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

Child poverty has continued to feature in headlines this year with at least one in five children living in poverty. Fightback participates in MANA, supporting this party in the struggle for reforms while maintaining the need to build a socialist party. Grant Brookes discusses MANA’s Feed The Kids bill, and calls for a collective approach which reinforces that children are part of a wider community and we need to ultimately end poverty in general.

Socialists support struggles for living wages while recognising that “fair wages” are ultimately unachievable under capitalism. Ian Anderson reviews previous struggles for a living wage and covers the current campaign backed by the Service and Food Workers Union.

Full employment is a key to ending poverty. Jared Phillips covers recent attacks on the unemployed and beneficiaries by the National government and the need for socialist solutions.

Fightback is an internationalist organisation, which recognises workers in Aotearoa/NZ must stand with the Pasifika working class. Byron Clark covers a leaked video of police brutality in Fiji, and the hypocrisy of our government condemning this brutality while approving the abuses carried out by its allies in the region.

Socialists must reassess some parts of our understanding of capitalism in the “age of the geek.” Daphne Lawless argues that information workers are part of the working class and discusses the implications of this for socialist transformation in the 21st Century.

Socialists argue that class solutions are required to combat climate change. Ian Anderson covers the impact of climate change on increasing drought risk, and conflicting approaches to water conservation.

Fightback comrades have a range of socialist perspectives on history. Mike Kyriazopoulos revives a piece of lost history, the 1939 condemnation of the Soviet invasion of Finland by Wellington seafarers, and suggests that this offers a glimpse of what socialist politics could look like in Aotearoa/NZ.

2013 April Fightback

Fightback is a Marxist organisation that houses a range of anti-Stalinist historical perspectives. In this article Mike Kyriazopolous argues for a third camp position on 20th Century history, which can be summed up as “neither Washington nor Moscow but international socialism.”

Readers with a knowledge of the history of Trotskyism will know that the USSR’s invasion of Finland on 30 November 1939 marked a turning point for the movement. It triggered a fierce debate, and eventually a split among the US Trotskyists. What is less well known is that a contemporary parallel development emerged among the Wellington seafarers. The Evening Post of December 7, 1939 reproduced the full text of a long resolution passed by a stop-work meeting of the Federated Seamen’s Union which expressed its “profound sympathy with the people of Finland now suffering under a brutal aggression in pursuance of the policies of the Stalin – Hitler partnership.”

The meeting conveyed its “admiration of their splendid fight against overwhelming odds in defence of their homes, of the conditions established in their country, and of their national culture. It notes that the Labour and Trade Union movements in Finland and all the surrounding Scandinavian countries have expressed their solidarity with the Finnish people and their detestation of the present unprovoked aggression.

“This meeting remembers the conditions under which the Soviet Government was first established in 1917 under the leadership of Lenin and Trotsky, and how it expressly repudiated the kind of aggression that Stalin and the present Russian dictatorship have launched. Marx and Engels, the founders of scientific socialism, vigorously opposed aggression against small nations. In 1917 the new Soviet Government appealed for, and secured, the support of workers throughout the world, largely because it stood for the freeing of small nations from their oppressors and for the determination of hostilities without annexations and without indemnities. The original Constitution of the Soviet Union expressly stated that it was ‘a voluntary union of equal peoples’ and that each constituent republic enjoyed ‘the right of freely withdrawing.’ Further, the Soviet Government at the  time gave practical proof of its sincerity by surrendering the rights it enjoyed over China and Persia under the former Tsarist treaties and by freely granting its independence to the Finland that Stalin is now endeavouring to crush.”

The president of the Seaman’s Union, Fintan Patrick Walsh, wrote to Trotsky in Mexico on 3 January 1940 enclosing a copy of the resolution. Walsh stated, “Although we down under are more or less outside the world affairs we nevertheless take a keen and live interest on matters effecting [sic] the international working class.”

Trotsky replied on 19 February, “Thank you cordially for your warm letter of solidarity. I enjoyed it the more that, in this period of terrible chauvinistic pressure in almost all the countries of the world, sincere and consistent socialist voices are rather an exception.” Five months later Trotsky was murdered by one of Stalin’s agents. Walsh, who had cut his teeth as a militant in the IWW in the US during the early 20th-century, was rapidly moving rightwards. By 1951, he would sell out the wharfies in their epic battle against the government.

What makes the Wellington seafarers’ resolution so significant is that, in my view, they had a clearer perspective than the great revolutionaries Trotsky and James P Cannon, who refused to condemn the invasion of Finland in their intra-Trotskyist polemics. (Although in his public writings, Trotsky was far more critical of the USSR’s invasion.)

Walsh was already an irredeemable bureaucrat in 1939. He was never likely to play a progressive role in politics, and his correspondence with Trotsky is more of a historical curiosity than anything else. What is important, though, is that the resolution was moved discussed and voted for at a meeting of rank and file workers at a crucial point in history. As such,the record of the seafarers’ position stands as a tantalising glimpse of the “Third Camp” politics that might have been in Aotearoa.

Sources:

Evening Post http://bit.ly/WyWr5z

Graeme Hunt Black Prince: the biography of Fintan Patrick Walsh

Counter-protest against Right Wing Resistance “White Pride” rally

Welcome to the first issue of Fightback, newspaper of Fightback (Aotearoa/NZ). Fightback is a nationwide socialist organisation with branches in Auckland, Hamilton, Wellington and Christchurch. With this paper we plan to continue and develop our agitation for struggle, solidarity and socialism.

The fight against asset sales is a key struggle in Aotearoa/NZ. In this issue we lead with two articles on this struggle. Firstly, we report on the mass protest against asset sales, and argue for the need to fight at the point of production. Secondly, we interview Annette Sykes, a lawyer in the Maori Council claim against Crown commercialisation of water.

Last month, we reported on a strike planned by Christchurch teachers, which would have challenged both charter schools plans and laws against political strikes. This was called off and replaced with a march, which we cover. We also report on a successful mass teachers’ strike in the Solomon Islands, where teachers are fighting for unpaid wages.

Internationalism is a key to workers’ liberation, overcoming the imposed national divisions which drive down conditions overall. In an article on rising health insurance costs under the Regional Seasonal Employer scheme, we argue the need to show solidarity with migrant workers.

During the global financial crisis, debt has received a lot of attention. We explain the Marxist theory of debt, which is necessary to the capitalist system. A second article debunks the myth of Iceland’s “peaceful revolution” against debt and finance capital.

Fightback is affiliated to Mana, an organisation in which tino rangitaratanga activists and revolutionary socialists work together. We review Red October: Left-Indigenous Struggles in Modern Bolivia, a book by Jeffrey Webber, which has lessons relevant to the Mana movement.

Like all fights against oppression, queer liberation must be integral to socialist politics. We provide a snapshot of the Gay Liberation movement, 1969-1979; and finally conclude with a review of Black Faggot, a play about the “gay Samoan male experience.”

2013 March Fightback