GUEST BLOG: Geoff Fischer – Colonialist or nationalist? The Peters Paradox

In 1992 I traipsed around the marae of Tai Tokerau in the company of Te Hahi Ratana a Kaikohe and the Hon Winston Peters who had parted ways with the National Party.  His new political vehicle, New Zealand First, attracted the attention of many Maori and others who had become alienated from the Labour and National Parties, both of which had embraced neo-liberal economic and social doctrines.  The following year I took up a job at Rotorua, and spent time canvasing for New Zealand First in the forestry towns and villages of the central plateau.  In the 1993 election for the first and last time in my life I cast a vote in a parliamentary election, giving my support to “Aunty” Beatrice Yates, the NZF candidate and a much-loved Rotorua identity.  From memory she won a respectable 3000 votes, though not nearly enough to take the Rotorua seat.

Over the following years I became disillusioned with Peters and New Zealand First, but refrained from voicing any public criticism.  Peters, it seemed, with his “centrist” conservative, nationalist politics still offered better prospects for our country than the ruthless “free-market” ideologues of the right and the left.  Like many others I was disturbed by his willingness to go into coalition with the National Party.  I had wrongly taken it for granted that Peters’ break with National would be full and final.  I now understand that politics does not work that way.  Just as Jim Anderton returned to the Labour fold, Winston Peters went home to the National Party.  Certainly it was with the understanding that “things would be different this time” and that the wayward sons would have a meaningful influence for the better upon their old parties.  Things may indeed have been different, but the differences that Anderton and Peters were able to make to the policies of their respective parties of origin were subtle at best, and certainly not the radically different approach that we had been encouraged to expect from them.

In 2008 I wrote “Winston Peters: A political obituary”.   The title was tongue-in-cheek.  I had little doubt that Peters would be back.  However in that piece I identified the contradiction between Peters colonialist premises and his nationalist rhetoric.  Optimistically I had hoped that the nationalist side of his politics would eventually prevail over the colonialist side.  That is not how it worked out, but more on that later.

I regard myself as a nationalist, and that was why I was prepared to make common cause with Winston Peters.  I also consider myself to be a “social conservative” which made the relationship easier.  However I am anti-colonialist and that is where Peters and I part company.   Peters would not call himself a colonialist yet indisputably he is one.  He freely gives his allegiance to the British monarchy and its legal and political institutions.  He upholds the colonialist military alliances, he is as much at home in the Palace of Westminster as in Wellington, and has dedicated his career as Foreign Affairs Minister to developing ever closer relations with the Anglo-Saxon powers.

The “nationalism” of Winston Peters, which took root in the early twentieth century New Zealand and claims 25 April as its most sacred day is nothing more nor less than what it claims to be: a pan-British ethno-nationalism that in its hubristic moments saw New Zealand as a “better Britain” with ties of blood to its Anglo-Saxon brothers and sisters in the Commonwealth of Australia.  That is why Prime Minister Keith Holyoake was able to call Edmund Hillary’s ascent of Everest “a triumph of the British race”.  Until very recently the colonialist regime recognized no distinction between “New Zealand nationalism” and British ethno-nationalism.  Arguably, Winston Peters still does not.  Yet it is a strange sort of “nationalism” that still honours the British monarch as head of state, has a flag dominated by the Union Jack, and regards the purported act of cession of sovereignty to the British monarch as marking the “foundation of the nation”.   For all that, the bizarre spectacle of colonialism in nationalist drag underscores the whole political programme of Winston Peters and New Zealand First.

Particularly over the past year, it has become apparent that what used to be called “Maori nationalism” has gained a wide following, extending well beyond the Maori population.  As that trend progresses, it will leave parties like National and New Zealand First, with their colonialist faux nationalism, exposed and isolated.

National’s last chance to become a true nationalist party came with the Muldoon government which ruled from 1975 to 1984.  Robert Muldoon was a nationalist of sorts, even though his nationalism was often expressed in petty ways such as contempt for races other than Maori and the British-descended peoples who were considered to constitute the national population of New Zealand.  That contempt extended to working class Britons (those with “Clydeside accents”), though not to the British ruling classes, for whom he always showed a proper respect.

So far, so like Winston Peters.

Under Muldoon, National set out to develop New Zealand’s industrial capacity with the aims of providing the infrastructure necessary to support New Zealand’s primary export industries and employed foreign capital to build the industrial base necessary to become a fully developed economy, with domestic capital providing a second tier of small to medium size businesses.

Therein lay a contradiction.  New Zealand was (as it still is) an integral part of the Anglo-American imperial system.  The imperial powers wanted New Zealand to produce and export to the empire a range of primary products, and also wanted New Zealand, as part of the imperial alliance, to have the economic depth and strength to withstand market shocks such as the 1970s oil crisis or supposed strategic threats such as that presented by the Communist bloc.  But they did not want New Zealand to develop to the point where it could go its own way and wave goodbye to Mother England or Uncle Sam.  To the imperial powers colonies should be successful, but never so successful that they take the road to full political and economic independence.  This contradiction has become more acute under the Trump administration, which on the one hand demands that vassal states make a greater financial contribution to the military forces of the Anglo-American empire while on the other hand restricting their ability to compete economically with US capitalists.

The development of capitalism in New Zealand was always a fraught business, negotiated between New Zealand, UK, Australian and US governments on a micro-scale, project by project through the two decades following the Second World War.

Thus colonialism and nationalism met in the no-mans land occupied first by the National Party of Robert Muldoon, and subsequently by Winston Peters and New Zealand First.  Were they nationalist or colonialist?  In a sense they were both, overtly supporting the empire, while unconsciously progressing the normal dynamic by which colonies evolve into economically and politically independent states.  That was the process followed to completion in the British North American colonies which became the United States of America.

However something happened to interrupt the normal historical process as applied to New Zealand.  In 1984, Robert Muldoon was thrown out of office and the Labour Party took charge.   From its origins Labour was a colonialist party closely bound to the British system and with no aspirations for either economic or political independence from the Anglo-American imperial system.  The effect of the Lange-Douglas transformation of the New Zealand economy was to massively tip the balance away from domestic capital and towards foreign “investors”.  Labour’s argument to its middle and working class supporters was that foreign capital was more efficient than domestic capital, would pay higher wages, and ultimately create more jobs.  While there was some basis to that claim, ultimately it lead to de-industrialization and created structural problems in the economy that have become progressively more severe in the succeeding four decades.

Rogernomics did more than alienate the infrastructural and productive assets of the state.   It was accompanied by rampant asset stripping in the private sector, and the destruction of the top tier of New Zealand commerce and industry.  The titans of New Zealand capitalism, John Spencer (pulp and paper), James Wattie (food processing), James Fletcher (construction), Charles Todd (oil and gas), Lincoln Laidlaw (retail and manufacturing), Alfred Horton (newspapers) and Richard Carter (forestry, timber, pulp and paper) are gone and their business empires were left in disarray.  Their descendants have retained a good measure of wealth but they have lost the power and the will to effect change.  They own real estate at Remuera and Pauanui.  They rake in dividends.  They are denizens of the Northern Club and pillars of high society.  But they build nothing.  They have become rent seekers.  They own shares in electricity companies which constrain supply so as to increase prices, and thus destroy the industries which their parents and grandparents built up, and force millions of  consumers to pay $2 a day before having access to a single unit of power.  They own forests which gain carbon credits, the holy grail of rent seekers, being paid out of the public purse to do nothing at all productive with their assets, while they themselves jaunt around the world thus aggravating the very crisis which has given them access to more unearned wealth.

Global capital, mostly in the form of US and Australian corporations, has taken over the role formerly filled by the top rank of New Zealand domestic capitalists.  Global capital, specifically British and Australian capital, has long taken a leading role in the colonialist economy, but throughout the first part of the twentieth century it was balanced by domestic capital.  That is no longer the case.  Domestic capital in the form of “small and medium enterprises” and “start ups” now exist merely to serve the interests of foreign capital.   It no longer constitutes an alternative for the future.

We need not grieve over the debilitation of national capitalism.  It was largely, though not entirely, comprised of people who were ruthless, amoral and self-centred.  However we do need to see what has happened and to understand the consequences for New Zealand politics, including the relative decline of the National and Labour parties, and the contemporaneous rise of ACT and New Zealand First.  Men like Wattie, Fletcher and Spencer had the ear of both the National and Labour parties while ACT and New Zealand First respond to and agitate the fears and desires of the low level remnants of New Zealand capitalism, such as farmers, tradies, landlords and franchisees.  The sort of people who in thrall to the banks, pollute waterways, build leaky houses using cheap migrant labour, run a MacDonalds takeaway restaurant or charge exorbitant rents on shoddy houses.  The serious capitalists of our times, people like Sam Morgan (Trademe) Rod Drury (Xero) and Peter Beck (Rocketlab), only last half a generation before selling out to the forces of global capital.  Should it come as a surprise that the politicians follow suit?  On all the big issues Peters, Seymour, Luxon and Hipkins will sell their country down the river to the big players in Canberra, London and Washington.  On other matters they perfectly imitate the typically dodgy lower orders of New Zealand capitalism, the scammers and the rent-seekers.  The Treaty Principles Bill is a scam supported by just that class of bottom feeding capitalist.  The Regulatory Standards Bill is just as bad.  It turns capitalism into a protection racket, pure and simple. “You must pay us not to do you harm” is the audacious principle of the Regulatory Standards Bill and the new mantra of our “property owners” aka colonial capitalists. This new principle overturns and supersedes the already problematic basis of neo-liberalism “You can do whatever you like so long as you do no harm to others” and thereby makes a farce of the whole neo-liberal ideology.

The newly expanded second tier of colonial capitalism consists of people who don’t want to pay tax, because, unlike Spencer, Fletcher, Wattie et al, they have no direct access to the holders of political power.  These small capitalists can be of use to the politicians, but the politicians are little help to them.   Therefore they seek “less government”.   And as capitalists of small stature, they are unable to see over the top of the grass.  They know they depend on their customers and suppliers.  They see a need for a police force when a bunch of adolescents steal their ute and use it to smash through the plate glass window of the vape shop down the road.   But generally they fail to see their dependence on the institutions of state which provide the health, education and housing necessary to the maintenance of a labour force and which through welfare benefits keep the destitute classes from breaking out into uncontrollable random acts of violence.  Their view into the future does not extend past next month’s bank statement and therefore they are blind to the social consequences of political actions.  Colonialist capitalism has been hollowed out to the point where beneath the heavy hand of foreign capital which controls the commanding heights of the economy (banking, insurance, large retail, transport, forestry and so on) there is only this diverse assortment of scammers, rent-seekers and tradies with tunnel vision.  This socio-economic reality is perfectly reflected in colonialist politics as if in a mirror, and New Zealand First as the political expression of “national capitalism” displays all the hallmarks of second tier colonial capitalism – the only tier to have survived the structural changes brought on by the Lange-Douglas government.

Sometimes people ask “What has happened to Peters’ “economic nationalism” now?  Where has it gone?”  The answer is that it has missed the boat.  Out of the Lange-Douglas transformation New Zealand domestic capitalism reverted to strictly colonial capitalism.   Foreign capital took back the commanding heights of the New Zealand economy and any new enterprise which reaches a certain level of success is quickly sold off to foreign buyers.  Thus colonialist capitalism degenerated into capitalism without heart or soul.  It became nothing more than a way of making money (yes, capitalism can be guided by values other than making money. But not colonial capitalism).  Lacking a heart, colonial capitalism also lacks a sense of decency and morality.  It became corrupt, and then went on to corrupt the colonialist political system.  Sadly, Winston Peters has personally succumbed to the colonialist regime’s inexorable descent into political and economic corruption.