HOW TO PROMOTE a radical left-wing agenda when so few people today can even imagine such a thing? The emancipatory impulse that guided so many of the left-wing programmes of the past has almost entirely faded away. In its place we find a denunciatory political culture. Far too many contemporary leftists are driven by the desire to condemn and punish. Where once the Left’s purpose was to create a better world, its chief preoccupation today appears to be making it a less evil one.
A more realistic goal, some might say. Except that, as a goal, reducing evil rests upon the dismal presupposition that evil is humanity’s resting state. Striving to reduce the severity of the planet’s daily torments is not at all the same as believing it is possible to overcome them. Directing one’s efforts towards making humanity’s prison more bearable, differs fundamentally from a project dedicated to reducing that prison to rubble and setting its prisoners free.
As the Second Wave of Feminism swept across the Western World in the early 1970s, its adherents spoke with tongues of fire about the end of patriarchy and the emergence of not only a new kind of woman, but also of a new kind of man. They argued persuasively that the bloody re-ordering of male hierarchies – which men liked to call “revolutions” – were not revolutions at all. The only revolution worthy of the name, they argued, would be the one that brought the full emancipation of women. Only when the 10,000 year-old patriarchal system of sexual and gender repression was no more, could real human history begin.
Fifty years on, so many of those fiery tongues have been stilled. As The Platform’s Ani O’Brien wrote on 8 March, International Women’s’ Day:
“In New Zealand – and perhaps elsewhere – International Women’s Day has become a farcical parade of corporate pink-washing overlaid by a nepotistic circle-jerk of privileged and influential liberal (mostly white) women giving each other awards at champagne breakfasts […..] And the issues they focus on? Usually not particularly high on the priority list for your average Kiwi woman – certainly not for those who are under-privileged.”
On matters of race the picture is equally depressing.
Sticking with our earlier prison metaphor, the attention of the Contemporary Left seems fixated upon the ideas and actions of the prison guards, and how important it is to make them understand the enormously harmful impact of their prejudices and practices upon the well-being of the prisoners. If the purpose of “re-educating” these oppressors was to persuade them to make common cause with the oppressed, then its inherent negativity might be overlooked. Unfortunately, that is not its goal. The ambitions of the Contemporary Left do not extend beyond ensuring that the guards and the prisoners administer the prison together – “partners” in penology.
When it comes to issues of class, the picture is even bleaker.
In tragic contrast to the leftists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Contemporary Left seem mortally afraid of offending the boss. The very notion that “the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle” strikes them as decidedly career-limiting. Located firmly in the Professional and Managerial Class, whose task it is to administer capitalism smoothly, with a minimum of fuss, on behalf of the people who own it, the Contemporary Left has taught itself to look at the working-class and see … nothing.
Without the determination to emancipate, the Left has no ability to inspire. Lacking the stimulus of their common advancement, the political inertness of “the people” is only to be overcome by outrage. By exposing the wickedness and brutality of those who wield power over them, individuals can be roused to anger. Rather than the emancipatory programmes spawned by the Old Left’s creative political imaginings, the Contemporary Left offers the marginalised and oppressed only the sterile alternatives of condemnation and punishment.
The “Me Too” movement replaces the New Woman and the New Man. “Black Lives Matter” replaces Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream!”
The problem with constantly parading wickedness and brutality before people’s gaze is that pretty soon they begin to think that’s all there is. Intuitively, they arrive at the dismal conclusion that the condemners and the punishers are not only fighting a never-ending battle, but a losing one. For every Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein who falls, countless other abusers will go unpunished. For every racist cop that gets put away, a thousand more contrive to hide their racism more carefully.
Not only are these conclusions depressing, they’re scary. Ordinary folk begin to ask themselves: if the urge to condemn and punish is all that now drives the Left, then how far is it willing to go shut down and/or shut up the bad guys? Not many people are happy with the idea of living in a society where citizens have to weigh carefully every word and action, or fall victim to a regime in which punishment is the first resort, and forgiveness the swiftest path to ruin.
Abandon the Left’s quest for emancipation in favour of the politics of denunciation, and what is left to the ordinary citizen but material aspiration? If building a better world is no longer on the Left’s agenda; and this one is dominated by forces against which the Left fights and fights but never overcomes; then surely the only sensible course of action is for individuals and families to get and keep as much as they can while the getting and keeping is good?
For the past thirty-five years this is the only consistent message the New Zealand electorate has been sent. Certainly, it is the message which the National Party never tires of sending to voters. The Old Labour Left (think Mickey Savage and Norman Kirk) was condemned for wanting to upset the settled order of things – a prospect which the comfortably situated can always be relied upon to abhor. The New Labour Left (think Helen Clark and Jacinda Ardern) National condemns for its puritanical obsession with punishing the sins that make comfort possible. (The Greens are even worse!)
Since the Old Labour Left died with the Alliance twenty years ago, and the current incarnation of the Greens regards its policies as ideologically suspect relics of a bygone age, the New Labour Left has very little incentive to develop a manifesto in which the impulse to confront and overcome the evils of the status quo is blended with a determination to emancipate its victims. Evil can only be vanquished by the creation of a world in which it cannot thrive.
Persuading the voters that this is true is no easy task. It requires a political party that never stops making the case for radical change. Sadly, no such party exists in the New Zealand of today. Offer voters a radical left-wing agenda in 2022 and its content will most likely inspire not enthusiasm, but a mixture of doubt and scorn.
As in this comment from a former National Party Cabinet Minister:
“Is it really credible that Labour will become akin to a Corbynite party, since that is effectively what is being suggested. If they did, and that was clearly signalled before the election, I reckon you could pretty much guarantee Labour a few years in the political wilderness to contemplate the consequences of such a decision.
“There is simply no appetite in New Zealand for a radical socialist change. It is no accident that the biggest selling vehicles are double-cab utes capable of pulling the 6 meter fishing boat [which is, in] fact, owned by the PM’s partner along with the beach house in Tairua. The epitome of the kiwi dream.
“Just about every single policy dreamed up by such a fanciful radical coalition would be diametrically opposed to people being able to fulfil such a dream.
“The party that actually trumpet the opportunity to fulfil such a dream are much more likely to electorally succeed.”
The tragedy of these times is that Jacinda Ardern’s Labour Party would almost certainly agree. And the even bigger tragedy – so would 98 percent of the voters.
The reason the old left died was because their policies simply didn’t work. Nation after nation was beggared by them in the 20th century. I know because I lived in more than a few!
I see the today’s left as more of a mass psychological disorder. Most of these people are raging against ‘ The Patriarchy’ , ‘Climate Emergency’ or ‘ Systemic Racism’ only as a way to distract themselves and maybe others from the disorder in their own lives. As Jordan Peterson says, they would achieve more if they started by tidying their own bedroom and worked from there, thus getting their own house in order before attempting to tell others how to live their lives.
Yes Andrew, wise words from JP. Someone whose room is a chaotic shithole and whose own relationships are a mess should probably STFU about transforming the world and maybe get back to us when they’ve got the infinitely less problem, themselves, sorted.
“We must each adopt as much responsibility as possible for individual life, society and the world. We must each tell the truth and repair what is in disrepair and break down and recreate what is old and outdated. It is in this manner that we can and must reduce the suffering that poisons the world. It’s asking a lot. It’s asking for everything.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
The revolutionary change Chris constantly longs for happened nearly a century ago. The world when the neoliberal revolution occurred nearly 40 years ago was a process where the elite who had been represented by the captains of industry; Chris’s arch enemy , were replaced by the captains of global finance.
Labour has achieved a fair share of the real economy, there isn’t an imbalance there any more. The benefits accruing from that joint human endeavour is being syphoned off to the unproductive financial sector.
A revolution is required but it is not the one of Chris’s nostalgia . And it is happening automatically as the world of finance spirals out of anyone’s control.
D J S
Yeah. Sir John Kay, the British economist, has some good proposals in this area. Check out “Narrow Banking” for example.
MMT is looming, for how long can they QE cheap debt (booming asset values) with inflation rising to 10% placing pressure on workers/tenants?
The gatekeepers of what is acceptable political discourse occasionally let a bit of mild socialism through the wall to wall TINA status quo defense of the present oppressive regime. But only so they can mock it and faint at such ghastly ideas.
Capitalist shill Eric Crampton was scornful of the RNZ piece suggesting tighter regulation of the supermarket duopoly – “it’s socialism!!!11!”. What a wanker. When thousands of NZers are going hungry all he cares about is the purity of the free market. The free market is a tired old lie and the whole world is sick of it.
One wouldn’t mind so much if it wasn’t the working poor who are subsidising the affluent lifestyles of the haves and the wealthiest under our corrupted financial system. It would be a help if the ‘capitalists’ paid their taxes instead of endlessly looking for tax breaks, loop-holes, avoidance strategies and blatantly engaging in down-right evasion. Let’s not fool ourselves, all the subsidies and strategies that are ostensibly for helping low-income families are just part of the trickle-up process that capitalists are supposed to abhor but thrive on without any conscience whatsoever. The payments barely land in the system before being taken out to feed the endless conveyer-belt cash flow to those at the top of the heap.
Crampton you are into Idology! No not a typo. You worship the free market and the doctrine that must be right and good because it pays sufficient bucks plus more, for a great life for you and yours, and you can sort of control it, and if it breaks away you can have an established hidey hole at the side, like a priest’s hole, to slip into.
Be the first, to whom all will beat a path to your door! Become the worm who turned – an economist who specialises in prevention of market collapse, so feared since 2008. You delve into micro economics and approach your task using sociological methods. Study the people as people, and their wants and beliefs, and ensure that their incomes are kept high enough to consume and watch that the consumption market stays steady in the lower levels where everybody knows the poor spend all their money. Just see that there are more barriers to alcohol, the everyman drug that is okay in short doses, and keep marijuana at a cost that encourages valuing it but within reach of the hoi polloi, perhaps have clinics in mobile vans where discounts for cannabis are given out after people have a health check or bring their children. Let’s be blatant about rewards and bribes, we all respond to them, it’s a classless effect.
So that would be accepting that the lower income stratus form the basis of society and if happy and busy we would all save hugely on criminal and health costs and be far more productive. What a great outcome, you will be honoured by Prince Charles if you get going quickly. He is a serious type and would like to leave his patch of heaven in good trim. And other oldies will be so pleased that some of the old goals and zest in NZ returns in time for us to cope with forming a better political system responsive to the common person, than now, and ready to organise themselves into devising climate change avoidance methods and ameliorating what we can’t avoid. And loving doing something useful and helpful for ourselves and having the basics, some holidays and be able to smile with genuine pleasure. The good old 5 million all doing a little something to serve the country (as in Your Country Needs You with a finger pointing at each one of us), and we will manage at that citizen level for at least a decade. So big ideas for you and you can let us know what you are thinking in your opinion pieces in stuff I think. Don’t be shy, get us on side and keen – start your own fan club!
You’re on a roll Chris
So true Chris.
A focus on ‘class struggle’ has been replaced by a myriad of other side issues and as you point out material aspiration rules the political…landscape.
The sidelining of Corbyn in the U.K and Sanders in the U.S ,who are are not exactly radical ,extremists show there is little real opposition to the…status quo.
Tragic.
So address the elephant in the room.
For whom do you vote? Or if that’s too secret, for whom does one vote?
Where does an old leftie former trade unionist put his/her vote?
The political garbage on offer today and the total lack of results over the last thirty years has made voting redundant.
Whomever we vote for the neoliberal government always wins.
Is hoping the Ukrainian matter escalates to WWIII just too sick? It would burn away a lot of the garbage…
I’m asking myself the same question, J S Bark.
Rest assured, if I find one, I’ll be sure to let you know!
A very good summary of society’s failings by Chris, while he is valid with current political events he could have looked further back to the reformation (about 500 years ago so probably not in most people’s thinking) for another instance where the desire to remake society for the greater good fell to those same human nature problems. We have ended up with all churches being some sort of image of the corrupt mother church which has substantially reduced any positive impact they can have on society.
We can be sure that a revival is coming that will place a revived Christian movement against the moribund established churches combined with the state both empowered with supernatural power (from different sources) that will lead to an eternal future in the sort of nirvana that any sensible person would want to live in.
This world is changing & recent events combined with further problems that are expected will trouble people so I have provided a brief snapshot of events to an alternative future.
Goodness knows how these people can afford these Ford Rangers. Even putting one on credit would mean taking a lot of a family budget in repayments.
millsy tests positive for Ute Derangemnet Syndrome.
Indeed millsy, being in hock to the banksters is the secret behind Bach, Renter and Ranger aspirations. Henceforth known as BRR–“living the dream”.
The repo’s are yet to happen. Well ekshully they’ve already started. Oh dear, how sad! They might even result in one or two broken marriages.
Gary can keep the SUV and struggle with the repayments, Liable Parent Contributions, and life with his bestest bros, while Shontelle gets the kids and what’s left of the mortgage (most of it).
Shontelle never could drive that bloody thing anyway
Gaza goes on to the next sexual transaction, as does Shontelle. And they both continue to battle over the kuds and other possessions for some ‘quality time’.
They’re both really sophisicated too
(Apologies Gentle Annie. You’re probably wanting to go get yer gun about now, OR your crystals and pearls)
I live in Bayswater.
Just about all the new residents buying the mid price point houses in the suburb seem to have double cab utes. The more expensive end of the suburb have high end SUV’s. Different types of jobs to the double cab owners. The cheaper housing of the suburb is state housing and naval housing.
Anyway, back to the double cab utes. They seem to be owned by owner operator tradespeople, or by managers within construction firms and the like. Large numbers have relatively new fishing boats. A total package of about $120,000 or more.
How do they afford them? The ute is a work vehicle, at least it is during the week. I guess the income level is $120,000 to $150,000, maybe a bit higher. The partner may also work, though it is obvious that many don’t, given the number of women I see exercising during the day when children are school. Usually pretty serious bike rides or running. All of them seem pretty fit. Obesity is not an issue in Bayswater.
Variously describing those for whom Chris Trotter speaks, as “a mass of psychological disorder” or as “drongos,” betrays a fault common to most discourse on matters of social equity. Yes, a large proportion of our fellow citizens, for reasons of culture, education et al, might be described as drones, but that’s just the point – it’s not a pejorative. Just as beehives need their drones, societies too need individuals with differing capacities, but neither can exist without the other. Get over it – it is what it is! If everyone was an entrepreneur “society” would be impossible, as would equally be the case if their were none. As Covid has surely shown us, private enterprise is nothing without the mass of the public being there to consume the product of its endeavours. And until we respect that fact, and establish its consequence in a constitution that our elected representatives must adhere to, this tiresome “left/right/centre” bickering will continue for ever.
Individuals with differing capacities needed by society – makes me think of the old play by JM Barrie ‘The Admirable Crichton’*. In a way it’s a sort of Swiss Family Robinson meets Robinson Crusoe and perhaps Tom Hanks on the island bit, having to use all god-given gifts and manage one’s situation with good effect.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Admirable_Crichton
* A group of shipwrecked English aristocrats stake their survival on the ingenuity of their trustworthy butler.
The old rules of class and hierarchy are useless in this new environment, and it is Crichton (butler) and Eliza (maid) who have the practical skills necessary for survival. Crichton becomes leader of the group through his superior ability and the family ends up contentedly following his orders.
https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofScotland/Admirable-Crichton/
Nice to see you tally agree with me Chris. The current Labour government is not left wing and the voter does not want to have to give up to much to make life better for fellow citizens.
As you say, there is no political voice of the left, clearly and simply putting the case for a focus on quality of life for Kiwis with equity as the main goal or measure.
CT, I reckon you drove the nail fully in, with one hit….”The ambitions of the Contemporary Left do not extend beyond ensuring that the guards and the prisoners administer the prison together – “partners” in penology.”
Those of us in the sunny BOP have had a taste of what happens when the guards cannot agree with one another on the the implementation of the TINA doctrine (never mind the prisoners, lining up their rangers on the boat ramps)…. Governance is the word, forget the D word.
“Mahuta said it was important Tauranga did return to locally elected democracy, but it was a finely balanced thing.
“The challenge for me was to weigh up, what has been a very difficult and disparate voice around the governance table at Tauranga City Council and what I want to do is try and settle that down,” she said.”
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/463183/tauranga-city-commissioners-retained-until-july-2024-minister-says
As Ardern put it, when she has retired and the baby boomers start dying off, then there will be an estate tax and CGT. And by that stage we may have MMT in place of debt fiat.
NZ thinks it is troubled. Would we be as committed, strong and able to recover as the Cambodians have achieved? This is the summary of this book – ‘Hun Sen’s Cambodia’ by Sebastian Strangio.
To many in the West, the name Cambodia still conjures up indelible images of destruction and death, the legacy of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime and the terror it inflicted in its attempt to create a communist utopia in the 1970s. Sebastian Strangio, a journalist based in the capital city of Phnom Penh, now offers an eye-opening appraisal of modern-day Cambodia in the years following its emergence from bitter conflict and bloody upheaval.
In the early 1990s, Cambodia became the focus of the UN’s first great post-Cold War nation-building project, with billions in international aid rolling in to support the fledgling democracy. But since the UN-supervised elections in 1993, the nation has slipped steadily backward into neo-authoritarian rule under Prime Minister Hun Sen.
Behind a mirage of democracy, ordinary people have few rights and corruption infuses virtually every facet of everyday life. In this lively and compelling study, the first of its kind, Strangio explores the present state of Cambodian society under Hun Sen’s leadership, painting a vivid portrait of a nation struggling to reconcile the promise of peace and democracy with a violent and tumultuous past.
As for progress’…have a look at Sihnoukville before and after…the Chinese built a Casino town..there.
Can you put a link, if you know where to find the image? It’s a help, there is so much to read and watch to understand just some of what has, is happening, and likely to.
New View I think your view can be summed up with ‘It’s the economy stupid’. Only you wouldn’t have said stupid as you seem to be well-mannered. But we live in a nation of people ane those who just judge on its effectiveness on whether the capitalist system is working, show they belong to the finance and enrichment cult klub or FECK. Those who haven’t been given a key or pass hover on the outskirts, without a skirt.
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