GUEST BLOG: Dave Brownz – Capitalism, Maaori Self-Determination and the Future of Democracy

The main fracture between the two main capitalist parties in Aotearoa/New Zealand, Labour and National, is over the role of Maaori in Government. The liberal Labour Party sees the need to honor the Treaty by giving Maaori more of a share in the power to governance and distribution of economic resources. Policies that flow from this are derived from the concept of ‘co-governance’ between Maaori and Pakeha consistent with Treaty obligations.

Chris Trotter says this liberal position has thrown up an extremist Maaori Nationalism that creates a race-based power grab exceeding the right of “one person, one vote”, in effect an ‘Ethno State’.  That generates its opposite political reaction in the National Party, even more so in ACT, as the rejection of co-governance as ‘separatism’, as a threat to democracy regardless of race, gender, religion, etc., in all, a betrayal of the dominant pakeha white nation.  

In Trotter’s view both ‘extremes’ can be moderated by a political movement of the center, such as a ‘grand coalition’ between the major parties, based on an equal citizen vote, and capable of a united, peaceful and democratic resolution. I will argue that such an outcome was never possible under capitalism, and now facing its imminent demise as a system, a dangerous utopia that diverts our attention and squanders our efforts, from what is necessary to arrive at the possibility of a peaceful, egalitarian and democratic resolution.  

First, there is no comparison between radical white supremacy and radical Maaori nationalism. The former represents the past and present evils of class society and settler colonisation, while the latter represents the ending of class society and the transition to a future egalitarian society. Let’s set the historical context of the struggle over the past and present that shapes the future of democracy.

First, we need to see that democracy is not some universal, timeless concept of one person, one vote. It is a reflection of the social relations that prevail at any given time. Democracy today is historically specific to the French Revolution and the victory of the bourgeoisie over the feudal aristocracy, which is why it is called bourgeois democracy, corresponding to capitalist social relations.

Yet there is a history of democracy reaching much further back to the ancient commune in the time hunters and gatherers before the rise of class society around 10,000 years ago. The democracy of the ancient commune is that of the egalitarian social relations that characterised society before the rise of class society. Today that class society with its bourgeois form of democracy is doomed to destroy humanity unless we overthrow it and build a future society that reaches beyond the limits of bourgeois democracy towards the democracy of a new commune.

How does this relation to Maaori self-determination. Since British colonisation, the struggle for self-determination is to win a bourgeois right – national freedom. This would allow Maaori to join the world of bourgeoise democracy 200 years too late, when it is clearly impossible. Already by 1848 bourgeois democracy was denied to those who did not qualify as ‘citizens’ since they were not owners of private property. Those who later qualified for citizenship had to win property rights first.

Not until the late 19^th century were propertyless workers admitted to bourgeois democracy as citizens when the right of wage workers to sell their labour-power became defined as a property right. Women had to wait much longer to win that citizenship by becoming economically independent of their spouses. Maaori, whose land was stolen and/or privatised during colonisation, have had to wait even longer, since as members of the reserve army of labour, their belated citizenship was conditional on regular wage-labour after World War 2.

So bourgeois democracy, naturalised and venerated as ‘one person, one vote’, has always excluded those who did not own private property, or formally sell their labour power as commodities on the market. Of course, for Marxists it is clear that the formal equality of bourgeois democracy was always a façade hiding the fundamental class inequality between those who owned the land as a means of production, and those who were landless and had to sell their labour power to subsist. This formal democracy masked the actual material inequality until it could no longer hide that fact.

Therefore, the struggle for democracy today between those who are its victims and those who are its beneficiaries is futile unless the social relations underlying that democracy are transformed by socialist revolution. Short of that Maaori nationalists fight for the realisation of bourgeois democracy which can be no more than token. And even those token ‘settlements’ are read by white supremacists as a mortal threat to their material advantages in private property. Since nothing short of a social revolution will resolve the right to self-determination, it follows that bourgeois democracy must be overthrown in order for workers’ democracy to live. So how will such a revolutionary transition be possible?

Maaori nationalism is essentially about ‘Tino rangatiratanga’ or self-determination. That is, their political autonomy as indigenous people fighting for the return of land stolen by the white settlers. Can this be won as a peaceful, united resolution conceived by He Puapua as co-governance which does not challenge the class relations of the state? Not until Maaori themselves realise that the fundamental democratic right of all peoples to autonomy on the basis of their land, language and culture poses the question of which class has the power, capitalists or workers, can we talk about realising self-determination and whether or not it leads to secession.

How far Maaori nationalism will go towards secession will depend on mass support of their right to tests the limits of bourgeois democracy. With majority support from pakeha they have the possibility of joining forces to end capitalism in which case the right to self-determination including succession remains active in the construction of a post-capitalist society. So, what are the conditions arising from the past and present that can facilitate the end of capitalism and the creation of a united, peaceful and democratic future?

The most pressing condition is that global capitalism is in a terminal crisis, and out of that crisis comes the promise of revolution. Economic slump, pandemic and climate catastrophe are destroying the material basis for human survival. There is no way that the capitalist ruling class fighting for its existence can make workers and poor farmers pay for their rotting system by conceding democratic rights to equality.

The class struggle between the two main classes will force those on both sides of the divide to unite and fight. This will see the big majority of workers and oppressed unite against the minority of land owners and their middle-class allies against the working class, who will turn to fascism to defend their class interests from the threat of a workers’ revolution.

The bloc of Maaori plus pakeha supporters will be the big majority since it will be capable of reviving new forms of social relations of the original commune as the only way out of capitalism’s terminal crisis. In doing so, it can activate the substance of the Treaty in de-colonising capitalism which today is globally ramping up the oppression of the poor and non-white globally, measured in collapsing living standards, mass victims of pandemics and authoritarian rule.

The argument is often raised that the class differences among Maaori disqualify self-determination since the ‘capitalist’ leaders dictate the will of the people. Fear is promoted of an ‘ethno’ state where the Maaori minority oppresses the pakeha majority.  This claim is based on a racist neo-colonial mentality which condemns the majority of Maaori as dupes of their ‘leaders’. Moreover, it accepts that leaders have sold out to the colonial practice of forcing iwi to ‘corporatise’ and turned their back on the Tino rangatiratanga of the Treaty.

Tino rangatiratanga in pre-conquest Maaori society was exercised in the interests of the collective and not a separate ruling class. Today this social relation is still alive and can be defended within the surviving institutions where leaders are elected and mandated by the people to work for their collective interests. Such a democracy that reflects the original historic commune can become the model for a new form of democracy that can unite all races and classes in the future.

That leaves the minority white supremacist-led fascists made up of middle class, small businesses, ‘kith and kin’, plus lumpen workers who will become the shock troops of a violent fascist movement to defend their class interests from the perceived threat of Maaori nationalism.

The state forces, particularly the police and military, will probably split over de-colonisation. So, it is important that the progressive majority organise self-defence against the state and paramilitary forces, appealing to the interests of sympathetic personnel to join the fight for self-determination based on class unity, racial equality and the democracy of the future commune.

When co-determination is already being practiced routinely over rivers, over settlements like Te Urewera, and local government, in many ways foreshadowing the emergence of a new workers’ democracy, it is not too hard to envisage a relatively peaceful, united and a socially democratic outcome, other than a dying capitalism which prevails today, from emerging out of the struggle for Maaori self-determination.