Political Disorders – Infantile And Geriatric

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IN THE END even Lenin lost patience with the perpetual malcontents of the ultra-left. His excoriating 1920 pamphlet,Left-Wing Communism – An Infantile Disorder, while re-asserting the Bolsheviks’ implacable opposition to social-democracy, reprimanded in the strongest terms all those who argued that a revolution could be made by “left communist” parties working outside the major trade unions and in opposition to what he called “parliamentarism”.

Though Lenin’s reputation for intransigence was well-deserved, even the advocate of “iron” revolutionary discipline understood the political necessity of compromise – especially in those societies where capitalist ideas and institutions remained predominant. In such conditions, Lenin argued, those who heaped scorn on trade union leaders and deprecated parliamentary engagement actually retarded the revolutionary process.

The majority of workers outside the Soviet orbit simply would not respond to the messages of left communist extremists – as the German Spartacists discovered to their cost in 1918-19. Accusations of betrayal hurled at trade union and parliamentary “misleaders” by the ultra-left not only alienated those workers who supported the targets of their abuse, but the ferocious class-oriented hate-speech in which the accusations were framed only confirmed the bourgeoisie’s worst fears of socialism and strengthened the hand of those pledged to its destruction.

It is a great pity that New Zealand’s ultra-leftists do not make a point of reading and re-reading Lenin’s pamphlet. Though small in number, they maintain an unswerving commitment to practically all of the political deviancy so roundly condemned by the Bolshevik leader.

David Cunliffe’s appointment of Matt McCarten as his Chief-of-Staff has, entirely predictably, prompted the more vocal of these disordered infants to throw up their usual derogatory rhetoric. Steve Cowan, writing on his “Against The Current” blog, opened his critique with a sentence of spectacularly Orwellian impudence:

“Matt McCarten’s decision to fall in behind Labour leader David Cunliffe represents a large step to the right.”

Not content with insulting a man whose contribution to left-wing politics is acknowledged even by his sternest right-wing critics, Cowan then proceeds to blackguard the Mana Party President, Annette Sykes:

“For Annette Sykes to talk of a ‘coalition of the left’ is not only inept, it is both cynical and opportunistic. How can Labour and the Green’s, both committed to the capitalist status quo and to the creed of neoliberalism, be in any way ‘left’?  Does Sykes seriously think people are going to swallow this rubbish?”

Now Cowan’s reach is pretty limited (amounting to only a tiny fraction of the contributors to The Daily Blog’s) but if his rhetoric dissuades even two or three young leftists from responding to Sykes’s call to get in behind McCarten and support Labour’s shift (however small) to the Left, then Cowan will have weakened the movement and (however unintentionally) strengthened the Right.

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The logic of the ultra-leftist’s position makes this sort of demoralisation-by-character-assassination inevitable. The eccentric nature of their political analysis and (as Lenin noted) their propensity for turning theory into dogma leaves them so isolated within the broader left-wing movement that practically every major left-wing figure will appear to them to be wilfully engaged in ideological treason. The higher the esteem in which such “traitors” are held, the more urgent the necessity to reduce their malign influence over the masses. Mild, well-argued criticism will not achieve this result. What’s required is the most vicious slander; the manufacturing of outrageous lies; and an unceasing drumbeat of negation whenever their enemies’ names are mentioned.

For those who are well versed in the theory and practice of the Left and whose networks include most of the Left’s leadership, this sort of extreme defamation is easily dismissed as evidence of precisely the infantile disorder Lenin diagnosed back in 1920. The real danger, therefore, lies in the minds of those whose grasp on the theory, practice and history of the Left is weak. When encountered by people new to the movement, the sheer vehemence of the ultra-leftist’s attacks infuses them with an undeniable persuasive power. The newcomers’ natural reaction is to ask: “Why would he say such awful things about these people if they weren’t true?”

So urgent is the task of ridding New Zealand of this National-led Government that it is probably time that the broader progressive movement took the attacks of the ultra-left more seriously. These people need to be challenged and the motivations for their destructive behaviour explained to those most susceptible to their lies and distortions.

IT WOULD SEEM ONLY FAIR, having passed judgement on the Left’s infantile disorders, that we turn our attention to the misbehaviour of its geriatrics. Once again, the appointment of Matt McCarten has brought this to the fore. The prime offender being the former Alliance leader (and one-time mentor of McCarten) Jim Anderton.

No one argued longer or more strongly than Anderton that McCarten should not be appointed to the Chief-of-Staff position. The bitter struggle within the Alliance that led to its collapse in 2002 is an event (Anderton would call it a betrayal) that he can neither forget nor forgive. “I haven’t spoken to him [McCarten] since 2002 and I don’t intend to start now” he told the NZ Herald.

It is a measure of how much Cunliffe wanted McCarten that, when Anderton, his arguments exhausted, informed the Labour leader that he could have him, or he could have McCarten, but he couldn’t have both – it was Anderton that Cunliffe let go.

Anderton’s defection is a significant blow to the Labour Party. His superb campaigning skills had turned the Christchurch East by-election into a much-needed triumph, and he was hard at work imparting his winning formulae to Labour Party organisations across the country.

It was important work which, had Anderton stuck with it, was set to make an appreciable difference to the election outcome. Sadly, it was not important enough for Anderton to set aside his feud with McCarten until Labour was safely home. Like Shakespeare’s King Lear, Anderton’s inability to see past the filial sins of the one he had looked upon as his political son and heir, threatens to plunge the entire Labour family into ruin. How sad that he cannot, like Lear, simply observe:

The art of our necessities is strange
That can make vile things precious.

The Left can only hope that “machinations, hollowness, treachery” and all the “ruinous disorders” which so taxed the patience of Lenin in 1920, and which keeps Anderton’s spite as fresh and bitter as it was twelve years ago, do not now follow Cunliffe and Labour disquietly to the electoral grave.

14 COMMENTS

  1. Exactly. Why are people on the left more focussed on doctrinal issues instead of what has to be the primary issue – ensuring the demise of the National led government? As I wrote earlier this year, all else is secondary.

    • >> all else is secondary.

      In 1984, what we worked so hard to replace National with was worse. I think it naive to blindly fall into line behind Cunliffe, and much more useful (to him and to the “Left”) to challenge him on every statement, position, and policy, to make sure this does not happen again. Secondary concerns? I think not.

    • I remember people saying the same about Muldoon, Frank. We ended up working for the failed pig farming devil and his mates, and we still are.

  2. I have not yet read all of Steve Cowan’s article cited above but whole heartedly agree with his reported proposition that: “Matt McCarten’s decision to fall in behind Labour leader David Cunliffe represents a large step to the right.”

    When I worked for Matt McCarten as a UNITE organiser I learned many things.
    One of the main things I took to heart was Matt’s injunction to:

    ” Act on what’s right, not who’s right”

    Most people in New Zealand are not bothered about the Labour yuppies latest reshuffle of their dirty old deck of cards.

    The few who give a stuff should heed Steve and the pre Labour top job advice of Matt McCarten

  3. Chris Ilyich Trotter and the Waitakere men against the ultra-left and the front bums? I thought Pete George was the voice of reason and rationality 🙂

    Any criticism from the left strengthens the right? Must be time for a good purge. Chris Hipkins would be great in the role of Beria, but Anderton hardly makes a good Trotsky.

    Well, I’m not Labour and I don’t tow party lines anyway, but I will do my bit for the workers (etc) of the land. Labour needs to win the next election, sure, but the last thing we need is to give them carte blanche to carry on with their NAct sometimes not so light policies. They need to win now more than ever because Mana and Greens will get voices with them, and those voices will raise issues that Labour is not prepared to face up to. They need to win so we can go further, and it’s front bums and ultra-leftists who will get us there, not Waitakere men.

  4. CALM DOWN, every one, please, especially Chris the Trotter with your wide imaginations and comparisons. We are talking about a humble one person, who grew up in orphanages, learnt in early years about inequality and injustice, got his dishing out of authority and dominance, where his own ideas and feelings were trampled on.

    It goes further, I know, and Matt deserves respect. I know many in similar shoes, and predicaments, and I can honestly tell you, I do feel I belong there too, although not an orphan or so.

    Injustice and harassment are the worst crimes besides of rape, slavery and murder! Too many suffer from int. And this present government has NOT done anything at all, to honestly deal to injustice, unfair treatment, social tensions and so. It is running a usual neo-liberal course, to cater for their voters, who are mainly the rather better off upper middle class, and the ones sucking up to that.

    It is time for a damned game changer, but I fear that most in public are too brainwashed and indifferent to even understand what is going on. We live in horrible times, where we are no longer “humans”, we are human material to “deliver’, to earn, bring profits and gains, and to “deserve’ our existence. That is where we are, and it is damned time more wake up, that we are nothing much short of slavery, that is for the future, thanks.

  5. Re Jim Anderton, He may have served the cause some time back, but hey, he has also betrayed it, because he was NO different to Winston Peters when working with Helen Clark after the collapse of the Alliance, to ensure she stays in power and to get HIS own influence and perks. He was holding “high’ office, by the way.

  6. Chris Trotter raises a good point. The far left can be sanctimonious and divisive. I remember back in the 90s passing a guy distributing “The People’s Voice”. He said “Do you know about socialism?” I quite like Jim Anderton” I replied. “Jim Anderton! He’s a capitalist! He’s a friend of Winston Peters!” He said.
    Being of the furthest left 2% or so I was taken aback at a party to be told by a socialist worker I know that I was a right winger. This attempt to claim being left wing as the exclusive preserve of the most extreme far left is unreasonable. In fact it is a sort of disease of the left, so well put in this clip from “The Life of Brian” – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gb_qHP7VaZE

  7. Yes, we all know how well the Russian revolution fared and how about that New Zealand Labour Party? They’ve done pretty well leading us to socialism ….

    The historical record speaks for itself ….

    • Aye, we must remember also Lenin had criticism aplenty for what he also called economism and tailism. He points out in ‘what is to be done’ that revolutionary politics cannot be abandoned for economic gain nor the excuse that it is “beyond” the least developed sections of workers.

      Down with National, but Labour too wallows in guilt, should we be their apologists?

  8. Though Lenin’s reputation for intransigence was well-deserved, even the advocate of “iron” revolutionary discipline understood the political necessity of compromise – especially in those societies where capitalist ideas and institutions remained predominant.

    Oh, I understand compromise. The problem is that it’s always the left that compromises as the right go ever further right. This is how we ended up with a radical right-wing government and a major left wing political party believing that being slightly less right than the present government is radical left.

  9. It’s true, the rampant, contemptuous, vocal radicalism of the far left purists puts off the more moderate socialist humanitarians who would nail their flag to the Labour mast, because they’re embarrassed to be associated with that element.

    Perhaps there needs to be a new registered Communist Party to soak up this element and absorb the slanted referrals from John Key et al about the extreme Left. For want of an actual extreme Left the insult, and therefore the damage to the moderates’ perception, falls squarely on the Labour/Greens.

    With the fascist bloc gaining traction for the upcoming election should that not balance things up a bit?

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