Getting On Top Of Things: The National Party’s Strategy Of Class Defence

By
Chris Trotter
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43
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THE NATIONAL PARTY’S apparent inability to do anything about Auckland’s rapidly worsening housing crisis is, on the face of it, curious. John Key’s government has, until now, demonstrated a remarkable sensitivity to adverse public sentiment. It’s rapid turnaround on mining in national parks, and primary school class sizes, are just the most memorable examples of its leader’s instinct for political self-preservation. Why, then, has the Prime Minister failed to respond to the electorate’s rising impatience with his government’s poor performance on housing? Especially when, according to The Daily Blog’s tip-line, it is beginning to inflict real damage to National’s poll ratings?

The answer is buried deep in National’s institutional culture. It should never be forgotten that the National Party, above all else, is an instrument of class defence. It’s formation, in 1936, came barely a year after the Labour Party’s historic election victory in 1935, and among its creators were a number of retired army officers: Colonel H.G. Livingstone, Colonel James Hargest and Colonel S.C.P. Nichols. These staunch defenders of the “national” interest were careful to include a solemn pledge to “oppose subversive and other doctrines” among the new party’s aims and objectives.

National’s No. 1 priority, in terms of class defence, has always been the repeal of any and all legislation touching upon the right of capitalists to manage their businesses as they see fit. Every attempt by the state to dictate a business’s hours and conditions of work, or to limit its ability to hire and fire, has been resisted strenuously by the National Party. Even today, 80 years after their party’s formation, most National Party members and politicians continue to regard trade unions with hostility and suspicion. The slightest intrusion by organised labour into the private employment relationship is dismissed by every “True Blue” Nat as intolerable.

But if the supreme test of whether or not someone is a Nat, is to start speaking positively about trade unionism. (They simply won’t be able to help themselves!) There are other, equally dramatic, triggers. Any institution intended to make the lives of working people and their families less vulnerable and more secure is almost guaranteed to produce a negative response from the average National Party voter. Class defence is not simply a matter of protecting rights and property. Of equal importance is the protection of social status. Nothing is more corrosive of class dominance than the loss of deference: the refusal of those at the “bottom” to “show a proper respect” for those at the “top”.

The Hollywood movie star Humphrey Bogart would boast to his friends about the size of his “Fuck You Fund”. A portion of his earnings, he said, was being put aside for the day when the demands of studios, producers, directors and publicists finally became too much to bear. On that day, he told them, the money he’d stashed away in his special fund would allow him to say: “Fuck you!” to whoever was oppressing him – and simply walk away.

The Welfare State was the “Fuck You Fund” of the working class. Like Bogart’s accumulated cash, the protection afforded to working people by full employment, trade unions, public health and education, accident compensation, state housing and welfare entitlements allowed them to say “Fuck you!” to the boss class – and simply walk away.

Which is why, from the moment of the Welfare State’s inception in 1935, the people behind the National Party hated it with a passion. It was unashamedly redistributive, and the highly progressive taxation system required to fund it imposed a financial burden on the upper classes which they were eager to unload. But that was only part of the story – and not even the most important part. What made the Welfare State so inimical to the interests of the upper and middle classes was the threat it posed to social deference.

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Social democracy and egalitarianism are joined at the hip, and the longer they persist the easier it gets for working-class people to say “Fuck you!” – and walk away. Capitalism can survive many things: riots, strikes, economic depressions, even wars: but it cannot survive that.

The scale of the National Party’s victory over both the Welfare State and the working-class it was established to protect may be measured by how many ordinary people living in New Zealand today feel confident enough to say “Fuck you!” to their boss, their Work & Income case manager, or, indeed, any person exercising authority over them. Bank managers and landlords, no less than judges and police officers, are back where they belong – on top. And they are only too aware that the institution responsible for this most satisfactory state of affairs is the National Party.

It would, therefore, be most unusual to see a National Government taking effective measures against homelessness. Labour’s state house: well-designed, solidly-built, fairly rented, and offering secure tenancy for life; was the jewel in the Welfare State’s crown – and absolutely central to the effectiveness of the workers’ Fuck You Fund. The National Government’s long-standing and quite deliberate policy of running-down of the stock of state houses has only one purpose: to increase the defencelessness of the poor.

It’s hard to say “Fuck you!” when you’re $10,000 in debt to Work & Income and sleeping in your car.

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43 COMMENTS

  1. Welcome back Cotter! opps! I meant Trotter.

    Well said by a fellow Egalitarian with a tinge of socialism like I was brought up by a father BATTLING ON THE PICKET LINES DURING THE 1951 Auckland WHALF STRIKE WHEN I WAS 6YRS OLD.

    Banned from living I Auckland my birthplace I now live in east coast and seldom see my ancestral home any more but almost weep in silence from inside when I see those amongst us pushed out in the damp cold unwelcoming night to suffer this way.

    I used to sing country folk music in Kentucky/Tennessee in my long breaks from the Toronto grind where I felt a spirual connection to those words of songs about those less fortunate then we were and always felt deeply saddened by what pain the song writer went through to pen that emotional deep into words so this forever has me hooked on emotion.

    So looking at this human tragedy in the cold light of day and the clinical manner and words this current Soul-less administration carries out their task I SHUDDER WONDERING if I am really back home into the loving bosom of my homeland or if I am in a constant dream.

    Roy Orbison would touch my heart with his words but national will never frost over my heart with their mean calculated uncaring uncompassionate inhuman ways of hate for us all.

    • Never thought of it that way, but it sure explains a lot of things and the younger generation ( 30 and under) take it like sheep and think it has always been this way.

  3. The right wing Labour party also has no interest in reducing house prices. Clark’s large-scale immigration policy was a major contributing factor, continued by National. I believe the valley of transition will soon be reached, where the “underclass” will simply take up arms and eat the rich, with the majority of the latter increasingly looking and sounding like transnational capital, or modern-day colonists.

    • Rubbish Castro, Labour builds, National destroys. History, even recent history backs that up. The extent to which National has deliberately dismantled NZ and marginalized kiwis for power and personal wealth is on a scale that is unprecedented. The “underclass’ was the term used by John key to describe the Kiwis his government are actively persecuting and punishing.

  4. The problem we have here in NZ is Roger Douglas ex ACT and other Governments Labour & National have dismembered our manufacturing sectors, which can not compete with the multinationals who are manufacturing in Third World Countries and are subsidized by slave labour, hence we have a fragile manufacturing base and limited growth in our manufacturing sector which employs a lot of urban workers.

    Also the average worker in NZ is in a poverty trap especially with the price of housing and the cost of renting, the sale of state housing is purely exaggerating the problem, the Government should be building more state housing not selling it off.

  5. The problem we have here in NZ is Roger Douglas ex ACT and other Governments Labour & National have dismembered our manufacturing sectors, which can not compete with the multinationals who are manufacturing in Third World Countries and are subsidized by slave labour, hence we have a fragile manufacturing base and limited growth in our manufacturing sector which employs a lot of urban workers.

    Also the average worker in NZ is in a poverty trap especially with the price of housing and the cost of renting, the sale of state housing is purely exaggerating the problem, the Government should be building more state housing not selling it off.

  11. “The scale of the National Party’s victory over both the Welfare State and the working-class it was established to protect may be measured by how many ordinary people living in New Zealand today feel confident enough to say “Fuck you!” to their boss, their Work & Income case manager, or, indeed, any person exercising authority over them. Bank managers and landlords, no less than judges and police officers, are back where they belong – on top. And they are only too aware that the institution responsible for this most satisfactory state of affairs is the National Party.”

    What do we make of this post?

    Social Democracy was buried already late in the 19th Century, when German Social Democrats worked with the German Emperor’s parliament and system, and during WW1 even supported the Kaiser during the war.

    Social Democracy was buried when Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were shot, Social Democracy was finally and completely buried by the likes of Tony Blair, Gerhard Schroeder and also here in New Zealand the likes of David Lange, who could not manage the neoliberal revolt within his own party, led by such traitors as Roger Douglas.

    Even Helen Clark was so alienated to Social Democracy, she could not revive it from the death bed, she rather learned to dance with the powerful establishment, now well looked after at the UN.

    There is NO more Social Democracy left, well, some like Corbyn and Sanders try to revive it, but they are struggling.

    So what is Chris on about, just another wander down history and memory lane, reflection on romantic ideals, that even the ordinary downtrodden precariat dweller here no longer relates to.

    National should be called National Capitalist, they are not even National Socialist, they are capitalist, and pretend to care, in words but not action.

    That is the disaster we have, a graveyard we live on, where the grave stones are thrashed by the demolition gangs, who want to build homes for rich immigrants in the cemetery.

    Welcome to a dead spirited nation, this “fuck you” does not come, as people are so disowned and disempowered, they are rather fighting each other likes rats over a morsel of bread, than stand together and overthrow the shit.

    We live in a society of sell outs, mercenaries, opportunists, servants and prostitutes, nothing more or less, all willing to deal with the master of mammon and hell. They rather rely on a lotto win than on political change, there is a dead spirited society here, I smell the rotten smell of rotten flesh everywhere, New Zealand is dying, it is neither a people, a nation a society anymore, just a lot of various people from whereever, all dwelling on some islands down under, with nothing that unites and inspires them – that is apart from the alcohol in a can of beer, drunk while a rugby game is on, where they may thrash the shit out of an enemy.

  12. I am fairly sure my grandparents pre WW2 generation would have used B words not F words if they could be told the plight of modern day kiwis sufferings from the housing crisis and how society has split into a new version of the Landed Gentry class and a Generation Rent class.

    Something like;

    “Bugger that, that’s bloody unfair. Those landed gentry bastards can bugger right off, we had enough of that bloody nonsense back in mother England.”

  13. ” The National Government’s long-standing and quite deliberate policy of running-down of the stock of state houses has only one purpose: to increase the defenselessness of the poor. ”

    ………………………………………………………………………………………..

    Excellent . Gold leaf earning.

    However,… all of the above being on the bullseye, back in the days of the early formation of the National party the were busy coming out of the grip of the Great Depression.

    It was the American Laissez Faire that ultimately had created that economic crash … a close cousin of what we have today : neo liberalism.

    And the whole ‘supply side’ economics, – with its dark side – ‘ starve the beast’ ( small govt, destruction of the welfare state , slashing of taxation of the rich and placing more disproportionately on the working and middle classes) is a direct descendant of the original Austrian school of economics and Laizze faire.

    It is ironic that all these systems that claim to be ‘economically liberal ‘… all backing the free market 100% ,.. that were always the preference of the ‘ elites’ … is also a system doomed by its own motives and ideology by its own rigidity.

    This is why we see little or no real action by the National party on NZ’s shocking housing crisis.

    This is why more and more people are seeing this govt as vicious , inept – and because of its ideological rigidity , – farcical. The constant having to resort to lies , dirty politics , and twisting of the stats and punitive measures regard welfare to give some slim plausibility and limp excuse is inevitably going to wear thin.

    This is now happening.

    They are appearing jaded , irrelevant and the populace is now seriously weighing this govt up in the balance – and whether it is indeed time for a change.

    This is the underlining Archilles heel of these quirky economics of the elites. It always has a shelf life. It always seeks to reset through economic crashes and downturns. It always seeks to utilize the working and middle classes to bear the brunt of these downturns and social spending slashes – and minimize taxation for themselves.

    That may work well in some oppressive junta in the third world – whereby violent overthrow is more often the case to effect change, – but not in the developed west. Here govt’s are still vulnerable to the mood of the people through the vote.

    Political embarrassment is a powerful tool . And we are now seeing this take its affect. As each political incompetence mounts up , as each insensitive gaffe is offered , as each glaring example of hypocrisy by Ministers is made… the mood of the nation is changing.

    That very rigidity is now coming home to roost. People are seeing through Nationals ‘ placating’ of the populace by flip flopping and adopting measures that make it appear as though it is ‘ moderate’… but in the housing crisis they have no answer. None whatsoever. They are ideologically bound to the sinking ship and they cannot find room to move.

    These and other reasons are why these ‘ economics of the rich ‘ can only have a certain shelf life. It can only push the bandwagon for so long before people react in the polls.

    If the MOU and other party’s on the Left rally , …. National is doomed come 2017.

    Guaranteed.

    ( N.B : if Labour are seen to be a mere continuance of the neo liberal dogma after National loses,… they too , … will receive a backlash by the public. It would behoove them therefore to radically cull MP’s who try to manipulate policy to slant it towards neo liberal economics . 2017 is a critical watershed election for this country. If not for our economic good health , our societal balance – but for our very own political stability. If Labour gets it wrong then… all manner of social dissent will almost certainly start to erupt.)

  14. What it highlights is the absolute and highly predictable short sightedness of the National Party.
    Nothing has changed there . Strangely enough Rob Muldoons ‘Think Big’ projects was the only time I have ever seen the National Party look past the end of their collective noses.
    However it is interesting how the narrative regarding this whole housing clusterf**k crisis is based around the homeless , the poor, or the working poor .
    While they are obviously being hit the hardest I can assure you it is dramatically affecting the middle class children of the baby boombers who are working long hours ,paying larcenous rents, spending an unhealthy amount of time in traffic jams and don’t have a snow balls chance in hell of even raising a deposit for a freezing cold dog box.
    A lot of them , both men and women fast closing in on the big 3 0 cannot see a way forward to being able to afford to raise a family especially with being shunted from pillar to post by overseas slumlords.
    The only ones I know that have a home , have wealthy parents (a lot of it inherited), who have shelled out large deposits. (The parents want grandchildren.)
    This is not good. The sons and daughters don’t have a real sense of achievement . Their house isn’t their castle . It’s their parents ,or grandparents, as the case maybe.
    How can these people then know how to feel pain, and see other peoples plight, when they themselves are being cossetted and being so supported.
    And so the ability to feel true empathy is diluted even more and more .
    The world becomes poorer for it.
    National … Myopic …. Short sighted…..dumb!

    • Some of us are going to aim for a legacy of violent overthrow, as children are no longer affordable… keep your ear to the ground, brother 😉

  15. Another thing that always comes to mind.

    The Left is notorious for many causes. Unlike the Right…

    And many of these causes are just and right,… however many of them dissipate the energy’s of the Left politically. I believe its always economics first. Always.

    Get that right and society is empowered .

    A basic historical example comes to mind. When the hunter gatherer became an agrarian /pasturalist… it created more time to focus on structuring its society for the better. People were released from the grind of merely finding enough food to eat .

    An example of this is the desperate plight of so many family’s/individuals in NZ today. They are caught up in the grind, they are afraid for their jobs , they are in effect – distracted from politics barring all but the most dramatic grabbing headlines.

    They have become that hunter / gatherer once more.

    When a society is prosperous and balanced, it can afford to indulge in the luxury of not only thought , …and concepts of political equity for all sectors ,- but actioning those thoughts . It was for this reason that the great renaissance of the Left occurred in one of the most prosperous decades of the 20th century : the the 1960’s.

    And though many battles have been fought under the neo liberal era by the Left for social justice and change…and won … the neo liberal ideology has made major inroads into democracy and the economic freeing up of the people.

    That , combined with technology ( which is invariably funded and backed by big business who also pay massive donations to the Right to keep the status quo ) has entrapped the populations ability to mobilise, unify and challenge unwanted corporate / govt legislation.

    The most egalitarian era for this country was when we practiced Keynesian economics. The economic system of John Maynard Keynes .

    And it is the most hated by the neo liberals because of its basic fairness in ensuring a progressive tax scale and also because of its inherent distribution of the wealth among society. The neo liberal will fight fang and claw to ensure Keynesian-ism is strangled at every turn. And yet for the greater part of the 20th century it was this system that ensured that prosperity.

    It was so effective it pulled Europe and later the USA out of the Great Depression on average in a mere 6 months for those country’s that adopted it.

    Create a prosperous society and you create a free society of self determination.

    The exact opposite of the neo liberals final end goal of creating a servile , divided, tiered society in which power and wealth always flow upwards … never downwards.

    • And where, out of interest, does nationalism fit into your analysis? Am curious. Do you believe in nationalism or not?

    • An understanding of the Class War has often been simplified by the use of commonly understood (or misunderstood) nomenclature, such as communism, fascism and the like, insinuating that those who have entertained these concepts served devilish, conspiratorial agents (when in fact some proponents of these ideologies had thoughtful, humane intentions). It has subsequently been difficult to keep the name-calling from being used to condemn people on either side of political arguments (some may know I’ve personally struggled to maintain my reputation after being called Retired Terrorist). I now observe another identity being used to confuse political commentary: neo liberalism. Perhaps a better understanding of the procedures of class warfare could be achieved if the identity of this political force was viewed in relation to these other nasty political concepts.?

  16. That is a fair summary of the way society has changed although the tiny number of beneficiaries who exploit the welfare system get lots of coverage in the MSM while wealthy tax avoiders get ignored by the same media so that public opinion gets brain washed to think that welfare is bad.

  17. New Zealand is being transformed into a safe haven for the wealthy elitists and rich immigrants, the average jo blow or middle class worker has a snow balls chance in hell of making any progress in today’s economic environment, how does one save for a deposit on a house when you are struggling to pay the rent and put food on the table working a 40 hour week on a minimum wage gives you $610 per week say minus 20% tax gives you $488 net per week less $400-$500 per week rent gives you $88 to -$12 per week for food and living expenses.

    Now that is if you can find a job here in New Zealand which will pay you the minimum wage?

  18. New Zealand is being transformed into a safe haven for the wealthy elitists and rich immigrants, the average jo blow or middle class worker has a snow balls chance in hell of making any progress in today’s economic environment, how does one save for a deposit on a house when you are struggling to pay the rent and put food on the table working a 40 hour week on a minimum wage gives you $610 per week say minus 20% tax gives you $488 net per week less $400-$500 per week rent gives you $88 to -$12 per week for food and living expenses.

    Now that is if you can find a job here in New Zealand which will pay you the minimum wage?

  19. New Zealand is being transformed into a safe haven for the wealthy elitists and rich immigrants, the average jo blow or middle class worker has a snow balls chance in hell of making any progress in today’s economic environment, how does one save for a deposit on a house when you are struggling to pay the rent and put food on the table working a 40 hour week on a minimum wage gives you $610 per week say minus 20% tax gives you $488 net per week less $400-$500 per week rent gives you $88 to -$12 per week for food and living expenses.

    Now that is if you can find a job here in New Zealand which will pay you the minimum wage?

  20. John Key is the Chairman of the International Democrat Union. When I found that out my first thought was, well, at least he actually believes in “something”. But still, it makes me sigh when people are constantly pointing at the Greens and Labours ‘Social Agenda’ and ‘Ideology’ without understanding that National have the most steadfast set of agendas and ideology of all.

  21. International Democrat Union?
    What a curiously ambiguous name for a union of conservatives, Tories and neo-liberal rednecks.

    • Their Website is also headed ‘The Freedom International’ which I guess means Freedom for the Neo Cons. I would like to see this aspect of Key be investigated more thoroughly, it is nigh on impossible to figure out what these guys get up to exactly.
      From their statement of beliefs..”HAVING REGARD to their common views that political democracy and private property are inseparable components of individual liberty” Now that’s a statement open to interpretation…

  22. “The National Government’s long-standing and quite deliberate policy of running-down of the stock of state houses has only one purpose: to increase the defencelessness of the poor”.

    I honestly doubt that there are many people – Nats included – who would imagine that they are doing what you suggest, even if they are. Human beings are not called “The Rationalising Animal” for nothing. We find reasons which seem good to us to do, perhaps, what we wanted to do before finding the reason.

    No more did the Helen Clark administration or the “traitors” of the Douglas-Lange government wish to hurt the poor or disadvantaged. In the case of Douglas et al, they were the dupes of a wrong-headed doctrine which took a bumper -sticker approach to economics. The Clark administration was influenced by a wide belief that Socialist solutions had proven ineffective, viz the collapse of the Soviet Union, leaving nothing but the Third Way espoused by Blair.

    Your expostulations are always interesting, Chris, and often largely on the money. Where I must part company is when you go from a macro-analysis of the movements of the times not to a prescription for suitable treatment, but rather to the suggestion that all this is caused by some nefarious intent, rather than simply small-minded, complacent semi-willful ignorance. And the implication that all is lost, which is interleaved in much of the texture of your comments, is at least challenged by the closeness of the polls today and even the narrowness of the margin of defeat at the last election, given that that event marked the lowest that the leading party of the Left had ever sunk in what was widely recognized as a total rout.

    It may be that, in the complex world of today, the battle-lines are frustratingly blurred. It may be that it is less likely that the toffs or Hooray Henrys of the comfy Right will ever receive the Fuck Off they so richly deserve. But that doesn’t mean that there is no chance for the disadvantaged.

    The Left (and I for one, still believe that Labour is the main party of the Left) could easily win the next election. With focus,confidence and some style, they might even be favorites to do so. And I am still convinced that that would be a good thing for poorer New Zealanders.

    I listened to Hillary’s speech on the US economy today. She is beginning to sound more like Bernie than might have been expected.
    There may even be hope for the Great Satan.

  23. Even under Muldoon, National was never this anti-worker. They were at constant loggerheads with the unions, by the union movement was strong enough to counter any right-wing extremism that might’ve reared it’s poxy head.

    Now, with the remnants of the Union movement in a defensive mode, the right-wing is free to rampage ideologically through our society.

    The results are obvious.

    I further suspect that far from being an “egalitarian” people, that NZers have an innate conservative streak that few will admit to, but vote accordingly in the privacy of the ballot-booth.

    • “I further suspect that far from being an “egalitarian” people, that NZers have an innate conservative streak that few will admit to, but vote accordingly in the privacy of the ballot-booth.”

      I suspect you’re right, Priss. When I over-hear some of my relatives talking, I shake my head in disgust. These are people who should know better, but to question the National government spin would be to inject a degree of discomfort into their lives that they couldn’t handle.

      We may’ve been an egalitarian society once upon a time, but all that came down crashing after the 1980s, when the middle class discovered recreational shopping instead of community activities, and “reality tv” bullshit superceded current affairs shows on prime time tv.

  24. It is sadly the docile temperament of the average NZ politician, even of Marama Davidson and others, in the opposition, that lets us down, there is NO firebrand such as a Camila Vallejo that Chile has, we live in a dull and poor political environment, some will say, the Kiwi way is to chat and talk things over a cuppa. That is maybe the very problem of this country and its people, no fire, no passion, not even principles.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBih0c689cI

    We need a NZ Camila, or we may as well hand Key a fourth term.

  27. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC7_2Qvg_3s

    This is how quasi Nazi powered police deal with protestors in Hamburg these days, in the north o f Germany, with the government we have, expect the same here, you will be nothing but cattle herded into corrals and otherwise be locked up and charged, it is shocking, does anybody here fucking wake up?

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