GUEST BLOG: Ian Powell – David Seymour and the political left

If there was a ‘most prolific blogger while still being consistently thought-provoking’ award it would be hard to beat Bomber (Martyn) Bradbury and his The Daily Blog (TDB).

His writing is turbo-charged and opinionated but underpinned by powerful compassion and a strong sense of both justice and outrage towards injustice.

For me he has been an acquired taste. It took a while and had its moments, but the acquiring proved to be a fascinating journey with the taste acquisition destination reached.

I have also appreciated that he republishes my health system (Otaihanga Second Opinion) and politics (Political Bytes) blogs in TDB.

Turbo charged Bomber Bradbury asks serious questions to be addressed

He doesn’t pull his punches. Occasionally he misses his target but more often he succeeds. He never leaves one wondering what he means. More importantly he invariably raises serious questions which deserve to be addressed.

A recent case in point was his 3 July post concerning the challenge of ACT leader and current Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour to the political left in Aotearoa New Zealand: Can the left beat David Seymour and ACT.

There are few questions more politically pertinent than this. As Bradbury observes, Seymour has, since 2014, taken ACT from less than 1% to, depending on which poll, a little under or over 10%.

However, I have two points of disagreement – TDB’s comments on ‘woke’ and what it means by being leftwing.

‘Woke’, identity politics and the absence of nuance

TDB attributes in part David Seymour’s and ACT’s relative electoral success to the left allowing itself to be distracted by what it calls “middle class woke Identity Politics”.

I discussed this disagreement over ‘woke’ in an earlier post (9 October 2023): Structure and superstructure.

Layered and interactive structure and superstructure better explains relationship between identity and class politics

I considered Bomber Bradbury’s then published views on ‘woke’ too blunt and lacking nuance. Instead I advocated that identity and class politics are better understood in the context of the relationship between structure and superstructure.

My criticism was that his argument:

…counterposes economic discrimination and oppression to its other forms; it’s either class or identity politics! This approach ignores nuance, complexity and layered relationships.

In fact, these politics have overlapping layers. The use of the terms ‘structure’ and ‘superstructure’ are helpful in this respect.

In this context the structure based on the mode and relations of production. Class is defined by its relationship to this production mode.

The superstructure, on the other hand, incorporates the various belief systems and ideologies that help rationalise what people do and think (and why), including the law, education systems and religion.

This superstructure also includes other forms of discrimination and oppression such as race, sex, sexual orientation and transgender. Sometimes it also includes religion.

They exist in a largely capitalist world. But they aren’t products of capitalism. They existed in earlier forms of class societies for centuries.

It is legitimate to locate them in a superstructure but with an important qualification. To differing degrees, they interact with the underlying structure. Sometimes it is to the extent that it becomes difficult to differentiate.

It is these ‘superstructural’ forms of discrimination and oppression that get labelled as identity politics.

The point is not so much the label but whether they are counterposed to class discrimination and oppression or run alongside it, sometimes reinforcing and interactively.

A word that should never have been invented

A year later (13 April 2024) I discussed ‘woke’ in the context of a wider discourse on sectarianism: From French Revolution to ‘woke’.

I concluded by observing that:

In my view the word ‘woke’ should never have been invented….Politics in New Zealand would benefit from a healthy debate on the relationship between class and identity politics. I regard them as interconnected and supplementary rather than opposites.

Bomber Bradbury’s argument about ‘woke’ would be strengthened by dropping the term completely (leave it to the political right; it’s their political plaything) and instead articulate a more nuanced narrative about identity and class politics.

Time to draw upon wisdom of CLR James

He could take a leaf out of West Indian socialist intellectual and cricket commentator CLR James’ ‘book’ who famously said ‘what do they know of cricket if cricket is all that they know’.

This could then be turned into ‘what do they know of identity politics if identity politics is all that they know’. This could be similarly adapted for class politics.

What is leftwing

My second disagreement is when TDB refers to the political left in New Zealand it means the Labour Party, Greens and  Te Pāti Māori.

Unfortunately most of the commentary in the mainstream media around leftwing and rightwing is along the lines that one is what the other isn’t; one ends where the other starts and vice versa. This becomes at best bland or meaningless and at worse absurd.

Even more unfortunately TDB is uncharacteristically consistent with this mainstream media paradigm.

I discussed this question well over two years ago in Political Bytes (30 April 2023): What being leftwing really means.

I said that:

One way of looking at differentiating between the political left and right is a continuum between collective responsibility and individual responsibility.

This leads into the role of the state and to questions over whether healthcare access and educational opportunities, for example, are a right or privilege to one degree or another.

…It isn’t a bad way of looking at what is left-wing and what isn’t. However, it is not enough. We can to better than this.

Being left-wing has to  be seen in the context of the material system that governs our daily lives. Today in New Zealand, and for the overwhelming majority of the planet, it is capitalism.

Wealth accumulation the main driver of capitalism

After discussing capitalism’s prime driver (limitless wealth accumulation) I observed that:

Being left-wing is about wanting to end, or even significantly curtail, the dynamic of wealth accumulation as a driver of societies. This might be through evolutionary or revolutionary means. But what it does require is transformational change.

Chris Hipkins leads a non-leftwing, non-transformational Labour Party with some collectivist impulses

There is a good argument that both the Greens and Te Pāti Māori are transformational (or at least significantly so) this can not be said of the Labour Party. Writing in the context of Labour then being in government, I commented that:

Transformational is what the current Labour Party in government is not. It is a political party not of the left but instead of social liberal technocrats with some collectivist impulses.

Social liberal values are good and the political left benefits from sharing them. In fact, many people on the political right also share these same values (or at least some of them).

In conclusion:

…social liberalism of itself does not transform a society which, more than anything else, has wealth accumulation as its dynamic.

…The political left needs to expressly differentiate itself from social liberalism in order to overtly focus on economic (as well as social) justice and protecting nature from the ravages of wealth accumulation.

If the term ‘left-wing’ is to mean anything other than not being right-wing or just having some collectivist impulses, then this needs to happen.

Bomber’s aim nevertheless deadly accurate

In his own expressive literary way, however, TDB is right on the mark in describing the effectiveness and interconnections of the hard rightwing Taxpayers’ Union, New Zealand Initiative and Atlas Network.

TDB is correct in identifying the high level of their lobbying power, particularly through social media describing them as a “…stable of astroturf organisations to generate lobbyist talking points camouflaged as the opinion of the people.”

TDB’s assessment of David Seymour spot on

Bomber Bradbury’s most telling point, however, is his assessment of David Seymour describing the latter as “… a philosopher before he is a politician and he believes in a far right libertarian economic platform…”

Elsewhere he has approvingly quoted leading Labour MP Willie Jackson who has described Seymour has the most dangerous MP in Parliament.

Again he is on the mark. The reason behind this assessment is that Seymour is a conviction politician; a hard right libertarian.

It does not mean that he isn’t contradictory. For example, whereas a libertarian might be expected to support small business, Seymour and ACT have a strong orientation to big business, including as donors, with all its consequential anti-libertarian monopolistic traits.

But it contrasts with the prevailing opportunism traits of both Christopher Luxon and Winston Peters. Opportunism allows the ability to bend and change somewhat; conviction much less so.

In Bomber Bradbury’s forthright manner he concludes:

The Left [sic] have underestimated Seymour for too long. They need to engage with him in a completely different way and understand they need to push back by offering better solutions and by defining him far more ruthlessly when they do attack him.

I agree although I would put it this way. The far right speak in slogans, the rightwing speak in sentences, the leftwing speak in paragraphs, and the far left speak in footnotes. This gives the political right a big advantage.

To counter this the political left (plus social liberal technocrats) need to express themselves in plain language sentences that are also translatable into good soundbites.

 

Ian Powell was Executive Director of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, the professional union representing senior doctors and dentists in New Zealand, for over 30 years, until December 2019. He is now a health systems, labour market, and political commentator living in the small river estuary community of Otaihanga (the place by the tide). First published at Political Bytes