GUEST BLOG: Dave Brownz – WHERE IS AOTEAROA/NZ GOING?
If we believe the leader of the opposition, Aotearoa/NZ is going “backwards”. Certainly as a neo-colony of China and the USA, Aotearoa is going backwards so long as it remains subservient to the big powers. Both China and the USA are only interested in extracting surplus value from NZ workers and working farmers as part of the global contest between the current hegemon and the challenger, China. The solution is to counter this cataclysmic backwardness by the forward motion of the working class, all those who produce the value syphoned out of the country by imperialism, and to expropriate that value and use it to build a socialist Aotearoa.
The NZ capitalist class is a comprador class serving as the agents of both the USA and China to manage their respective interests. Both have significant capital invested in the production of value in NZ as a source of surplus-profits/rentexpropriated from productive workers and small farmers that are sucked offshore. As the global economy faces worsening slumps, pandemics and global warming, both competing big powers are forced to pressure NZ to join their camp against the other.
As the cold war ramps up into a hot war in Ukraine and threatens to become a new world war, NZ is in a lose-lose situation. To support one camp is to make an enemy of the other. It cannot maintain any pretence of ‘independence’ since the economic nationalism of the First Labour Government was junked by the Fourth Labour Government. The war in Ukraine is the first big test of NZ loyalty. The US is demanding that NZ become part of the extension of NATO in the Indo-Pacific to meet the “challenge of both Russia and China…”
At a recent NATO meeting the non-NATO countries Korea, Australia, New Zealand and Japan were specially invited. The NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg made it clear why. “Beijing has decided to support Russia and question the right of countries to self-determination and to choose their own path…China must be made to pay the price for supporting Russia”.
Heather Conley, head of the German Marshall Fund think tank, said: “This is now for the U.S. one Eurasian theater. We’re looking at the challenge of both Russia and China long term in similar ways. We’re going to have to have a NATO that prioritizes collective defense for Europe while at the same time being able to build greater partnerships and bridging mechanisms to our Indo-Pacific allies.”
There we have it. A/NZ is caught up on the rush to WW3 for Eurasia that continues the “Great Game” that led to WW1 in 1914. The Ardern Liberal-Labour Government has already made its decision. It has jumped on the warmongers’ bandwagon to impose token sanctions on Russia. It has already signed up to an ‘enlarged NATO’ in the Indo-Pacific that will be used to make make China pay for supporting Russia in the war with NATO in Ukraine.
NZ sucks up to the jingoist Boris Johnson who sends weapons to Ukraine and partners with the US and Australia in AUKUS against China. Meanwhile the working masses in Ukraine, Russia, and increasingly the world over, will be sacrificed in this war and the ones that follow as cannon fodder. We need an international workers United Front that is capable of stopping these wars through direct action against their own ruling classes, putting an end to the rotten capitalist system.
End imperialist war with socialist revolution!
Workers, refuse to fight for your ruling class!
Mutiny against your officers and fraternise with those you are ordered to shoot!
Turn imperialist war into civil war!
Turn you guns against you own ruling class!
For an Independent Socialist Republic of Aotearoa!
Dave Brownz is TDBs Guest Marxist, because every left wing blog should have a guest Marxist.
“Workers, refuse to fight for your ruling class!
Mutiny against your officers and fraternise with those you are ordered to shoot!
Turn imperialist war into civil war!
Turn 2022 into 1922!”
No, I added the last line because Dave had failed to carry his rhetoric to its absurd conclusion.
Dave if you want to start a civil war go right ahead. But don’t stand on the side line yelling for others to “mutiny” and “turn imperialist war into civil war”. Marxists are great are urging the working class on to bloody revolution, but when the balloon does go up more often than not make slink away muttering that “the objective conditions are not right for revolution at this point in time”.
“Civil war” is another name for class war. We don’t have an open class war because only one side is fighting – the bosses. Economic war; propaganda war; cyber war; and shooting war all express the inevitable escalation of economic war into bloody killing wars.
All the attacks on workers in this class war are to prevent workers as a class from ending the rotting capitalist system which cannot exist without bloody reactionary wars.
According to Geoff its OK for NZ workers to go and kill other workers for the benefit of their ruling class. Because, you know, “bloody revolution”.
Two world wars proved that millions of workers died as cannon fodder so that their ruling classes could increase their global control. But, you know “bloody revolution”.
A third world war is beginning in Ukraine. Again workers are conscripted into armies to fight one another so that either the US and its allies or Russia and China can win and continue to take us down the road to extinction.
Should we fight back and end capitalism. No says Geoff. Because… “bloody revolution”.
“According to Geoff its OK for NZ workers to go and kill other workers for the benefit of their ruling class.”
The fact is that I have always counseled our people not to engage in colonialist or imperialist wars, and not to serve in any capacity in the colonialist military.
Because colonialism and imperialism are wedded to violence, we do need to have a capacity to defend ourselves and others against their depredations but should never be the ones to initiate violence.
We can all consciously choose not to be capitalists, which is the first step towards ending capitalism. No interest on bank deposits, no kiwisaver, no shares, no rental properties. The self-emancipation of the working class doesn’t start with bloody revolution and need not end in bloody revolution.
‘Consciously choosing not to be capitalists’- I like that.
“No interest on bank deposits, no kiwisaver, no shares, no rental properties.”
I like that slao.
We are being forced away from our natural state as gardeners and pastoral artisans by the clever leverage of our need for hope. Hope which we are not allowed to grow in our own gardens and parks because well, Andre Litlle. (soz)
Our organic, natural and God given planet, our garden, is being mined, suctioned and scraped of all that is biological material, and that is us! While we are mesmerised with shiny tech and false paradigms the real treasure, which is us, is ripped from the earth in little bags sorry I can’t give details
Our only hope is to cling to the earth, not send ‘lethal aid’ of bombs, AVs, rocket launchers, flak jackets, field watches, drones and baby formula to destinations most questionable. This is not Putin’s war. This is Jens Stoltenberg’s war, which will kick him up another notch to head the World Bank.
While the hedge fund managers tinker with the timing on their watches we have to ask how many dimensions this unexpected and partially unexplained conflagration occupies. Think Tour of Duty blended with Descendants of Dracula meets Time-cops except not all timecops play for the same team.
In the words of the Bad Santa Grandma: “Have a muffin, dearie,”
very few consequential changes has ever come from politely asking for it..
Good article up until its last three foolish lines.
We ARE a NATO partner ,,,, a boot licking one maybe ,,, but a partner none the less.
Go check Nato’s own website ….
https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/photos_195458.htm
I have long called New Zealand, Aotearoa. It’s simply a beautiful name. It resonates with us as a people, a nation.
I’ve long supported co-governance. It is not a new idea to me. I grew up in an area with 92 percent of Pakeha people and I yearned for fair representation of all of our ethnic groups, including Maori and Pasifika.
For some on this thread to have the opinion that my perspectives regarding these issues was different a mere few years back, is simply wrong and it is ill mannered to assume something like that.