DEAN PARKER, New Zealand’s leading left-wing playwright, tells a great story about two old Bolsheviks.
It’s 1917, half way between the February and October Revolutions, and these two old comrades are complaining about what’s happened to their local branch of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. They cannot believe the numbers turning up to branch meetings. Hundreds of people have been regularly packing out the little hall where, formerly, twenty was regarded as a good turnout. What’s more, most of the newcomers are people the regulars have never seen before. And so young! With no respect for older comrades who have been with the party for years and years – even when it was illegal – back before the Tsar granted Russia a parliament! Truth to tell, these poor old codgers actually preferred political life before the revolution. The meetings were quieter, and the comrades so much more polite.
According to Soviet historians, the membership of the “bolshevik” [majority] faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, in the year before the outbreak of World War I, 1913, stood at roughly 25,000. By the end of 1917, however, the ranks of the Bolsheviks had swollen to a figure in excess of quarter-of-a-million.
Dean’s story offers us a tiny glimpse of what that sort of explosive growth might have felt like on the ground. It is also a useful historical reminder of how ordinary people respond when politics suddenly stops being an elite sport and they find themselves invited to join the game. That’s when everything changes – including the rules.
The story should also remind us that the aspirations of most political parties – even those on the Left – are considerably less heroic when revolution is not in the air. In a capitalist society, under “normal” circumstances, the preoccupations of parliamentary parties are all about maximising their vote at the next election; securing more seats that their rivals; amassing sufficient funds; seeking out friendly journalists; and making themselves more electable by keeping the party’s radical elements under strict control.
It is absolutely pointless for non-parliamentary “revolutionaries” to wail about this state of affairs. Because behaving in any other way, under “normal” capitalist conditions, has been proved, over and over again, to be utterly self-defeating.
Which is why Andrew Little, as Leader of the Opposition, used the opportunity provided by Prime Minister John Key to humiliate and alienate the Greens. Rather than invite Metiria Turei to take Russel Norman’s place on the Intelligence and Security Committee of Parliament, Little nominated his colleague, David Shearer, to join him in over-seeing the work of the Security Intelligence Service and the Government Communications Security Bureau.
In the current political climate, Little is acutely aware that Labour’s close association with the Greens is a big political loser. Too many people who would like to vote Labour are declining to do so because they fear the influence of the Greens within what all the polls tell them would be a coalition government of the centre-left. It is one of the reasons why so many Labour supporters split their votes. They are happy to give their electorate vote to the Labour candidate, so long as, by party-voting National, they can keep the Greens out of government.
Clearly, by so publicly mistreating the Greens, Little hopes to convince potential Labour voters that his party is no longer willing to be lumped-in with Green “extremism”. His message is clear: in any future coalition government the Greens will serve on Labour’s terms – or not at all.
The Greens, having digested this latest helping of dead rat from their Labour “friends”, should ask themselves (one more time, and with feeling!) how the job of being Labour’s left-wing conscience is working out. Has the strategy of locating the Green Party to the left of the empty ideological husk that Labour has become been a good thing or a bad thing in terms of advancing the Green agenda? If it’s been a bad thing (and Lord knows, after 15 years in the wilderness, it’s hard to characterise it any other way!) might it not be time to consider a new strategy? One in which the slogan “Neither left, nor right, but in front!” is fleshed out programmatically in a way that leaves the Green’s parliamentary caucus open to offers from both sides of the political spectrum?
It took a world war and almost complete internal collapse to propel the Bolsheviks into the job of effecting the revolutionary changes demanded by the Russian people. As climate change begins to bite, and the planet’s carrying capacity is exceeded once, twice, three times over; what sort of party will find its membership exploding? Will it be the mean-spirited party of an attenuated social democracy? The party of discredited neoliberal extremism? Or, will it be the party which, like Lenin’s Bolsheviks, has never ceased telling anyone who would listen that this day would come?
I fear that this climate thing will be like the Vietnam War. Only after it is finished, lost, and subsequently seen as a stupid error, will public opinion turn.
(No special brownie points for those who remember the Vietnam debate, and detect the same bullshit arguments driving us to a war against ISIS, another war that the USA is capable of losing.)
But after people realise they have lost the war against Global Warming, it may well be too late for our survival. We are a frail species.
Those who learn about history understand this. The zealous bigots who push violence, warfare, and religion (including the religion of the Market) serve only to advance our self-destructive idiocy.
Thanks Chris for an insightful article.
1000%
Chris, I think you’ve neatly outlined my utter dismay at the democratic system we currently have. Party’s are willing to throw any principles they might claim to have stood for under the bus if it means they get elected. This means that they don’t really have any principles at all.
The Greens however have forthrightly stood by their principles, they state what they stand for and the stand by what they state. This has meant that they haven’t received a great majority of the vote because they haven’t tried to appeal to the lowest common denominator. It also means they are one of the few honourable parties in New Zealand.
It’s a real shame Labour has sunk to National’s standards, I had hoped they were better than that. I’m not angry with Little, just really disappointed.
“Party’s are willing to throw any principles they might claim to have stood for under the bus if it means they get elected. This means that they don’t really have any principles at all.”
Exactly, the whole second to last paragraph is basically calling for the Greens to abandon their principles and change their beliefs. Party policies and who one votes for should be based on where one sits on the political compass, which should be based on one’s principles and beliefs. Not the other way around.
I am also dismayed by our situation. While Chris writes;
“Too many people who would like to vote Labour are declining to do so because they fear the influence of the Greens within what all the polls tell them would be a coalition government of the centre-left. It is one of the reasons why so many Labour supporters split their votes. They are happy to give their electorate vote to the Labour candidate, so long as, by party-voting National, they can keep the Greens out of government.”
I party voted Green and cringed at voting for the Labour candidate in my electorate because I despise the semi-Left policies of the Labour party, but, they had the better chance(they had no chance really) of beating Anne Tolley. It’s as if the Labour party(or New Zealand, for that matter) don’t know the saying that truth and reality have a well known Liberal bias. Which is why the Greens need to stick to their principles, and why I prefer Chris’ last sentence;
“Or, will it be the party which, like Lenin’s Bolsheviks, has never ceased telling anyone who would listen that this day would come?”
In that case it may be better if the Green’s do stand apart. I am hanging out for a party that will stand up and speak bluntly to our over-population of the planet. The next time Stephen Joyce sneers in parliament that the Greens are anti-growth, I want someone from the Greens stand up and say, yes, basically we are and here is why.
People have got to start thinking about this, start thinking about what things will look like with growth going doing a 180deg turn and how we can prosper from it.
This is a matter of some urgency, as we have to understand that growing to 10 billion then “flattening off or reducing” will not come in an orderly fashion, as, as Chris stated at the start of this article, we are already maybe 3 times more than what the planet can readily sustain.
At 10 billion I see dead oceans and dead oceans will mean a dead world.
People need to start thinking beyond themselves, look at their kids, their grandkids and really ask themselves, what do I want to leave for them.
If we start now, and the most effective way is education of women and giving them control of their fertility the desired result will be achieved, look at Japan.
Of course the huge problem will be cultures that eschew education of women and birth control and certainly them having a say in if or who they partner with and when. I am not sure how you bring them in on this, but we will have to try.
People please do not just leave this to your kids and grandkids. Please
Labour no longer represent the left.
They are the other party that supports the neo-liberal doctrine.
1. Labour is not a Left party, and hasn’t been since the Roger Douglas era. 2. The Greens are not, and never have been extremists – that’s just how the Right (sadly, including Labour) likes to paint them. It says a lot more about National and Labour than it does about the Greens, at least for those who are actually listening.
I am waiting for the day that “left” and “right” become obsolete terms. They should refer only to things economic, left being collective right being individual and for my mind a combination of the two is the thing to aim for.
The thing we need to be looking at is “totalitarianism” and “libertarianism”
If you take a piece of graph paper put left and right in the obvious places then totalitarian and libertarian on the top and bottom you will quickly see that on that sheet you can have all manner of combinations of all four and you will also see that left and libertarian are a thing just as right and libertarian is. It’s just the right have decided to collar the term. If you want to know what libertarian left might look like then “Do unto others etc” and that is from an atheist. Just because I do not believe in a divine deity does not mean that I cannot see sense in some guy’s thoughts. IF we were able to live like that you wouldn’t need a single solitary law – but we don’t live like that. Same is true for libertarian right if you don’t want to end up with something like Somalia. Sadly, we are still too selfish for libertarianism.
But we sure as hell don’t want to end up on the other end of the scale either, I am sure no-one here wants to be ruled by a Stalin, or a Hitler or an Augusto Pinochet, so again, hello, the middle looks pretty good, doesn’t it.
Great Chris. Keep this stuff up. We will have National in power forever.
Seems like you are o.k. with this.
This reaction to Little is almost the final straw for me with left wing blogs.
Do you really think Andrew Little is the type of person to act unlawfully if he was aware he was doing so? He easily could have consulted the Greens and NZ and then made the decision to have David Shearer.
Bollocks. And good on him.
Hi Trendy Leftie, was the bollocks comment to me?
O.k for you to express yourself, but just remember Chris T did this stuff with Cunliffe too. “what the hells wrong with Cunliffe” article etc. And of course he is entitled to write what he likes. But it is such a help to National when journalists and bloggers trash the Labour Leader. IMO why we haven’t won. Or a big part of that.
That’s fine if you don’t mind putting up with the Nats till the balance of power changes and we get a Green/Mana Govt. That of course may never happen and that’s the risk.
I think the most likely scenario is Mr Little didn’t know he was legally obliged to consult. If he did know he would have, afterall he’s a lawyer and not stupid. He isn’t obliged to have the Greens on that committee. They are only 11% of the vote and they have already had a shot. I know this point of view will be unpopular on this website.
no it was to the article, and good on Mr Little.
Cheers trendy leftie. Thanks for clarifying. I agree
I totally disagree. I think just as many Kiwi’s vote Labour for electorate vote and then a further left party for party vote.
Labour 25% and Greens 11%? Greens are catching up so maybe Labour should actually look at their polices and see why they are catching up.
Internet Mana got more votes than the Act party, the Maori party and the United Future Party. Likewise the conservatives got nearly half the votes of NZ First.
It is pretty clear that the minor parties are ‘catching up’ in NZ as people seek alternatives to National and Labour. The NatLAB arrogance and lack of respect for the people of this country is going to catch up with them by next election.
Now is not the time for Little to beLittling other leaders who he should be seeking alliances with.
Dead right my party vote went green
labour for the seat.
Would have been plenty more like me.
Personally I think its time the greens started campaigning for the seat and party vote if labour don’t want to work with the greens then maybe they should go for the centre and link up with mama.
Of course Little is doing a lot to marginalise the Greens, as Chris has correctly assessed and stated above. But instead of falling for the fallacy, that this will drive more voters back into the open arms of the remnants of the Labour Party, Little and his colleagues should really be focusing on working out new policies, or improving and refining existing policies.
What we have is a surrender, a surrender to the neo liberalism that swept into New Zealand in the mid to late 1980s and in the 1990s. And that was allowed to happen under a Labour government!
Little and many of his caucus colleagues seem to have “accepted” that they better move towards the “centre”, and win over middle class voters, that they feel left them in droves.
With opening themselves up to appeal to business, small and medium size, to contractors and so forth, they are moving away from what Labour once stood for, and back towards what Roger Douglas, Prebble and mates wanted Labour to be. Maybe not quite that far, but nearer again.
They seem to forget that it was the laissez faire regime they allowed to gather pace, that ended in mass privatisation, mass outsourcing, in the dismissal of tens of thousands of former employees from former state owned companies and departments, who were in many cases forced to become self employed.
Few now dare to think the state can do much good, and as even John Key teased Labour’s Phil Twyford today in the House, Labour is not that far away from National when it comes to “social housing”, social security and health care delivery. We get more slogans and “emotive” talk from some in Labour, but in their own closed circles, they will never consider reversing welfare reforms, the renationalisation of sold assets, the buying back of sold state houses.
As a result Labour is leaving the truly marginalised by the wayside, the precariat, the unemployed, the sick and disabled on benefits, and also the low paid, as all they were prepared to offer in the election was 15 dollars for the minimum wage, just a bit above what it is now.
Labour will NOT appeal to the many non voters of various backgrounds, and will dwell around the 30 percent mark for years to come, wait and see. They have decided to compete with the Nats on that “centre ground”, and that means blurring the lines so much, it will be hard to find any significant differences between Nats and Labour. But as the Nats have closer ties to the money generating and owning elites, they will have more resources to recruit and buy the support of educated, smart brains, to serve their interests, not the ones of ALL New Zealanders. There Labour will miss out and continue to play second fiddle.
What a truly inspired, proactive and smart Left or Left of Centre Party would do, is to discover and promote some reformist, progressive, smart and somewhat radical new policies, like the introduction of a Universal Basic Income, like a return to more affordable tertiary education, like truly free school education, and like more decentralised, yet efficient, effective and proactice health policy, also emphasizing prevention.
They would embrace smart environmental and economic policies, reinvent something like “nationhood”, a collective, more united, unified society, and present themselves with a clear focus, with unequivocal, decisive, clear messages, unashamedly progressive and smart, and not fear critcism.
They would have a think tank, a work group of core smart heads, a strategy and planning group, and work at the base, setting up networks all over the community.
We get NONE of this, and hence Labour is and will remain to be a disoriented, poorly guided and weak party, desperately out on the hunt for some “gotcha” momentum, to attack the government on small fry topics.
That is the problem as I see it, and now disappointing or even angering the Greens will have very damaging effects, for both parties, as the opposition looks more divided than ever before, and thus will be perceived as unfit to govern.
It is a sad tragedy what is happening here. But it could be an opportunity for a new progressive party if formed and started off well. We just need the right minds and bodies behind this.
The NZ left needs a great leader, not a little one.
“effecting the revolutionary changes demanded by the Russian people”
Like the gulag? That was the signature achievement of the Bolsheviks, along with mass murder.
Let’s not go crazy. What Little did was take a useful and knowledgeable supporter into the committee with him. Russel Norman would have been equally useful in interpreting the information provided to a new leader with not much security experience. Turei would be massively less useful because her focus, not surprisingly, as Norman was available, has been elsewhere. That she feels slighted by not being given the respect she believes her due, is unfortunate, but hardly earth shattering.
I agree with Anker above. I usually agree with most of Chris’ positions, but he is sometimes a little quick to turn on Labour. A broadchurch party will have shades of opinion. A reforming party will have more extreme variation between those streams. The longer a faction of political opinion is out of power, the more Simon Pure their philosophies and the more divorced from the realities.
Chris, your idea that the Greens could swing round to support National, returning to a narrowing focus on the environment, is Machiavellian, but if your followers get in behind such irony the internal pain will be as damaging as it is unnecessary. I don’t imagine you are really suggesting that the Greens’ hyper-left credentials are simply assumed in order to carve off a slice of Labour’s more disaffected support base, are you?
That would leave the angry men of the Daily Blog nowhere to go but to Mana or Mana’s love child, only to disappear in a puff of self-righteous smoke.
Worse than this, it is still so much easier to get into a moral rage than to discuss policy which would improve the lot of New Zealanders – and, as a supporter of Labour (as you may have guessed) I mean the poorest new Zealanders, but not only the poorest. Since none of us have an opportunity of putting policy into play at present, let the discussion be unfettered and broad-ranging.
Unless, of course it is more fun kicking the shit out of imagined backsliders, Quislings, and sell outs. And, after all fun is what it’s all about, isn’t it?
Nick – could you please explain to us all why David Shearer, the man who was secretly trying to cut a deal with Key on the GCSB issue should be on that panel? When the security agencies have been so manipulated, why does a Labour Party hack who was looking to cut a deal in secret with Key the best option for oversight?
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