GUEST BLOG: Dave Brownz – Rogercomic: the socialist Aotearoa that might have been…
It was an alliance of most to the left of the Labour Party that was formed to fight Rogernomics, but which dissolved around 1989 with the formation of New Labour.
The Fourth Labour Government, elected in 1984 faced a threatened capital strike unless the Government balanced the budget and introduced neo-liberal reforms. Roger Douglas was the monetarist Minister of Finance under Prime Minister, David Lange, both of whom feature largely in this story as the perpetrator and enabler of the radical right-wing reforms introduced between 1984 and 1990.
Rogercomic is an alternative history which develops what might have happened in Aotearoa if a socialist revolution had come to power and put the leaders of the treacherous Labour Party on trial for their attacks on workers and oppressed in the service of national can international capitalism.
For those who think that history is bunk and the lessons of the past are passe, they may find that this comic teaches them something new about Aotearoa.
It may also help convince them that the parliamentary road is permanently blocked to all those who need and want a better society and that the alternative socialist future is both necessary and possible if we are to have any hope in the survival of the human, and many other, species.
Dave Brownz is TDBs Marxist blogger.
1000% Dave more power to this cause.
It is high time we came out to reclaim our country from these sellouts!@@#$%^&*()_+@!#
SIR Rogercomic if you please!! As in Sir John or Dame Gwynyth Balderdash.
And if you can’t cope with that, it can be abbreviated with a syllabic camp sounding ‘essss’. As in ssssssJonky or ssssssRodja….or if re-erected: ssssssssBull.
It’s good – but though Malthus was a rightie, Adam Smith wasn’t – his Theory of Moral Sentiments was behind a lot of the reforms that put England well ahead of the rest of Europe in progressive terms at that time. When you read Burke confessing to having been moved to tears by a theatrical performance in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, you are seeing a claim of virtue based in sensibility – the sensibility Smith recommended as a virtue – the sensibility that Douglas, Thatcher and Friedman utterly lacked.
Sorry mate, look forward to the Mighty Adam Comic.
Cemetery: I totally agree that we cannot follow the path of Russia,China,North Korea, and Cuba. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat that morphed into a dictatorship of an elite is certainly not a prescription that I would sign up to. I am supportive of a totally democratic socialism that is absolutely more democratic than what we have now.The news media would need to be absolutely free and without bias. The economy would be run for the benefit of all , not just for a wealthy elite. No one would be very rich or very poor.There are finite resources available in any country, and a small group of individuals cannot be allowed to owned more than is reasonable.This of course would not be very attractive for John Key and Gareth Morgan , who would have to disgorge their millions. Peter Thiel would choke on his caviar. The inheritance of wealth would be a thing of the past.No more rich family dynasties. A meritocracy where individuals could earn more, but only within certain parameters. Does this sound so bad!?