ALL IS NOT AS IT SEEMS. That’s the brutal truth to keep in mind. Even in the golden afterglow of last Friday’s extraordinary National Remembrance Service: all is not as it seems.
So many on the Left do not appreciate the true dimensions of the vast and immovable cultural-political consensus that allows Capitalism to survive and thrive. If it wasn’t there: or, if it was there, but amenable to reason and love: then Capitalism would long ago have given way to a more human order.
This grim judgement is a lot easier for the Left to accept when reactionary ideas and parties are in the saddle and riding them hard. In those moments, it is easy to convince Capitalism’s enemies that it is, indeed, a monstrous nightmare pressing down upon the lungs of human hope.
A Left without illusions has a much better chance of organising effectively and, on rare occasions, winning.
The real danger comes when events conspire to make it appear as though the Left has already won.
Consider the events that shook Paris and the rest of France in May 1968. The tens-of-thousands of students in the streets. The barricades. The CRS – France’s brutal riot police – counter-attacking. Parisians rushing to the aid of the beaten and bloodied citizens. Clouds of tear-gas wafting down the boulevards of the capital. Spontaneous strikes in France’s largest industries. Workers turning their bosses away from the factory gates. Surely, in May 1968, France teetered on the brink of revolution?
That is certainly what it looked like and felt like.
Except, that is not what was happening.
After the French Communist Party had bribed the striking workers with a ten percent across-the-board wage rise and the factories had been handed back to the bosses. After President Charles De Gaulle had returned from Germany, where he had taken refuge with the French army units stationed there. After the French Prime Minister, Georges Pompidou, had allowed the scheduled elections for the French legislature to proceed. Only then was it made clear what the people of France really thought about the events of May 1968.
In those elections, the governing Gaullist party and its allies won 387 seats in the National Assembly. The Socialist Party and the Communist Party, between them, just 91. The Governing party had taken 111 additional seats. The combined forces of the Left had lost 99.
What had looked like a revolution was anything but.
In the United States the story was the same.
Between 1968 and 1972, the USA was rocked by some of the most tumultuous political protests of its entire history. Mass demonstrations against the Vietnam War grew ever larger. The “Youth Revolt” filled newspaper columns and the airwaves. Young left-wing delegates to the 1972 Democratic Party Convention secured the presidential nomination for Senator George McGovern – an avowed liberal and fierce opponent of the Vietnam War. The Democrats offered the American electorate the most progressive party platform since Roosevelt’s New Deal.
McGovern’s opponent, President Richard Nixon, appealed to “the great silent majority of Americans” to give him four more years in the White House.
The great silent majority were only too happy to oblige.
Nixon won an astonishing 60.7 percent of the popular vote: McGovern just 37.5 percent. The streets of America may have been teeming with young, idealistic protesters, but they were vastly outnumbered by the silent and invisible armies of the Right.
Closer to home, in 2002, the National Party was routed by Helen Clark’s Labour Party, receiving just 20.9 percent of the Party Vote. Pundits reckoned it would take National several elections to rebuild its support. Some even suggested the party might be over. Three years later, however, the Don Brash-led National Party came within 46,000 votes of winning the 2005 General Election.
Brash’s in/famous “Nationhood” speech, delivered to the Orewa Rotary Club in January 2004, unleashed a vast wave of hitherto unacknowledged Pakeha resentment towards the New Zealand state’s official policy of bi-cultural “partnership”. Responding to the highly-charged mood of racial anxiety which Brash’s speech had whipped-up, Clark felt obliged to pass the deeply divisive Foreshore & Seabed Act. Had she not, it is probable that Brash would have defeated her government, scrapped the Treaty of Waitangi and abolished the Maori Seats. The sleeping dogs of Pakeha racism, kicked into a state of vicious wakefulness, had demanded, and been given, large chunks of raw political meat – by both major parties.
When we look up into the night sky, what do we see? The moon, the planets and the stars ranged across the heavens in a glittering diadem of light. Looking at all this beauty, it is easy to believe that the universe is made up of nothing but light. But, all is not as it seems.
What the physicists and cosmologists tell us is that in between the stars there is something else. Something mysterious and invisible, and yet so powerful that without it the universe could not exist. These unknown forces are said by the physicists and cosmologists to make up 85 percent of the universe. The world of light, they calculate, represents a mere 5 percent. The names given to these mysterious and invisible cosmic forces are “Dark Matter” and “Dark Energy”.
The capitalist universe is similarly held together by dark matter infused with dark energy. Though silent and invisible, these political forces are ubiquitous and immensely strong. Powered by the dark psychic energy that drives capitalism: the lust for power and wealth; the willingness to exploit and consume; the hatred of all that is weak and in need; the worship of force and violence; and the ever-present fear of falling into powerlessness and poverty; dark political matter is not exceptional in the capitalist universe – it is the rule.
Since Friday, 15 March, the Left has been dazzled by Jacinda’s light. So much so, that it has failed to understand that, far from defeating the Right’s darkness, the Prime Minister’s recent illuminations have only exposed the terrifying dimensions of its realm. Light speaks only to light. Political dark matter has always been, and always will be, profoundly deaf to everything except the soundless screaming energy of its black and inexhaustible rage.
Both well written and accurate.
CHRIS: “If it wasn’t there: or, if it was there, but amenable to reason and love: then Capitalism would long ago have given way to a more human order.”
It’s easy to point out that capitalism isn’t 100% fair, depending, of course, on your definition of fairness. What is more tricky is to provide details of a viable alternative.
Armchair revolutionaries have for centuries dreamed of a fairer system and encouraged others to revolt against the ruling order, only to find that the new order was more brutal and less fair than the old one.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions…
I wish I could say that your observation isn’t true, Andrew.
For my money, the best alternative we have so far developed was the mixed, social-democratic, economy that prospered in the three decades following World War 2.
Actually Existing Socialism – as exemplified in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe – was something people ran from – not to.
There was never a huge waiting-list for Soviet “Green Cards”!
I don’t know how many times its got to be said to guys like Andrew that NZ saw its most prosperous era during those years and it was because we followed a Keynesian economic and thus political system.
Its almost like there’s a wall of blindness in front of them or they do not know NZ history.
No matter what you point out to them it never gets through. I think its wilful ignorance.
The fact of the matter is the ‘ egalitarianism’ and prosperity that we were so famous for was created under that system. The high poverty , suicide , crime rates , degradation of our infrastructure was created by the neo liberalism introduced into this country 35 years ago.
We were akin before 1984 in some ways to Scandinavia today , and even though Scandinavia was right on the doorstep of direct trade with Europe, during the late 1960s we were the 6th most prosperous nation on earth per capita. A little behind Denmark.
Not so long ago – during the John Keys years- we were estimated 32nd, – behind Mexico !!!
Now how is THAT a great advertisement for neo liberalism ???
Sorry , Andrew, – you’re another one that needs to read THIS :
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New Right Fight – Who are the New Right?
http://www.newrightfight.co.nz/pageA.html
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The collapse did not begin in 1984. You well know that when the UK entered the EEC in 1973 it ended over a century’s worth of economic dependence on the UK. We had only 20 odd years of economic health but that was gone by the oil crisis hit coupled with the loss of our dominant market for our exports which, when competed to today, were very limited. The Keynesian system broke down in the 1970s and while Muldoon tried his best, there force of history and global development was against him. Lange was a total failure as a PM, but even he had the good sense to make the changes needed. If you think things were better prior to 1984, I offer Mangere Bridge and import licensing as the “good old days”.
Thanks Chris
I think maybe you’re looking at that era with rose tinted glasses. It was our youth so it is natural to look back fondly, but whilst everything appeared rosy on the surface, NZ was busy painting itself into a corner.
Two things:
1. NZ was a one-crop economy that was profitable for a while post WW2 but was inherently fragile. The UK joining the EEC and the development of artificial fibres saw an end to (most of) the profit in growing sheep. As soon as the post-war protein deficit was caught up, the game was over.
2. Through subsidy and protectionism, NZ propped up endless failures: Business models, products and lifestyles that didn’t make ANY sense were put on open-ended life support and this eventually dragged the whole country down.
As well as inefficient government control of many areas of the economy, some of this protectionism was expressed as political favours. At one end of the scale these favours gave certain well-connected families a monopoly of production and/or distribution whilst at the other end, similar favours gave a select group of union bosses hegemony over entire sectors of our economy.
What we should have learned from all this:
Part of the success of capitalism is letting go. Let failures fail. They will soon be replaced by other ventures that work.
Minimize control by government. For two reasons: Firstly it isn’t very efficient at running businesses and secondly government intervention opens the way to ‘grace & favours’.
‘Let failures fail’, you say. So I expect you wholly approve of businesses being compelled to pay a livable wage and that those whose businesses cannot afford to do so should be allowed to fail.
The fact is that there has been no ‘letting go’. The subsidies are still being paid in the way of accommodation benefits and family tax credits etc to allow businesses to keep wages low.
If governments are not very efficient at running business, why was it that the government at the time had to bail out Air New Zealand and buy back NZ Railways?
Do you wonder why suicide rates are higher now than they were in the 50s, 60s, 70s? Why we never saw homeless people sleeping in the street? Why unemployment was near non existent? Why people who needed a state house did not have to wait years and years for one? Why it was a given that a young couple could secure a government loan to build a house that would provide safety, security and stability to the new generation?
What has changed?
Or do you suggest that in 50 years this human species has evolved (devolved) now, into one with a predilection to suicide, homelessness, under-employment, poverty.
You just are not being very honest Andrew
While population has more than doubled since those times, land development has ceased , mechanisation has exploded almost eliminating many jobs ,the financial advantage captured by the few , and those that remain or have replaced them have been largely exported.
Capitalism by itself has no internal mechanism to counter this trend to share the advantages of technology. It has to be adjusted arbitrarily by government.
The financial industry has been the massive growth industry and it produces nothing for society .
But this trend is mirrored all over the western world so looking only at NZ in isolation might not reveal the basic problem.
But the world cannot sustain unlimited population growth at ever increasing living standards under any political system.
D J S
Yet still we have a shortage of labour David!
These days, if you can be arsed to get out of bed in the morning reliably five days a week you’re pretty much guaranteed a job. Employers are crying out for people.
Unfortunately what they don’t want is broken people: Addicts, Illiterates and the mentally impaired. And unfortunately that adds up to about 4% of the population.
That’s quite true Andrew. But it’s also true that this sector of unemployable people didn’t seem to exist in the 50’s 60’s and 70’s.
When neoliberalism set in in the 80’s a part of the philosophy little talked about was that 5 or 6 % unemployment was the target so that the workforce valued their job and behaved accordingly. In a society accustomed for generations to everyone having a job, losing your job and not being able to secure another , on not being able to ever get one in the first place, was extremely humiliating and shameful. The unemployed felt that shame and so clung to their employment opportunities when they had them.
But a generation later a population has naturally grown up in an environment where unemployment is accepted; and a part of the population has adapted to not expecting to be employed, or since base level employment leaves one hardly better off than on the benefit, working at a boring ignominious job is not as attractive as hanging out with unemployed friends and doing some meth or whatever.
The unemployable sector have been created by the neoliberal philosophy.
Despite what I said about innovation destroying jobs the fact is that for us in NZ we import masses of stuff that we used to make here. And we sell stuff overseas that could be refined here if the government regulated so that there was a financial incentive to do so rather than disincentives.
I sell logs for export in the summer and mill them myself for the local market in the winter when extraction becomes difficult. I always intended to only sell milled timber for export , but I’m doing the milling for almost nothing when the value comparison is worked out.
It is government’s responsibility to set exchange rates and or incentives or disincentives to see to it that full employment is target of meaningful jobs , and stuff is only imported that we could have made here, and raw material exports are only sent off when there is no one here to do the work.
D J S
I agree with Andrew here.
The reason the silent majority reacts when they have a democratic opportunity , to support the status quo in response to violent street protests is not because the necessarily reject the cause of the protesters but because they reject violence that can has and does at the moment lead to civil war . See Russian revolution and contemporary Syria, Libya etc. Though recent examples all seem to have an outside power component without which the civil wars would not have got far.
If you have a democracy you have to keep it as a priority, and improve it from within through the frustratingly slow process of explanation education and persuasion.
Capitalism is human nature in it’s basic concept. It is the individual’s freedom to recognise an opportunity to provide a product or service that his or her community needs or wants and will reward him or her for in some capacity. as such it makes for the facilitation of society’s needs and aspirations all happening at ground level without ant authority needed to direct who is to do what and for whom from above. An impossibly complex task , that allows no scope or reward for innovation or improvement. You cannot have democracy without capitalism if you allow this simplistic definition of capitalism. If another concept of “capitalism” is the bogy man then a clear alternative definition is required that explains where individual commercial transactions can take place and what they are then called. So as to clarify that it is not a totalitarian command economic society that is being advocated.
It is often suggested that employees / workers should have control of their workplace and all it’s decisions so that they get to decide the sharing up of any profits. Well our democratic society’s laws do totally allow that. There is nothing to stop people setting up co-operative enterprises that are structured just this way. This is what workers should do if they think they are not getting a fair break from their employer. If you outlaw “capitalist” employers in favour of unelected managers of all state owned commerce , all you do is to change one boss for another with no reason to expect an improvement.
Capitalism just has to be controlled not in control as it is now. And it can’t be controlled on a world scale.
D J S
So let’s get into the nitty gritty of different philosophies of social studies. In most developed nations you’ve got two primary developed groups, the working class and the capitalist class. Capitalists are those who survive off of their capital. Workers are those who survive off of their sweat and labour and hard work.
So workers use their hands, chefs, plumbers, carpenters ect. Or they might use intellectual labour vs physical labour so accountants, lawyers, doctors, engineers ect. But the one thing all workers rely on is their labour. Then you’ve got different grades of working class like upper, middle, lower, working poor, poor, very poor ect.
The membership of the capitalist class is much smaller than the membership of the working class which is sometimes called the 1%. 1% isn’t quite accurate but we’ll run with it. So there’s 1% in the capitalist class and 99% in the working class and this balance is needed in order to support the 1%.
Lots of the 99% will be offended that I’m calling them working class for reasons of what they were taught. So if you’re waking up this morning on your way to somewhere called work then you’re in the working class. Now that don’t mean the capitalist class doesn’t work it means they survive and subsist on there own capital to make money and the working class subsists on there own labour.
Now the key is just a mind set so a classic definition of money is a current medium of exchange in the form of coins or banknotes which is a classic working class definition and it’s also wrong.
So now the capitalist definition of cash is just a proxy for labour. So figuring out ways to replace the owners labour with some one else’s labour OR, the labour definition is – expenditure of physical or mental effort especially when difficult or compulsory.
So if you’re able to work past the point to where you don’t need to work in order to shelter yourself or eat that just means your putting your money / capital away and you are at a point when your capital equals your labour and you are at an equilibrium point. At this point you’ll be on the verge of moving from working class to capitalist class, and you can move back from capitalist class to working class because you’ve run down your capital and need to work to replenish your reserves.
Now using the working class definition of capital to acquire products and services then you’re spending capital. Where as members of the Capitalist Class are saving there capital. Because if you spend your capital then you no longer have any capital.
If you are a member of the capitalist class your only goal is to get every one else to give you their capital. AND, if you are a member of the working class then your goal should be to get every one else to give you their capital. But members of the working class are taught in schools and employment and basically everywhere the working class is taught that you have to give your capital to the capitalist class. When working class people spend they spend way above utility which is just an annual salary that working class can borrow against. And every time you make a purchase or buy an iPhone you in rich the capitalist class and the owners of the machine and the plant and business’s that peddle these things. And the working class get something in return that could be advertised as settlements, returns and / or happiness or what ever you may get. So now if you get a student loan, mortgage or personal loan or any other type of loan then you are giving your capital away at an accelerated pace of capital deception which only benefits the capitalist class.
So the rich get richer and the poor get poorer only by mindset. The major difference is mindset but that’s not what the working class is taught. Working class are taught that it’s money and working harder and going to school and so on. A lot of members of the academic community would have a fit if they knew how I thought because most academic schooling does not teach people how to become capitalists. Academia is designed by definition to teach people how to become workers, designed by capitalists so workers continue giving capitalists all the money in the world.
A lot of people will say well I’m a lawyer or Iv got a PH.D. or something and yes they are a high level worker that benefit the capitalists. Go to Forbes 500 and 80% of them dropped out of school so all the academic guys can come debate me. You know where I am so let’s dance.
“Academia is designed by definition to teach people how to become workers, ”
That’s a critically relevant truth Sam. Our education system provides not a clue as to how our money and commerce system works at a general education level, and it is what affects everyone most throughout their lives.
D J S
Part of the issue is that the government seems to get very obsessed with controlling the masses but less interested in controlling growing inequality.
Governments increase taxes and compliance for the middle class while turning a blind eye to how people can pay an accountant over $100k in OZ in return for paying no taxes!
‘Taxable income’ around the world has proven to be easily be avoided. Any tax around taxable income is pretty much a wink, wink, that the richer folks need not worry.
In fact the more you spend of accountants, the lower you taxable income is in Australia!
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/02/millionaires-in-australia-are-managing-a-tax-bill-of-0
So people who can afford $133k on accountants can get their income down to pay no tax in OZ! Bargain for accountants, less so for people who can’t afford to spend over $100k on accountants and all the compliance to lower their tax bills.
Hey under NZ proposed capital gains taxes, the rich might even get a tax cut for the ‘low’ paid.
Take from the middle class and give to the rich and their advisors who can easily manoeuvre their tax returns. Just like those domiciled overseas or corporates!
‘Data from the ATO reveals that in the 2015/2016 financial year, 732 companies failed to pay a cent of tax. These include household names like Bluescope Steel, Leandlease, CSL, Alcoa, Glencore, Qantas, Sony, Origin Energy, Energy Australia, Exxon Mobil, Auspost, Vodaphone, IBM AU/NZ, Ford, Foxtel, Virgin Australia and Seven Group.
There can be no disputing the fact that there is one rule for the rich and one for the workers in this country, when companies don’t even pay tax on their massive, and ever-increasing profits, while workers struggle with record-low wage growth and exponentially increasing cost of living.
Many of these companies have engaged in attacks on the basic rights of workers and attempted to strip pay and conditions.”
https://www.actu.org.au/actu-media/media-releases/2017/732-companies-pay-no-tax-cost-australia-134-billion
At least in OZ they bother to analyse it! Note most of the non corporate taxpayers in OZ were large multinational companies that the government LOVE to give contracts to and protect even further!
They love companies more than their own nationals!
Even worse is in NZ, the unions seem more interested in protecting the status of exploited workers on behalf on multinationals to keep their cheap labour going, than stopping multinationals exploiting workers and NZ taxpayers, paying decent wages and conditions or taxes in NZ.
Try to remember a time when politicians talked about protecting NZ born workers who apparently no longer have a voice in this country or encouraging NZ owned and operated businesses to be successful with legislation, a big NO NO under neoliberalism which is all for massive compliance for big players, and have representation in parliament or by unions all doing their bidding and keeping cheaper workers coming in no questions asked.
“The capitalist universe is similarly held together by dark matter infused with dark energy. Though silent and invisible, these political forces are ubiquitous and immensely strong. Powered by the dark psychic energy that drives capitalism: the lust for power and wealth; the willingness to exploit and consume; the hatred of all that is weak and in need; the worship of force and violence; and the ever-present fear of falling into powerlessness and poverty; dark political matter is not exceptional in the capitalist universe – it is the rule.”
Sounds like we are talking about The Lord of the Flies here
Another awesome article Chris Trotter, fairly easy to understand and embedded with prose I could not emulate, so I wont bother to try. Comments might attack your angle or argue superior knowledge, however they appear to just confuse and get side tracked which is a damn shame on this web site. Good reading your article, thankyou.
Mysticism, I suppose.
Manichaean was my first thought. At least in the academic sense which we are expected to trust. (I think though, there may have been a whole lot more to Manichaeaism.)
@SAM
“Academia is designed by definition to teach people how to become workers, designed by capitalists so workers continue giving capitalists all the money in the world.” Absolutely true. What was the point of learning parts of speech and patchy bits of history when we could have been taught how to transfer our neighbour’s shillings into our own pockets?
There are other factors. My sister and I built up a hand craft business in the late sixties and early seventies. Enough to keep us going and attend to a parent who had had a masectomy and who later died. Twice we were asked to produce 10,000 of particular items, one for export to Australia and the other for a chain of tourist shops in N.Z. We were flummoxed because not only did we not know how to effectively change to mass production, we didn’t have the right psychology for financial risk taking. Marketing is a ruthless business and each stage in growing a business is fraught. Thousands of start ups go bust. No political party has ever been interested in small businesses or the self employed. So speaking in terms of light and dark is dramatic but as has been mentioned a regulated “mixed social, democratic economy” was kind of satisfactory.
So which party fast tracked privatisation and globalisation then porous borders and fluid apertures galore? When are we all going to join hands and in unity and spontaneous cooperation jump in the thoroughly watery grey-green sea and drown?
As for the universe being more “dark matter” than anything else, we don’t know what this means any more than we know the meaning of ‘junk DNA’ or the ‘Black Madonnas’ which were and are the most revered images of the Catholic faith as was the Black Isis of the Egyptian and classical world.
The Right can never be finally and fully defeated, anymore than the Left can, because both arise from legitimate concerns and impulses. Both are necessary to a free society, and both are needed as a corrective to the other sides overreach and blind spots. This is also true with regards to Socialism vs Capitalism, hence the superiority of the mixed economy.
Attempting to permanently eliminate the other side is a fools game that only ever leads to tyranny, whether it’s the tyranny of a Lenin or the tyranny of a Pinochet. A healthy democracy is one in which, sooner or later, the other side wins.
Life is not a war between the light and the dark, between the righteous and the unrighteous. Neither light nor dark would exist without the other. There is no absolute Good and Evil, only shades of grey.
The two top paragraphs set it in motion , – extreme Left and extreme Right are just two arms of the same bow, which , when bent round far enough to meet in the middle become the same: totalitarianism.
The mixed model economy is the balanced one. Such as we once had before the radical extremism of Roger Douglas and his neo liberalism.
That was the Keynesian model. Yes , under Keynesianism we had capitalism and we also had a fine cradle to the grave welfare system. We maintained a fine infrastructure in both health and education , low unemployment and relatively high wages.
Then along came 1984.
This country has been steadily declining ever since.
“Responding to the highly-charged mood of racial anxiety which Brash’s speech had whipped-up, Clark felt obliged to pass the deeply divisive Foreshore & Seabed Act.”
This is incorrect. The decision to proceed with the F&S legislation was made well before the Orewa speech.
Don’t be so quick to correct, Matthew. Read the sentence again. It does not say “introduce” it says “pass”.
Once Brash’s speech had been delivered – and responded to so dramatically – there was no hope of Labour’s Maori caucus hauling Clark back from the brink.
Chris
You’re both right. I remember just prior to the Brash speech there were the usual political forecasts that stated how great Helen Clarke and the government was doing. Labour was very complacent until the speech was given and the positive reaction was unexpected. They had underestimated Brash. It’s clear that Labour panicked and rush the legislation through. As Helen stated, “haters and wreckers”. It was the same again a year later with the Exclusive Brethren. The same sense of panic and lack of understanding. Again, poor legislation was passed which contributed to the defeat in 2008.
What is the job description of a political commentator in a non capitalist economy?
D J S
What real socialism looks like !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDRxbQlpqmo
Well I reckon that the vast majority of people with a labour force theory are both unhelpful and wrong.
News alert Americans love socialism after all.
There is still hope.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6e4mOit0Rc
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