Greens), had explicitly endorsed the Labour candidate Kelvin Davis (NZ First, Maori Party, National, Labour and others). Despite Mana increasing its vote, this wasn’t enough to counteract the resources, media attention and backing of the entire political establishment.

There is an argument that Kim Dotcom played some role in catalysing and energising this opposition to Hone. However, there is no evidence to suggest that this was decisive. For example, if there was a big turnout to just beat Mana in Te Tai Tokerau, you could reasonably expect that there would be more candidate votes than party votes, as people would have been instructed to just vote Kelvin Davis, and do what they will with the party vote. The opposite is the case. About 800 voted party vote, but not for a candidate. This was actually more than similar Maori electorates. This suggests that the ‘Kill Dotcom’ factor was not decisive.

Ultimately, rather than shooting ourselves in the foot with a poorly thought through alliance with Kim Dotcom, all indications point to Mana being politically defeated on the day. Rather than crashing on the rocks of Kim Dotcom and seeing its own support evaporate, it was the combined powers of the entire political establishment that held off the challenge that Internet Mana presented.

Why does this matter?

I think this is important for leftists to be clear on. This is not just an exercise in setting the record straight. As important as it is to have a clear view of the past, it is much important to be looking to the future.  Nor is this an attempt to say that nothing has changed post election for the Mana movement. Losing its seat in parliament will have an obvious impact on the state of the movement, and time will tell if Mana finds new ways forward (I for one am hoping for the best).

As it stands the prevailing myth on the left is that Mana failed because it made a dodgy deal with Dotcom, and paid the price. It would be a colossal error to let those myths stand because they would have real impacts on the future.

The implication of blaming the deal would be that it was a mistake to attempt to reach out to new organisations and formations. Therefore, in the future, leftists should stick by their established organisations, and not try to work towards change with other organisations, lest the kaupapa be wounded and support be lost.

Building towards radical change will take finding and building on these alliances. In Venezuelan revolutionary change was led by a former military officer, Hugo Chavez. If the left had failed to link up with his group in the military then his political evolution would probably not have been as effective, and the revolutionary changes in Venezuela may never have happened.

Failure to be able to make these links can leave the established left isolated. In both Spain and Greece establish left parties (the United Left and the KKE) have been left sidelined and weaker as their support melts into new radical projects (Podemos and Syriza). This separation of old and new leave both weaker, as the resources and experience of former struggles are isolated from the new movement for revolutionary change.

The challenge for leftists today is not to retreat into ideas or lament the election, but to build greater and stronger organisation, movements and political clarity. The election process showed that our potential audience is expanding (the vote increased), but that our political instruments (organisation and ideas) has to be stronger to defeat challenges when they arise.

The rulers of today want the left to remain small and isolated. The want a left thats pure and impotent, and that can’t link up with people are they begin to struggle. Smashing the post-election consensus is an important part of building a left that is ready for fights in the future.

Since more people access Fightback content through the website and social media than our magazine, Fightback has moved to a less regular publication schedule, using the magazine for analytical themed issues. We begin 2015 with an issue on the national housing crisis.

To get your hands on a copy, please Subscribe or contact your nearest branch.

Report by Matt Jones, reprinted from Aotearoa Workers Solidarity Movement (AWSM).

Fightback Wellington branch will hold a public forum on fighting zero-hour contracts and poverty wages on Sunday the 29th of March.

Over 50 people attended a public meeting held in Christchurch/Otautahi on the 2nd March to hear from workers and union organisers about the brutal reality of zero hour contracts. Chaired by Jared Phillips of the Dairy Workers Union and introduced by Ben Peterson Organiser of Unite Union we were treated to the stories of Unite Union member Rose Williams from the Wendy’s Restaurant chain and long standing Maritime Union delegate Mike Will.

Ben told us that in 2014 Unite Union asked their members what their life in the workplace was like. Over one thousand responded and the results surprised many. They discovered that the average hours worked was 25 hours at the minimum wage and more than half of the respondents needed 35 hours or more to meet their living costs. Those that were getting more than 40 hours per week were forced to drop their overtime allowance. Overtime allowances kick in when someone works more than 40 hours per week, they should receive their hourly rate plus a further half for every additional hour they work. In reality they are by being told to sign a waiver, or at times by not giving their consent at all, to allow the company to pay them at their ordinary rate. Unite had spent the previous two years fighting for a living wage, forcing the issue onto the front pages, what the survey results were telling the union was that without hours to work, the rate of pay arguably became a secondary issue.

The hours are not scarce in the industries Unite represent. Fast food, retail, hotels, cinema’s and security all suffer from incredibly high turnover rates. Fast food for example churns through 70 to 80% of its workforce on an annual basis alone. Why do the bosses continue to hire if their existing workforce are clambering for more hours? Power, that’s the only possible conclusion – hiring new workers requires advertising, interviews, inductions, training, administration and supplying clothing and equipment, in short it’s not a cheap process. Keeping your work force desperate and fearing to cause a stir by requesting a day off, taking sick days, demanding your holiday entitlement or saying no when you’re called to work with less than thirty minutes notice is exactly how these multi national corporates and franchise operators are running their businesses.

Rose Williams addressed the crowd telling her story of the recent strike held at her store. Wendy’s are in negotiations with Unite Union who took the company by surprise when their only South Island store took to the streets. She described how she was originally taken on as a full time worker, working more than fifty hours a week sixteen months ago. She is now down to 26 and only gets five days a week by working both Saturday and Sunday while having with no consecutive days off. When she works public holidays there is no day in lieu. There is no standard shift and as a result workplace bullying is rife, managers are literally using the rosters as disciplinary tools, baiting workers with the very means of survival.

Mike Will told us of his experiences with the local activist community during the past few years. He spent day and night at the Christchurch Occupy site in Hagley Park and witnessed the possibility of community organizing and direct democracy. He thanked the individual anarchists that were at the heart of the local chapter of Occupy and acknowledged the hard efforts that many from our scene put in during the emergency period of the Canterbury earthquakes. Many ears picked up at his mention of the short lived Otautahi Solidarity Network that was inspired by the Seattle Solidarity Network.

Mike’s words inspired figures from the union movement including Dave Bristow of First Union to stand up and hint heavily that there were early talks of a new way of organising within their union – something the writer of this article will be following up discussions in the near future.

The reality is the businesses that profit from zero hour contracts and paying minimum wage are taking the piss out of their workforce on several levels. Workplace bullying, insecurity and fear is topped off by a gut wrenching weekly phone call to the IRD to declare the inconsistent hours and irregular earnings worked in order to make ends meet. The multinationals make a killing by paying poverty wages and the taxpayer tops up the shortfall. TV3’s Campbell Live made the connection between zero hour contracts and kids turning up to schools without breakfast, lunch or basics such as footwear on the same night as the public meeting.

The floor was opened for people to ask questions and speak their mind. Networking and sharing resources was the theme of the night and the momentum will continue to build. The forum also discussed the idea of establishing a progressive network and regular meeting to discuss local progressive ideas and campaigns. The first Monday of every month at the WEA, 7pm will be the place to hear of the day’s issues and be inspired that you’re not alone when thinking it’s all on its head and the world’s gone mad – the question is, what are we gonna do about it?!

Three women coined the Black Lives Matter slogan.

Fightback is a socialist-feminist organisation.

Harsha Walia is a South Asian activist and writer based in Vancouver, unceded Coast Salish Territories. She has been involved in community-based grassroots migrant justice, feminist, anti-racist, Indigenous solidarity, anti-capitalist, Palestinian liberation, and anti-imperialist movements for over a decade. This piece on International Women’s Day is reprinted from her column, “Exception to the Rule,” on rabble.ca

Every morning I read my one-year-old daughter a fabulous children’s alphabet book. When we get to the letter F, it goes “F is for Feminist, Fairness in our Pay.” Of course a children’s book is limited in its ability to express nuanced layers of analysis, but I often wonder about how relevant this articulation of a particular version of feminism will be for her.

Dominant liberal feminism has typically sought equal and fair rights for women. Even subsequent waves that brought greater representation of diverse women and trans people within these same frameworks of feminism have rarely altered the premise of “equality” as the primary organizing force of feminism, thus leaving the relationship of heteropatriarchy to other social, economic and political structures of power largely unquestioned. Patriarchy is not secondary to capitalism and imperialism; the very foundations of capitalism, colonialism and state violence are structured in conjunctionwith and through patriarchy. Marginalized women, therefore, not only endure gendered violence at higher rates, we also experience it qualitatively differently.

Feminism: Friend or foe of the state?

The past decade has seen a surge of debate on feminist anti-violence strategies that rely on the state. Anti-violence strategies, such as tougher sentencing laws and increased policing, have been criticized for emboldening criminalization that already disproportionately targets communities of colour, poor communities, and trans folks.

It is clear that the state is not interested in protecting women who defend themselves against heteropatriarchal and transphobic violence, as evidenced most recently in the cases of Marissa Alexander and CeCe McDonald, both Black women who were incarcerated for defending themselves against partner violence and transphobic violence, respectively. A fact sheet on battered women in U.S. prisons details that as many as 90 per cent of the women in jail today for killing men were battered by those men.

Battered women in prison are part of a broader trend of incarcerating Indigenous and Black women, women who are street-involved, sex workers, trans women, and migrant women. The incarceration of Black women in the U.S increased by 828 per cent over five years. In Canada, the representation of Indigenous women in prison has increased by nearly 90 per cent over the past decade. For migrant and non-status women, reporting sexual abuse often leads to deportation, and Canada has recently introduced a policy of conditional permanent residency that further entrenches the vulnerability of migrant women. This criminalization, incarceration and deportation of women and trans people is gender violence perpetrated by the state.

Feminism: A challenge to or in the service of imperialism?

At the global level, Western feminism has been complicit in racialized empire. Despite the fact that military occupations wreak havoc in the lives of women and children and the documentation of rape as a primary tool of war, many feminist organizations support imperialist interventions. From earlier “yellow peril” myths that warned of migrant Asian men ensnaring white women with opium to the more contemporary justifications of the occupation of Afghanistan as a mission to liberate Muslim women, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak portrays the cheerleading of civilizing crusades masked as feminist solidarity as “white men saving brown women from brown men.”

Liberal feminism is a handmaiden to cultural imperialism, essentializing communities of colour as innately barbaric. Women and queers are supposedly devoid of any agency — forced to veil, subjected to honour killings, coerced into arranged marriages. In the post-9/11 context, cultural imperialism is evident in debates about gender and Islam that force a singular feminism — secular, sexually expressive, and liberal autonomist — on women and queers of colour. Laws banning the niqab, for example, target Muslim women for public scrutiny, hate crimes, and state surveillance. Writing about the architecture of feminisms in the service of imperialism, Leila Ahmed charges, “Whether in the hands of patriarchal men or feminists, the ideas of western feminism essentially functioned to morally justify the attack on native societies and to support the notion of the comprehensive superiority of Europe.”

Colonial gendered violence: Land is Life

Given that Indigenous women suffer the highest rates of sexual violence, combatting gender violence requires a commitment to dismantling settler-colonialism. Nearly 1,200 Indigenous women have been murdered or gone missing in Canada over the past 30 years. As renowned Indigenous feminist Lee Maracle writes, “It is not simply about ‘ending violence,’ the violation is the colonial order.”

Gendered violence is embedded within settler-colonialism: in racist and heteropatriarchal laws such as the Indian Act, in policies of child apprehension, in the practices of locking up Indigenous women and youth at alarming rates, and in the genocidal attempts to annihilate Indigenous laws through the very bodies of Indigenous women, girls, trans and two-spirit people that embody and enact Indigenous sovereignty. In particular, the systemic ideology that upholds the colonial entitlement to and pillage of Indigenous lands is furthered by the colonial construction of Indigenous women as sexually available. As a Manitoba judge stated during the inquiry into the death of 19-year-old Helen Betty Osborne: “the men who abducted Osborne believed that young aboriginal women were objects with no human value beyond sexual gratification.”

Settler-colonialism is founded on the violences of lack of free, prior and informed consent: the “rape-ability” of Indigenous women’s bodies is intricately connected to the “rape-ability,” theft, and exploitation of Indigenous lands.

Climbing up the ladder on migrant women’s backs

A frequently touted success of the liberal feminist movement has been the entry of women into the paid workforce. However, migrant women performing domestic labour have actually facilitated the entry of these women into the wage economy.

In Canada, the Live-In Caregiver Program (LCP) brings predominately Filipina migrant workers to work as domestic workers for middle-class and rich households. Given their temporary status, they are a vulnerable workforce and constantly subjected to labour and human rights violations including unpaid or excessive work hours, additional job responsibilities, confiscation of travel documents, disrespect of their privacy, and sexual assault. As one migrant domestic worker remarks, “We know that, under the LCP, we are like modern slaves who have to wait for at least two years to get our freedom.” Freedom for some women is, therefore, reliant on the unfree indentured labour of other women.

Reproductive justice and emotional labour: Beyond the wage economy

Women are more likely to be stratified into low-wage work, particularly sectors such as retail, social services, janitorial, food service, clerical work, teaching, child care, domestic work, and nursing. These sectors are undervalued and underpaid precisely because they mirror (and reproduce) the gendered division of labour that typically occurs within the home. As Andrea Smith writes, “Patriarchy is the logic that naturalizes social hierarchy.”

Capitalism not only creates the conditions for wage theft and precarious labour but — through patriarchy as a mutually reinforcing process — it also defines what can even be characterized as labour and ties human worth to wage-labour productivity.

Single mothers become marginalized as “unemployed” and “uncontributing” when they are in fact, as scholar Silvia Frederici observes, reproducing labour power as a key source of capitalist accumulation. Because reproductive labour has been naturalized as women’s unpaid work, it has provided an immense subsidy to capitalism. According to figures by economist Raj Patel inThe Value of Nothing, women’s unpaid work is estimated at $11-$15 trillion, which is more than half the world’s entire economic output!

Reproductive justice movements, therefore, challenge the assumption that the only valuable labour is that which can be commodified and sold on the market. The greatest transformative potentials of feminism lie in the valuing of relational work that sustains our communities and manifests our responsibilities to each other: care work, land stewardship, and emotional labour. By rejecting the dominant model of competition, domination, commodification, and isolation, these forms of labour inherently challenge male, cisgendered, ableist and capitalist supremacy.

Multitude of feminisms

Rather than a feminism that strengthens racism, imperialism, and economic subjugation, feminism is most relevant in its subversion of the state, capital interests, gendered relations, and the policing of gender and sexual binaries. By challenging the ideologies of superiority and uniformity that underlie the dominant liberal framing of feminism, embracing a multitude of feminisms would diversify our understandings of how coercion and oppression is experienced, as well as resisted. It is no coincidence that the Idle No More movement is credited to four women, that three Black women founded the Black Lives Matter project, and that women in Kobane and Chiapas and Palestine and Chhattisgarh are leading those struggles for liberation.

Some days I alter my reading of Avnika’s alphabet book to “F is for Feminists, Freedom Fighters Against All Violence.”

First in a series of monthly left forums organised by Fightback.

Heleyni Pratley (Unite Union organiser) speaks on the international struggle for secure hours and living wages.

2pm, Sunday March 29th
17 Tory St, Wellington
[Facebook event]