So far there are a range of opinions on TDB about the Convoy occupation of Parliament Grounds. Chris Trotter calls for the police to remove the protestors. John Minto sees this as a revolt of workers fed up with neoliberalism and the failure of their political leadership. Bomber is sort of neutral tolerating the ‘clowns’ and against using the cops to recruit more ‘clowns’. Somewhere in all this the distinction between the petty bourgeois leadership and the ugly mob is lost.
Let’s go further. This is an ugly mob that demands their individual rights without reference to the rights of others. But clearly the mob is one of mainly workers who are the victim of decades of antiworker attacks. But what Bomber sees as ‘clowns’ is a populist mob hyped up by fascist demagogues into a confused and distorted expression of the class struggle.
The struggle that is represented by the Convoy on the Parliamentary lawn is not about the use of violence, or whether most of the mob are workers. It is about how an international fascist movement is using declassed workers as fascist fodder to win state power to launch systematic fascist state violence against the working class.
Appearances are always deceiving. There is much more to the Convoy than a legitimate protest of angry workers. It is the creation of the international rightwing project of Bannon and Trump for a white supremacist fascist movement. The NZ Convoy is part of a global plan to save the white European world from the rising flood the poor black and brown masses.
So it is not a question of the mob vs the capitalist state. They are part of the same problem which is how to monopolize state violence to smash the working class. Fascists are not against the capitalist state, they want to control it. They want to remove the ‘communist’ Jacinda just like the January 6th attempt by a populist mob to force the US Congress to give Trump the election victory over the ‘liberal’ Biden. Fascism is a long story.
Fascism is the last ditch attempt by the capitalist class to hold onto power in the face of rising mass resistance against its destruction of society to hang onto its wealth. The effect of this destruction is the collapse of all the gains that workers have won over generations. Many millions of working people are thrown out of work into poverty. Having nothing to lose, their potential power to overthrow capitalism becomes a revolutionary threat. ‘Potential’ because that threat has first to be organised before it can be realised.
So while globally workers can unite to overthrow capitalism with strikes and occupations halting the production process, workers are divided as a class by income, nationality, religion, race and gender. Identity politics is one result which erases class identity, ‘declassing’ workers as bourgeois individuals in the dog eat dog market. Unless workers are united and mobilised against the ruling class and its state, the class enemy will make use of these divisions and recruit workers as fascist fodder to smash those workers who so retain their class solidarity and consciousness.
Since WW2 capitalism has undergone a long structural crisis of falling profits where the share of value produced going to workers has shrunk relative to the share of profits. Increasing labour productivity has casualised labour, weakened if not destroyed trades unions and thrown many workers into self-employment. The declassing of workers sees social democracy move right into the liberal center, and those left behind become prey to populist demagogues who recruit them as fascist fodder against organised labour.
The upshot is what we have today. Capitalism facing terminal crisis, layers of workers declassed and turned into fascist fodder, prey to petty bourgeois ‘leaders’ who blame the crisis on the working class, and any govt that is labelled ‘socialist’ or ‘communist’ even ‘liberal’ targeted by a populist mob to get fascist leaders in power.
Once an ‘event’ such as the occupation of Parliament grounds by Convoy is understood in terms of the class struggle, the task of revolutionary socialists is clear – build a workers’ antifascist movement!
Fight all attacks on workers on the streets, expose and discredit the bourgeois funders of fascism like Bannon and Trump, ridicule the puffed up petty bourgeois leaders like Eftpostle and Demented who want to bring down the Labour Government.
Because the ruling class is preparing an international fascist movement to take state power, we have to defend bourgeois democracy. But only as a means to advancing the struggle, not as an dead end. We never appeal to the bosses’ state to defend our rights.
We do it by class struggle methods. We show how parliamentary democracy is a sham. That the ‘human rights’ demands of the populists are a delusion. Only a workers’ state can deliver ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ from exploitation and oppression.
So once the socialist left has got its arse into gear, builds independent fighting anti-fascist militias to dispense with fascism, we have to move on to the task of smashing the capitalist state and replacing it with a workers’ state.
Dave Brownz is TDBs guest Marxist blogger
Succinct and accurate. Thanks.
you’re tripping bro
Which parts aren’t factually correct?
Agreed. So how do we fix it? Time is running out until the election next year.
So how do we fix it?
Some basic Marxist precepts
Building anti-fascist militias that have the means to defend workers from fascist attacks, on social media, workplaces, public rallies etc., have to be based on workers organisations which have the ability to mobilise their collective power.
At the workplace where workers produce the wealth we need real class struggle unions that fight for workers’ control of production. Unions, since the Red Fed was smashed by the 1913 general strike, have become totally enmeshed in the state and need to be rebuilt as a new Red Fed on the basis of rank and file democracy independent of the state labour law.
The Labour Party which was formed in 1916 to steer workers in bourgeois parliament by claiming to represent their interests, is now a bourgeois liberal party that openly works against workers. Labour serves the ruling class on behalf of the middle class so the only workers it represents are declassed workers who want to escape into the middle class.
The working class is effectively disenfranchised.
Workers are the big majority and are overdue for their own political party based on a new Red Fed and workers councils. Its program would be to advance the interests of workers as an exploited and oppressed class by exposing parliament as the ‘organising committee’ of the ruling class, and calling for a Workers’ Government.
A Workers’ party would fight to form worker’s councils in which workers’ democracy was the rule. Councils would elect delegates to the leadership who would be subject to immediate recall if they break from their mandates. Councils would operate alongside unions as the political voice representing the grass roots collective power of the working class.
When it comes to elections to parliament, councils would elect delegates to stand as candidates, not as MPs, but as advocates for the party program. If elected they would not sow illusions in the hope that parliament could solve all the problems facing workers, from global warming to good housing and decent jobs, but call for the end of the capitalist system and for the creation of a workers’ state.
You cant build anti-fascist millennial GenZ militia who cant fight, won’t fight and are too scared to fight against fascists who will.
Mum and Dad cant do everything for them!
Long live Soviet Republic of New Zealand!!!
But: we are in 2022 and not in 1917.
But: the dictatorship of the proletariat is in fact the dictatorship of the Workers party. Working class is exploited by another exploiter: the top men of Workers party.
Wrong. This protest is about mandates and segregation. It has brought people from both the left and the right together. Segregation is wrong!! Denying kids the right to play sport, have dance classes, etc. on the basis of a medical treatment is wrong. Denying people the right to work or visit a library on the basis of a medical treatment is wrong. As soon as you start over analysing what this is about you have missed the point. This is not about Trump or his minions this is about overreach by the NZ Government. The protesters are clear, stop the mandates and the vacc. passes and they will leave.
Sadly the independent media who are showing this are the right-wing media because the left-wing independent media have stopped listening.
It may be down to the people I mix with but nearly all are for the passports and vaccine mandates that give us the freedom to work and play with less fear of getting sick and dying.. Your group is only a small noisy minority.
In a week or so many of those in the protest will reap the rewards of being dick heads and I hope when they in hospital they are able to say sorry to the nurses and doctors that have to run around after them
Once one of your vaccinated friends catches the virus, your “freedom” is gone.
#0.03%#notamandate
“So once the socialist left has got its arse into gear, builds independent fighting anti-fascist militias to dispense with fascism, we have to move on to the task of smashing the capitalist state and replacing it with a workers’ state.”
You would think that this disruption is an ideal platform for the “socialist state” to take charge. But where are the boots on the ground? Nowhere. Why?
Your beloved Labour party is not interested in a socialist state right now. The are playing the long game. First they need to split the nation through the ethno-nationalistic divide so that they can, on charging white stallions, set up a unifying social state. Maori are being played to be the “fall” guys to enable the socialist state to be a unifying force that creates a communist utopia.
Dave Brown, you are not up to speed with the long term plan. You should be worried that the Labour party leader, to front the move to your socialist state, has not been front and centre these last few days. Was so inspiring her “comrade” speech all those years ago, she was going to lead from the front with conviction, socialist sword in hand.
Not cower behind her bovver boy Mallard. And your socialist dream will turn to dust when they lose the next election.
And did I mention fascists?
Fascists like Naomi Wolf perhaps?
“And yet now these former heroes for human rights and for equal justice under law, stood by calmly or even enthusiastically as the massive edifice of discrimination was constructed. And then they colluded. Without even a fight or a murmur.
And they had their “vaccinated-only” parties, and their segregated fashion galas, and their nonprofit-hosted discussions in nice medically-segregated New York City midtown hotels over expensive lunches served by staffers in masks — lunches celebrating luminaries of the civil rights movement or of the LGBTQ rights movement or the immigrants’ rights movement, or the movement to help girls in Afghanistan get access to schools which they had been prevented from attending— invitations which I received, but of which I could not make use, because — because I was prevented from attending.
And these elite justice advocates enjoyed the celebrations of their virtues and of their values, and did not seem to notice that they had become — in less than a year — exactly what they had spent their adult lives professing most to hate”
https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/is-it-time-for-intellectuals-to-talk
Nice analysis – thanks Dave.
My only uncertainty comes from having Trumps name associated with anything.
The guy is such an ignorant narcissistic blowhard it’s hard to believe he forms a credible global threat.
Less ‘scheming despot’, more ‘dreaming tosspot’.
Is that a smokescreen to deceive??
But the left has become the establishment and have abandoned the ‘left’.
The fascists have a free shot at the premiership.
The left traded in their working-class credentials for a keyboard, low hanging fruit legislation and a demegoue inept leader PM.
I’m not holding my breath for the GenZ and Millennial ‘working class’ to turn up for the working class because they don’t see themselves ascworlong class at all. They’re fodder for the bourgeoise and will protect the current authoritarian state capo’s ‘online’ with a keyboard.
It’s sad to think that the yoofs of today have been programmed to mitigate everything that may hurt their feelings by cancelling the idea of it and just hope it all goes away will fix it.
We’re fucked when it comes to a bif.
Really?!? This protest is the “creation of the international rightwing project of Bannon and Trump for a white supremacist fascist movement”? All those Māori doing a mass Haka waving Independence flags are white supremacists. What utter tosh!
Is it rather just people who have lost everything because the don’t subscribe to the government’s edicts?
As for not respecting others rights – if the vaccines work, why should the vaccinated be concerned? Especially as the jabs (of which I have two) still don’t prevent transmission or even death in the very old or those with compromised health.
It’s all about compulsion and control to force NZ to become vaccinated in order to protect those who will likely die anyway as well as covering up the absolute failure of multiple governments to sort our 2nd world healthcare system out despite spending BILLIONS in the past two years which did very little other than to help the rich get even wealthier.
We are into the end game now and Labour along with the total support of the Wellington bureaucracy have driven a wedge so hard into NZ society they’ve completely cracked the social contract which has created space for what we’re now seeing. The legacy of this I feel will be much worse than just a few thousand people chanting slogans that makes the soy boys and snowflakes of Wellington feel triggered and unsafe. The level of rage and anger north of Hamilton is real and visceral, fail to acknowledge this and it will keep building until it explodes far more violently than the protests of this weekend.
Go listen to Tracy Chapman’s song, talking about a revolution. Change is coming whether we like it or not and these lying duplicitous politicians and bureaucrats of all sides don’t know what to do. Through things like Social media and alternative voices (such as Bombers) combined with an ever accelerating and growing awareness of the lies and deception of the elite mean they are beginning to lose control and I don’t see how they will ever be given it back.
The lies and deception of the elite are real enough, but only half the story.
Do you think that all those alt right groups fighting inside the Convoy to promote their own lies and deceptions, are the answer?
The lies and deceptions that are now destroying human civilisation are those of the capitalist ruling class which avoids the blame for global warming that will kill us all if we don’t get rid of capitalism.
Were is your ‘freedom’ then?
It is capitalism that has caused the pandemic by destroying wild habitats and causing viruses to jump to humans.
That means that freedom must be anti-capitalist.
You put the right to choose to infect others including family ahead of using science to kill the virus off. You can’t wriggle out of that one by claiming that vaccines don’t work anyhow.
Read the science.
Almost all deaths are of the unvaxxed.
They were not going to die anyway unless from other causes created by capitalism, including all those who die because the ICU beds are full of unvaxxed.
The vast numbers of unvaxxed are not by ‘choice’ but because the capitalist drug companies won’t make them available cheap enough.
Unvaxxed allow the virus to mutate out of control.
Do you think that the global majority of mainly non-white people who are still unvaxxed have any choice?
No they don’t, so your position makes you complicit in capitalist eugenics.
You think Jacinda’s policy of eliminating the virus was interfering with the right to choose to contribute to the deaths of others.
And that makes her govt fascist?!?
No. Her govt is a centrist capitalist government that attacks workers basic rights to a health, housing, living wage etc etc. but if you want a fascist government vote ACT at the next election. That is your right.
If you can’t get your basic facts right, use deception to justify antivaxxers, and lie about what fascism is, why should your lies and deceptions be any different than those of other so-called ‘elites’?
Capitalism is the enemy. We have little control over our bodies. The wage is designed to enable us to eat just enough junk to go to work and be exploited.
We have little control over our future with global warming, but we can try to get control short of the end of the world by getting the jab.
The jab represents the pathway to total control of them (the ruling class) over us. You seem to have a good grasp of government, but somehow you think that the government is all of a sudden working for us instead of their capitalist overlords. Meanwhile the ruling class are rolling in it while we have, at best, tread water, but more commonly, suffered. This is a world-wide manufactured crisis created by the ruling class, driven by their political puppets in conjunction with corporate/government funded media, for the duel purpose of gaining full control over us via a global universal digital ID system (vaccines play a key role in this) and for one other purpose that amounts to, the capitalist class “building back better”.
Don’t believe me, then I say again, whom among us has benefited the most from this crisis? Why is censorship so unbelievably strong, why are you anti-protest (go ahead, try and verify the beliefs you hold towards the convoy) and why the heck do you think this capitalist government is all of a sudden working for us?
The dots don’t add up here.
This capitalist govt is not working for us. It works for the capitalists. $1Trill to them and $400m debt to us since Covert started.
Capitalism has no control over the environment. It has to suck the life out of nature to survive. That’s why we are headed for extinction as a species.
Capitalism does not plan pandemics so big pharma can make trillions. Nor does it ‘suddenly start working for us’. It needs healthy workers or it has no profits.
So it uses science to kill off the virus selectively. In the Rich world workers get the vaccine and continue to produce the value that becomes the bosses’ profits.
In the Poor world where there is an oversupply of workers it is prepared to allow millions of deaths by failing to provide vaccines to stop infection.
The right to refuse vaccinations is a Rich world problem. If you lose your jobs as a result that is your problem don’t make it our problem. Poor world workers have no choice but to work and die prematurely.
I am not anti-protest. But I need to have something worthwhile to protest about. That does not include my ‘sovereign individual’ right to chose something with no responsibility for the effects it has on others.
My protest is to end capitalism in terminal crisis that is not only taking away basic rights such as free speech, but collaborating with the rise of a fascist movement to smash any attempt to overthrow the rotten system.
That’s so confused it’s hard to know where to start. A couple of things though, in NZ and in much of the western world the vaccine is free so you can drop the pretence that those who choose not to get it (in NZ) have done so because of cost.
Again, if the vaccines work why then force others who may not want to participate in the largest trial of an untested and novel approach? Again, if the vaccines work why have all governments signed off those nasty EUA clauses meaning there’s no pathway to seek recompense if they fail?
You are explicitly calling for forced vaccination despite not addressing the above.
Last thought as it’s early, you mention that many non-white populations not being able to afford the vaccines. That’s true, life is shit for huge segments of the world but that was true before the pandemic and will be true afterwards. There are so many drugs and medicines that are out of reach in NZ let alone Honduras or Bangladesh simply due to cost. The paradox is that it’s the profit incentive that drives people and companies to create these marvels of medicine. I don’t know of any amazing contributions made by marxists.
Thanks Dave, what we need is someone who can step up and pull together a movement of vision and togetherness. It wouldn’t necessarily need to be a political party but could be flexibly affiliated to a party or openly support policy. But a powerful movement with decisive leadership.
The Taxpayers Union nationwide banner campaign against 3 Waters has drawn wider attention to an issue which is not being explained by MSM, as an example.
We have some great people working in the public arena in NZ, many have wide political experience and are unsung heroes. I’m not naming any here.
They all know the Establishment mechanisms they would be up against not to mention the power of social media vitriol, rubbish and dirty politics.
However with the right support it could build into something…
Another interesting comparison in NZ history of a similar time in the 1930’s.
“The Legion arose at a time of great crisis. The world had just entered the fourth year of the Great Depression, with little sign of improvement. In Europe, the fascist jackboot was on the march: Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, and Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists had begun to attract attention. Closer to home, unemployed riots had shaken New Zealand’s main cities in 1932, and an increasingly unpopular government seemed incapable of handling the situation.
While historians have sometimes called the Legion a ‘fascist’ group, the label doesn’t fit; its leaders were influenced by classical liberalism and committed to parliamentary methods. It brought together thousands of discontented conservatives with a variety of ideas, both radical and traditional, on how to combat the Depression. Ultimately, it was on the losing side of history, with the Labour Party winning a landslide victory in the 1935 election. Many former Legionnaires subsequently played a role in the newly formed National Party.”
Hooray! Finally a considered position.
But where is this anti fascist infrastructure?
Coz in the meantime these bastards are wreaking havoc on the poor and dispossessed…
‘They’re’ all busy in bubbles working hard learning doctrine!
Bro. If you don’t know, you’re not invited. That’s how they roll know. They’re paranoid about being infiltrated.
They’ve joined the establishment and msm propaganda. There’s $54m of funding for article writing following the PMs Propaganda and Public Enlightenment advisors advice.
what a bizarre post. have you even spent any time at the protests and talked to people?
#0.03%#notamandate
This is a simple state of affairs. People have seen their freedoms, rights, liberty, free speech, eroded over the course of the past two years. And if that wasn’t bad enough, now the people have been divided, discriminated against and to top it all off – faced or facing losing their jobs.
That’s what we’ve got here, nothing else. Thus, we either support all these measures dished out to the people – with every likelihood of more measures to come – or we protest against them, in the hope of, at the very least, if not the most – ending the measure that threatens jobs!
Thanks for your measured and reasoned analysis Dave.
The struggles of workers is once again, playing out what George Orwell made into allegory in “Animal Farm”. Orwell took fascism to its worst dystopian nightmare of a Big Brother state in “1984”, and foreshadowed a Bannon and Trump state in 2016 to 2024. Steinbeck’s dustbowl trilogy “In Dubious Battle”, “Of Mice and Men” and “The Grapes of Wrath” all helped me visualise US workers’ struggles, and gave and have given me, a contemporary context for the struggles of workers in the 2020’s, which you so clearly delineated.
I’d love to hear what you think of the links between the international fascist movement and slightly-right-of-centre, right-wing, or conservative political and religious groupings in New Zealand.
What is becoming evident to me here in New Zealand, is that global fascists groups are being emboldened and embraced by workers, who have been marginalised by Covid’s unintended collateral damage, and ‘socially responsible’ mandates. The mandates, designed with a benevolent and ‘social responsibility’, are deemed necessary for the ‘team of 5 million’, to protect weaker members, such as the elderly, the weak and ‘the brown-skinned’. Trump’s absolute insistence not to denounce the “Proud Boys” and “The Oath Keepers” speaks volumes to his fascist core and base of “White Power”. The Trump Flags at New Zealand’s convoy 2022 now make more sense. Action Zealandia’s sinister video from Bowen House speak truth to the involvement of neo-fascists. Zealandia’s slogan, “Building a community for European New Zealanders”, unequivocally shows they don’t care about mandates to protect ‘brown-skinned, or non-European New Zealanders’.
The execution list of https://www.nuremberg.nz/, shows a disturbing similarity to the “Hang Mike Pence!” chants on January 6th 2021. Grant Robertson on “Q&A with Jack Tame” Sunday at 9.00am, outlined the ‘death threats in chalk’ by Convoy 2022 participants, which are abhorrent physical manifestations, of overtly digital threats to political and health figures. Dr Fauci also came under politically motivated right-wing attacks and death-threats to himself, his staff and his family in the US, https://edition.cnn.com/videos/politics/2022/01/11/dr-anthony-fauci-rand-paul-coronavirus-hearing-vpx.cnn Fauci showed this to be a fund-raising drive by a right-wing politician and Trump acolyte! Our own health leaders are vilified and put on an execution list, while fake snake-oil doctors go on the same site’s ‘heroes’ list.
The dissemination of sites like Counterspin through Facebook groups, https://freeworldnews.tv/channel/counterspin-new-zealand, show that the international fascist movement you wrote about, are already targeting New Zealand. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the US and Britain, have also seen the rise of un-civil unrest. Extreme international goose-stepping fascism is being aided and abetted by local operatives like BFD https://thebfd.co.nz/, a morphing blue aberration of of Whale Oil Beef Hooked and Dirty Politics 1.0. Maybe it is because of the 5-eyes links in these countries and speaks to internationalist fascism moves to destabilize western democracies, and, as you say, use the fodder of workers to be one tendril of this concerted attack. Media; Fake News; Cannibal pedophile celebrities, New Order; QAnon; Evangelicals are other galvanising iterations of fascist destabilising and weaponing in the Metaverse.
The existence of Todd Muller’s MAGA hat on his shelf, put paid to his National Party aspirations, because it hints at NZ National Party’s right-leaning tendencies. Harete Hipango and Maureen Pugh both showed support for civil unrest, also indicative of their right-leaning tendencies. Clearly, Harete and Maureen did not get the memo about supporting neo-fascist rallies, whether they are relatively harmless, or not-so. Convoy of Hate 2022 have extremists like the Karen-type with a banner about “Love and care”, threatening a reporter with execution. Backward swastikas and death-threats!
Trump promised to ‘Pardon the January 6th good people who were undertaking democratic dialogue’ . Chris Luxon here in New Zealand, does not have that political power to quash any convoy 2022 convictions …..yet.
I have never seen this level of hatred in New Zealand and it is frightening. Your guest blog made me realise the tendrils of fascism, have been embraced by marginalised workers here. Facebook’s antivax algorithms have led many of these marginalised workers to extremist posts and groups. These are being exacerbated and disseminated by local fascist operatives on the extreme and centre-right wing of New Zealand politics and religious parties.
Once again, Dave thanks for helping to see another side of this polarising issue; your Marxist perspective helps me to see clearer, what has become a dichromic issue, with a little more colour and perspective.
“demands their individual rights without reference to the rights of others”
What a load of bullshit. It is their rights that have been suppressed by mob mentality that demanded to be protected against being scared.
Human rights aren’t rights if they are conditional upon compliance.
Imagine the shit storm if we compelled solo women to have abortions because their children tend to have higher risk of criminality or welfare dependency.
If someone becomes so desperately out of work that they cannot feed their family and decides to shoot the princess, don’t be shocked. She has done everything required to create fertile ground for it to happen.
#0.03%#notamandate
“If someone becomes so desperately out of work that they cannot feed their family and decides to shoot the princess, don’t be shocked. She has done everything required to create fertile ground for it to happen.”
Extremism at it’s worst. Fortunately the GSCB have you on their watchlist.
Fascists calling people fascists. When you think you’re for workers rights but you’re just a power hungry fascist. The left has become a danger to itself.
The right has become a danger to us all.
Daryl, come to the light and seek truth, at which point left and right dissolve. People disparaging the protesters have no idea what is actually going on.
To amplify Dave Brownz take there are ample online and real world rallying points (including Tamaki and ACT) that lead working class, alienated and opportunists to neo fascism, but precious few for those more amenable to a class left view point.
The central organisation of unions, the NZCTU, is openly class collaborationist and generally tails behind the Labour Caucus! So that is one source of working class leadership effectively off the field. The NZ Labour Party is an electoral machine and deeply embedded in the neo liberal state and NZ capitalism. All the other parties in the bourgeois Parliament support the neo liberal consensus too (maybe not Te Parti Māori) that sees the Reserve Bank Act, State Sector Act and penetration of public infrastructure by private capital continue after each election.
The numerous but influential small marxist parties of the 60s, 70s, 80s–mid 90s are largely gone now or devolved into online entities and discussion groups. Another source of leadership largely off the field.
So something new needs to be done and it will be built from the bottom up. I do my bit in the Far North and that is how you do it, street by street, issue by issue.
But the left has become the establishment and have abandoned the ‘left’.
The fascists have a free shot at the premiership.
The left traded in their working-class credentials for a keyboard, low hanging fruit legislation and a demagogue inept leader PM.
I’m not holding my breath for the GenZ and Millennial ‘working class’ to turn up for the working class because they don’t see themselves as working-class at all. They’re fodder for the bourgeoisie and will protect the current authoritarian state capo’s ‘online’ with a keyboard.
It’s sad to think that the yoofs of today have been programmed to mitigate everything that may hurt their feelings by cancelling the idea of it and just hope it all goes away will fix it.
We’re fucked when it comes to a bif.
Honestly started rolling my eyes when i saw the words fascist. This protest is all liberal Praxis in action the entire lot of it, from the economic conditions forced on these people to the corporations using algorithms to herd their biases to the protestors organising and protesting outside parliament. All of it, there is ZERO Syndicalism involved at all even their demagogues are at risk of being cancelled by the crowd.
I actually like alot of Martin Bradburys takes and Chris Trotters as well, it is the main reason i come here but yours just reads like some middle class incel wetting the bed.
Please remember the Black Panther saying about Liberals
Scratch a Liberal, you will find a Fascist underneath
I don’t know if the protestors can be classed as “workers”. I seem to personally know over 20 people who don’t not support vaccinations (which is what it is really about, rather than a vaccination mandate). Very few of them come from the working class. They include musicians and artists, old hippies, naturopaths, Christians, etc etc. I think it would be fair to say that nearly all, if not all, of the ones I know, come from the middle class.
The truth of the matter is that as a group, the protestors are actually hard to put into a tidy group. But they definitely represent a cultural group in New Zealand. But I don’t think “workers” is a very satisfactory label.
Dave, you criticise the protesters for only promoting their individual rights “without reference to the rights of others.” Does that mean you think there should be a balance of rights, between individual and collective rights? Or do you only support collective rights?
Please do not dismiss this question with terms like “bourgeois rights” or “bourgeois individual”.
You have made it clear that you only support ” bourgeois” concepts like freedom democracy and individual rights so long as they further the class struggle.
So what happens in socialism? Will there be individual rights in *socialism* or not? Should there be any individual rights respected in a *socialist movement*? Will individuals be considered to exist or to matter at all in socialism or not? Will body autonomy be considered to exist or matter at all in socialism or not? ? Is there a relationships between the individual and the collective? Or is there no such relationships? Does the individual simply disappear within the collective?
You imply there will be a better kind of freedom and democracy in a socialist society. How will it be better? Will this socialist freedom and democracy include body autonomy and individual rights? The right to protest and the right to question? The right to think? Or will erasing individual rights be considered the way to promote socialist freedom and democracy?
What about body autonomy?
Body autonomy is important to women, and includes our right to refuse sex and refuse reproduction. What if a future socialist society determines that the collective well being requires women’s sexual availability and reproductive services? Will an individual woman’s body autonomy and the right to say “no” to sex or pregnancy, simply disappear and become irrelevant, in a socialist society?
Is a woman’s right to say “no” merely a “bourgeois” right? Will this be abolished under socialism if the individual disappears, and the collective is all that matters? Do you think that an individual has the right to body boundaries and body autonomy or not? According to what you are writing, the answer is: apparently not.
Many of the protestors at parliament are concerned about their body autonomy and their rights to refuse vaccines which can harm their health. Many have already have their health harmed by their first vaccine, and are refused exemptions to have have a second one. They are told to have the vaccine in hospital so that the hospital can be on hand to treat the predicted life -threatening effects. This clearly violates their bodily autonomy, and rights to health and safety, even to life; which are respected in our Bill of Rights, which provides for the right to informed consent, and the right to refuse treatment.
But for you, it appears all human rights are merely transitory and “bourgeois”; only to be supported when they further your political aims. So if that’s the case, don’t pretend that you support a balance between individual and collective rights, if you actually believe that the individual can always be sacrificed for the collective, and that the kind of socialist society that you want to promote will not respect any individual rights or bodily autonomy. Don’t pretend that you are any more balanced or fair than the protesters who, according to you, only care about their individual rights. Despite showing clear collectivity and communality in their ability to organise together and care for one another during a protest and an occupation.
Do you expect individual rights to disappear in a socialist society, where only collective rights will exist ? If so, how is that approach not totalitarian, and indeed, violent? Do you actually have a problem with totalitarianism, or violence, or is it only a problem for you if a capitalist state does it? Some of the features of fascism are violence and totalitarianism, where the state enforces its will violently upon a population. Is this violent totalitarian forcing only bad when it is done to save capitalism, but okay when a socialist society does it?
How do you recognise the collective but not recognise the individual parts that make up that collective? Do you recognise the individual parts, ie persons, as having any existence or agency? Do you recognise the boundary of the human body? The brain inside the human skull that is capable of thinking? Do you realise that individuals do actually exist and make decisions? The same as individual dogs and cats also exist and make decisions for daily functioning?
How can you accuse the protesters of being fascists, or even dupes of fascists, when they are validly trying to protect their own health, their own lives, their own bodies, and those of their children? Are you saying that they should be happy to sacrifice their health and that of their children, or even their lives, for the sake of the greater good? Happy to be collateral damage? Silently and without complaint?
Perhaps, if the protester’s concerns about the mandates were given due attention, the protesters would not fall prey to the fascists you mention- who may currently be the only people listening to their concerns. Because the left certainly is not listening. The left are either dismissing the clear evidence of harms from vaccines for a large number of people- or else viewing these harms as justifiable collateral damage from mandatory vaccination. This is not good enough. It’s callous. It’s also patronising to those who have suffered harm, or have valid concerns about harm; to suggest that they are only protesting because the fascists, or the overseas puppeteers, are manipulating them. Perhaps the socialists should listen to them , and take their concerns seriously.
If you reply, please do not use terms like “bourgeois rights” to avoid addressing what I am saying. I want to know if you believe that individuals and their rights exist outside of a bourgeois society or not. What kind of rights will exist in a *socialist society* and what rights should be promoted and protected in a *socialist * movement?
Thanks Alexandra,
The models I use for socialism (as guides not blueprints) are the original ‘commune’, the first form of human society back in the upper Paleolithic. It was ruled by women who as mothers organised collectively to create ‘society’ when they syncronized their menstruation at the full moon refusing sex and sending them off to hunt to provide for the family.
In doing so they ceased to primate ‘individuals’ but new individuals who benefitted from acting by collectively organising production and sharing the work and food fairly. This system survived for millennia until it was overthrown by men who formed the patriarchy, the first class society. The new ruling class (men) then defined the ‘individual’ by sex roles, domestic slave to the slave owner. The social collective was smashed.
The second example is the Paris Commune of 1871 which arose from France’s defeat by the Prussians. An uprising of working people formed a new ‘commune’ in Paris opposed to the bourgeois Govt at Versailles. Elections were held where all adults without regard to gender, race or rank, voted for delegates to oversee the organisation and defence of the commune. A political program was drawn up which defined a socialist society where patriarchal, feudal and bourgeois class relations were obliterated. So a new individual defined by collective solidarity was born in embryo, but unfortunately did not survive the sacking of the city and bloody massacre of the Communards. For Marxists the Paris Commune proved that the bourgeoisie as a class was no longer progressive and the future of humanity was now in the hands of the proletariat.
The third case is the Soviet Revolution. It was two revolutions in one. The first in February was sparked by striking women textile workers. This spread to a massive strike and the fall of the Tsar. In the period between February and October, a political tussle between the Provisional Govt that represented Russia’s weak bourgeoisie and the Bolsheviks took place. In August General Kornilov representing the Tsarists attempted to overthrow the Provisional Government. But his real target was the growing Workers’ Peasants’ and Soldiers’ Soviets which were becoming a new base of collective power of societies producers against both the feudalists and capitalists.
So the Soviets represented the embryo of a new society in which individuals were no long be subjects of landlords or capitalists. They would not be landless labourers alienating their labour on the market to an exploiting ruling class. No longer the alienated individuals separated from the means of production. The armed soviets proved their new collective power by defeating the Kornilov coup. And then in October, the soviets by a majority voted to overthrow the failing power of the bourgeois Provisional Government. Such was their power the insurrection was almost bloodless. The new Government with a majority of Bolsheviks and Left social revolutionaries (representing the poor peasants) set about delivering the program for Peace, Land and Bread.
The revolution was immediately met by a global counterrevolution of all the capitalist nations, and from 1918 to 1921 Russia fought a bloody civil war to survive. That counter-revolution continued destroying any hope of the revolution fulfilling its socialist objectives, but in the few years when the revolution was able to advance its program we can see once again a glimpse of the individual born within a new collective society that offers the promise of the future commune we need to solve the problems of humanity.
The inspiration, the lessons learned, the program we need for today, are all to be found in the legacy of the first commune that separated humans from hominids, through the two attempts in the 19th and 20th centuries, to the many struggles today for a society after capitalism that returns to harmony with nature.
Thanks Alexandra,
The models I use for socialism (as guides not blueprints) are the original ‘commune’, the first form of human society back in the upper Paleolithic. It was ruled by women who as mothers organised collectively to create ‘society’ when they syncronized their menstruation at the full moon refusing sex and sending them off to hunt to provide for the family.
In doing so they ceased to primate ‘individuals’ but new individuals who benefitted from acting by collectively organising production and sharing the work and food fairly. This system survived for millennia until it was overthrown by men who formed the patriarchy, the first class society. The new ruling class (men) then defined the ‘individual’ by sex roles, domestic slave to the slave owner. The social collective was smashed.
The second example is the Paris Commune of 1871 which arose from France’s defeat by the Prussians. An uprising of working people formed a new ‘commune’ in Paris opposed to the bourgeois Govt at Versailles. Elections were held where all adults without regard to gender, race or rank, voted for delegates to oversee the organisation and defence of the commune. A political program was drawn up which defined a socialist society where patriarchal, feudal and bourgeois class relations were obliterated. So a new individual defined by collective solidarity was born in embryo, but unfortunately did not survive the sacking of the city and bloody massacre of the Communards. For Marxists the Paris Commune proved that the bourgeoisie as a class was no longer progressive and the future of humanity was now in the hands of the proletariat.
The third case is the Soviet Revolution. It was two revolutions in one. The first in February was sparked by striking women textile workers. This spread to a massive strike and the fall of the Tsar. In the period between February and October, a political tussle between the Provisional Govt that represented Russia’s weak bourgeoisie and the Bolsheviks took place. In August General Kornilov representing the Tsarists attempted to overthrow the Provisional Government. But his real target was the growing Workers’ Peasants’ and Soldiers’ Soviets which were becoming a new base of collective power of societies producers against both the feudalists and capitalists.
So the Soviets represented the embryo of a new society in which individuals were no long be subjects of landlords or capitalists. They would not be landless labourers alienating their labour on the market to an exploiting ruling class. No longer the alienated individuals separated from the means of production. The armed soviets proved their new collective power by defeating the Kornilov coup. And then in October, the soviets by a majority voted to overthrow the failing power of the bourgeois Provisional Government. Such was their power the insurrection was almost bloodless. The new Government with a majority of Bolsheviks and Left social revolutionaries (representing the poor peasants) set about delivering the program for Peace, Land and Bread.
The revolution was immediately met by a global counterrevolution of all the capitalist nations, and from 1918 to 1921 Russia fought a bloody civil war to survive. That counter-revolution continued destroying any hope of the revolution fulfilling its socialist objectives, but in the few years when the revolution was able to advance its program we can see once again a glimpse of the individual born within a new collective society that offers the promise of the future commune we need to solve the problems of humanity.
The inspiration, the lessons learned, the program we need for today, are all to be found in the legacy of the first commune that separated humans from hominids, through the two attempts in the 19th and 20th centuries, to the many struggles today for a society after capitalism that returns to harmony with nature.
Fabulous piece Alexandra.
The post by Dave full of contradictions and the use of bourgeois reflects his favourite authors.
Hi Comrade Dave.
I’ve enjoyed your article it certainly had more direction than others I have read of late. I think however there are a couple of points you’ve missed perhaps not intentionally(?), but such is the dialectic science we are burdened to uphold.
1. the core issue of the protest is a legitimate issue of working class concern. The “power of the sack” is a power reserved for the capitalists to discipline workers, one we oppose. The right to guaranteed work (and income) has long been a demand of the working class. To extend the “power of the sack” to government over differences with workers sets a dangerous precedent. You are of course familiar with another period when a govt exercised the “power of the sack”, the McCarthyite witch hunts of socialists and sympathizers. You will naturally point out that vaccination and political ideology are not morally equivalent which is true, and class conscious workers will vaccinate. But any extension of “the power of the sack” materially impoverishes workers and is a reduction in conditions.
2. Fascists have a long history of using the cover of pro-worker struggle as a leaf to cover their real bid to seize state power. After all the name National Socialists contains socialist for a reason. However once power is achieved these elements are liquidated. We need only point at the example of homosexual pro-worker Sturmabteilung officers over 160 of whom were murdered once they were no longer useful to Hitlers charade. These tactics are well known, there is little doubt that fascists are operating within the protest. Their charade is allowed to continue though by the weakness of the anti-fascist left. Who have ceded ground by failing to consistently criticize anti-worker practices implemented by the (for now Labour) parliamentary govt.
Without raising, full employment, social housing or other demands, how is the class consciousness meant to improve? how do workers see how these are held in common? how to organize around them?
Independent anti-fascist militias are only a struggle against the worst parts of capitalism, a continuation of our defensive posture which has given space for fascist to win over workers and organize a layer of the petty bougoise.
Anti fascist militias are insufficient for the task which we face. We need to go on the attack to show that a new world is possible a world free from rampant inflation, spiraling house prices, climate death or rampaging pandemics. We need a Party!
Thanks David.
Agree we need a party. Based on a program for revolution.
However, I see the rise of fascism as an immediate life and death question for workers and the supreme test of whether it an organise its best fighters to win over workers who are being recruited to fascism.
NZ has always had a strong proto fascist element based on the white-settler petty bourgeoisie who stole the land and build a society based on private property. In fact the settler ideology was one of escaping the working class onto the land.
But even as we oppose fascism today as a direct attack on workers we need to build a party and program to organise a mass base for the wider struggle to overthrow capitalism.
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