The Extinction Of Rebellion
JOHN MINTO IS RIGHT, New Zealand needs nothing more urgently than a mass movement committed to ending the wealth crisis. He is right, too, that those who can have a moral duty to do something about the obscene maldistribution of wealth in this country and across the planet. Nor would I quibble with the list of those we cannot and/or should not rely upon to intervene – i.e. the principal economic and political beneficiaries of wealth inequality, and political parties. As John says: “only a broad, well-organised people’s movement will be able to end the wealth crisis.”
Where I suspect John and I would part company, however, is over the question of whether a “broad, well organised people’s movement” is any longer achievable in the New Zealand of 2023.
John reckons it is. He cites the people’s movements of the past as proof of what can be achieved when New Zealanders get organised – and then get active. Certainly, the broad mass movements he cites: women’s suffrage; halting sporting contacts with apartheid South Africa; opposing the war in Vietnam, abolishing conscription, outlawing discrimination on the basis of sex and sexuality; declaring New Zealand nuclear-free; were all successful in achieving their aims. Unfortunately, all of John’s examples peaked around four (or more) decades ago.
The only appreciably younger mass movement I recall achieving its objective is the early twenty-first century campaign to keep genetically-engineered organisms out of New Zealand. There were others – most notably the mass movement against the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and the mass movement against the Trans-Pacific Partnership – but they did not achieve their objectives.
Some may object that I have left out John’s reference to the 1975 Māori Land March, and the protest activity at Raglan, Bastion Point and Ihumatao. (To which I would add the impressive hikoi against the Foreshore & Seabed legislation of April 2004.) My reasons for doing so turn on John’s use of the crucial qualifier, “broad”. Māori have been successful in achieving a great many of their political, economic and cultural objectives, but these have, perforce, been sectional victories: “by Māori, for Māori”. As such, they do not fit John’s paradigm of the mass movement extending across class, race and gender boundaries to engage the broadest possible cross-section of the New Zealand population.
It is precisely the immense difficulties encountered by those attempting to surmount the barriers of class, race and gender identity that leads me to question the practicality of John’s appeal for a mass movement against the wealth crisis. The “Occupy” movement which swept across the English-speaking world in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-09 serves as a tragic test case for whether “broad, well-organised people’s movements” can any longer be constructed.
Certainly, it is difficult to imagine circumstances more conducive to the formation of a mass-movement against the obscene maldistribution of wealth than the GFC. Nor is it possible to fault the inspired slogan of the “1 Percent vs the 99 percent”. If any formula could generate unity across the broadest possible cross-section of society, then including on your side of the barricades everyone except the tiny group of super-exploiters memorably referred to by President Theodore Roosevelt as “the malefactors of great wealth” should have been the formula to do it.
And it did do it – briefly. Those who rallied to the cause, expecting to find an organisation with a clear statement of aims and objectives, a constitution, elected leaders, and sections dedicated to communications, fund-raising, and keeping the thousands of people eager to get involved in “Occupy” occupied, found something else entirely.
Occupy’s originators, activists drawn from the many manifestations of what people call, for want of a better description, “identity politics”, had no intention of building a movement on the organisational principles of the Boy Scouts of America. There were no elected leaders, speechifying was frowned upon, and rather than applaud or cheer, people were encouraged to wave their hands in the air – but only after they had “checked their privilege”.
Entirely unsurprisingly, most of the people encountering this brave new world of intersectional anarchy turned around and walked the other way. The authorities, initially terrified of this burgeoning political movement, received the reports of their informers and very soon realised that it posed no threat at all. They waited until the Occupy gatherings were reduced to a fractious remnant of their former selves, and then sent in the pepper-spray, tear-gas and billy-clubs to, once again, make the world safe for the 1 Percent.
Occupy made it all the way to New Zealand, but its fate here did not differ substantially from its fate everywhere else around the world. The political praxis of identity politics, its extraordinary disintegrative power, made the organisation of any kind of credible threat to the status quo impossible. Ruling classes, throughout history, have always understood the effectiveness of the “divide and conquer” strategy. In the aftermath of the GFC, however, the “1 Percent” were astounded to discover that its deployment would not be necessary. The “Left” (or what passed for it in the 2000s) was doing it for them.
It is interesting to note that the mass movements cited by John conform neatly to the mode of mass political interventions listed by historian Michael King in his Penguin History of New Zealand. He mentions the visits of America’s President Johnson in 1966 and Vice-President Agnew in 1970. He covers-off the angry reaction to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, and recalls the student protests against the installation of the US Omega spy navigation system near Blenheim. Mentioned, too, is the mass campaign to “Save Manapouri”.
Missing from John’s and Michael’s lists, however, is any reference to the organiser of the 1960s’ and 70s’ most impressive demonstrations: the biggest and broadest mass movement of them all; the trade unions. Certainly, one of the largest demonstrations of the late-1960s and early-1970s coincided with what was effectively the half-day general strike of 12 May 1970 which shut down most of the capital city’s industry and infrastructure. On that day, tens-of-thousands of workers and their families gathered outside Parliament to protest the soaring cost of living.
In the thick of that massive gathering was CARP – the Campaign Against Rising Prices. Formed in 1966 in Auckland, and 1967 in Wellington, CARP was a radical outgrowth of the Housewives Association. It was spurred to action by the abolition of government subsidies on key food items such as bread and milk. Led by the wives of trade unionists from both the private and public sectors, CARP became a household name for the best part of a decade, and a thorn in the side of both National and Labour governments.
New Zealand’s working families are again experiencing severe cost of living pressures. A movement dedicated to easing those pressures, organised by those most directly affected, and unafraid to take their message directly to the powers-that-be, would be a most welcome development.
Except, of course, the New Zealand of 2023 is not the New Zealand of 1966-67. A Housewives Association would be laughed off the political stage in 2023. It is also true to say that the sort of working-class communities that gave birth to political organisations like CARP, no longer exist. Poorly-paid wage-workers by necessity, de-unionised, ill-housed, isolated, with those forced to live outside the workforce under the constant surveillance of the state’s welfare agencies, the working-class women of today would find in difficult to even conceive of such autonomous and uncompromising interventions.
Although, to be fair, they would probably find it easier than the Council of Trade Unions!
It’s hard to mount a sincere fight against the wealth crisis when your union boss is taking home a six-figure salary. Hard, too, to construct a “broad, well-organised people’s movement” when those same people are immediately divided into their respective identity groups, discouraged from indulging in excessive individual assertion (i.e. leadership) and forbidden from applauding it.
Much and all as I agree with John, that a mass mobilisation against the malefactors of great wealth is what we need, I cannot see how it could be done.
I remain transfixed by the tragic image of all those revolutionary hands refusing to come together.
They’re not waving, John, they’re drowning.
You can only push down on a coiled spring by a certain distance. It isn’t possible for 90% of the population to be continuously ground down forever, without some kind of eventual reaction.
The early signs of mass discontent were the sudden rise of Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. We are now going through a global strike wave, where suddenly Railwaymen’s Union secretary Mick Lynch has become a household name.
What has been exposed so far is the disorganisation of the working class, and the resulting lack of progressive political leadership. Organised labour is, these days, just not that organised — and much too dominated by the liberal political machine.
90% ground down? A bit high Kristoff. From my observation trickle down has worked for a good many. Comfortably well off, employed often in well paid jobs and discretionary spending, less now if you have a mortgage. But, yes, for many increasing difficult and for some that sinking feeling. But not 90%.
First, they came for the 1% because they were too successful…
Fear is the greatest motivator, when things get bad enough people will unite probably under whoever has the loudest voice although that does not necessarily mean that it will be a good thing.
NZ fast-tracks citizenship for high-value immigrants to build their dooms day bunkers in Queenstown and wants their super yachts to come here for yet another refit and tax breaks for movie makers. Then the reason CEOs get paid millions is that if we didn’t pay the worldwide rate they will go elsewhere, yet, we will not apply the same argument to nurses. Then John Key sold the power companies to his mates or the pretext of providing better social services, and now his rich mates are getting fatter and the benefits to the taxpayers didn’t eventuate
Let’s not forget the Black Lives Mansions movement that were allowed to protest under lockdown.
Somehow it was for kiwis to protest police brutality in the USA.
Huge success.
Virtue was signalled, covid spread and the founders of the movement siphoned off millions of dollars on property.
All protest is good protest. Killing people for misdemeanour crime particularly black people. When a white Australian female was shot dead by U.S. police the Australian foreign minister was straight on the phone. Black Americans don’t have the luxury of representation. So they grab onto whatever they can grab in a greedy selfish oppressed and scared nation.
The neo liberal state, the atomisation of the collective into grasping or alienated individuals, the ascent of post modernist “anything means anything” philosophy, the dissipation of the hard left, a class collaborationist central labour organisation, the NZ preponderance of the petit bourgeois and reactionary self employed, are obviously formidable obstacles to new mass movements.
The impact over the next decade of the generational power shift has not been factored in by many grey beard pundits. A generation has been raised knowing little of the previous analogue and pre Rogernomics world. So the answers and action will be likely be way different from what old school leftists might have wished for.
But defeatism is not acceptable now, anymore than it was in slave, feudal, or colonial societies “ooh we better not do anything because the inquisition will get us…” Peoples resistance and technological advance always arise in the end.
As Bob Dylan is reputed to have said to Hunter Thompson–“we may not be able to defeat the bastards just yet but we don’t have to join them!” Never say never in politics is a wise truism.
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
― Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
I don’t think NZ’s biggest problem in government is a lack of money – there’s plenty of cash to create more and more consultants and committees in government, after all and pay for near million dollar new builds for a select few Kainga ora tenants.
What is more ominous is that formally non political state agencies and civil servants who are supposed to be non political are going woke, and putting woke political theories such as critical race theory, at the forefront while getting rid of anybody who does not agree. This is against the tenant that NZ public servants should not be political and neither should our education system.
From the UK – same problem -while this whistleblower got a settlement, growing lack of freedom of speech into political ideology sweeping public service in the west.
Sacked civil servant wins £100,000 after reporting ‘Whitehall activism’
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/sacked-civil-servant-wins-100-000-after-reporting-whitehall-activism-qzfj338bh
“A sacked civil servant has received a £100,000 settlement after she reported concerns about political activists operating in Whitehall and expressed her belief that people cannot change sex.
Anna Thomas, 32, had said that political activism was infiltrating the civil service and cited the dissemination of critical race theory in the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).
Thomas, formerly a work coach at a Jobcentre in Portsmouth, tried to raise the alarm about resources for staff, including an exercise asking employees to “assume” that they were racist.”
Can mātauranga Māori help us understand climate change?
https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2023/05/30/can-matauranga-maori-help-us-understand-climate-change/
Puberty blockers etc are being pushed into the syllabus. However anybody reading what is really going on with NZ youth would be thinking one of the biggest problems is now anger management – the more they are taught about identity the more angry and mentally ill NZ youth seem to be getting. It is destroying NZ youth and no wonder NZ students are now truant in record proportions – they increasingly know that what they are learning is gobbledegook.
Oranga Tamariki’s cruel critical race theory finally wears down Pakeha Foster Family
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2023/03/21/oranga-tamarikis-cruel-critical-race-theory-finally-wears-down-pakeha-foster-family/
Note Oranga Tamariki also allowed this child to be beaten with a hammer as she was in their parents care, maybe because the mother is fluent in te reo, who knows? Does not bode well when tamariki are allowed to be abused by parents as state agencies release back to abusive parents, and the ideology about critical race theory and te reo is more important than stopping abuse.
Mother who beat child, hid injuries under face paint fails to reduce jail sentence
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/mother-who-beat-child-hid-injuries-under-face-paint-fails-to-reduce-jail-sentence/UZ77UQ6U2FG3FIB4HGGCGJIMXQ/
“At the time, the girl was 9 and subject to a custody order placing her under Oranga Tamariki, but was in her mother’s day-to-day care.
Court documents state the woman had hit the girl repeatedly on her body, punched her repeatedly on the lip and hit her on the head with a hammer.
The girl’s injuries included extensive bruising from head to toe, a nasal bone fracture, cuts on her face, a cut and swollen lower lip and multiple abrasions.
The woman did not seek medical help for the girl but put her on the flight, dressing her in a long-sleeved turtle-necked top and applying thick face paint to hide the injuries.”
“A Napier mother in jail for punching and hitting her daughter with a hammer, and then trying to hide the injuries under face paint on an Air New Zealand flight, has failed in a bid to have her sentence reduced.
The woman went to the Court of Appeal, trying to introduce new evidence about the impact that colonisation and intergenerational violence had on wāhine Māori and their ability to care for whānau.”
Bonnie. Fear can also immobilise people, and in the workplace, particularly a government workplace, there are numerous ways of getting rid of people who stick their necks out and thus get dubbed troublemakers, including by fellow workers.
Downtrodden people can be too occupied with day-to-day living to have the time or the energy to consider their own interests, or to know how to. Most parents though will leap into action when their children are under threat, or victimised, but again, they don’t always know what’s going on. The disgraceful dumbing down of the education system, and it’s infiltration by damaging ideological interests is case in point here, and the only certainty is that the scoundrels who enable this, won’t be the ones who fix it. This is another reason why both Labour and National need to go.
To what extent could you ever get a mass movement that would substantially change the wealth and income distribution in New Zealand? It is worth noting that New Zealand sits in the middle of the OECD in that regard. At one stage we had just about the flattest wealth distribution in the OECD, but that was over 40 years ago, pre the 1984-87 reforms of Lange and Douglas. Income distribution is essentially the same as it was 30 years ago. Wealth distribution has become somewhat more unequal due to property and share value increases over the last 20 years.
Martyn says there are 3,100 people who are ultra wealthy with $50 million or more. In reality that is 3,100 families, which is about 0.1% of all families. I personally would question whether someone with $50 million is ultra wealthy. Obviously wealthy, yes, but to me ultra wealth denotes at least the low hundreds of millions. Super yachts and all of that.
There are about 3 million families in New Zealand. One percent is 30,000. Rashbooke says the entry point to the 1% is about $7 million. A family with a reasonable house in Epsom, a beach house and a rental or two qualifies. So do about two thirds of all full time farms.
Martyn also includes another 10% as enablers of the 1 % and the 0.1%. Of course a large percentage of that 10% will get into the 1% as they become older and accumulate more assets.
Another way of looking at this is that nearly a quarter of National’s and Act’s support base fit into these various wealth categories. In fact it will be more than a quarter, probably at least a half. Basically just about all farmers, small to medium business owners (including tradespeople with 1 or 2 employees), plus a significant number of urban professionals. In wealth terms, basically in the top 20%.
Wealth is age related. The twenty somethings don’t own as much as the fifty somethings. But they may have the same aspirations.
What is the point of of this analysis? It is not the 99% against the 1%. It is much more like the 50% against the 50%. In short, the democratic contest between the Left and the Right.
Yes! Finally the percentages have some meaning.
Ah I see, you don’t understand that Martyn has two different arguments going at once.
1. Genetics is a very important factor in determining a person’s future success, this can be a bigger factor than the environment he or she grew up in.
2. Despite this, sometimes people with very similar environments and identical genetics turn out very differently. Statistics are only useful when applied to groups, not individuals.
Also it’s kind of silly to say the distribution of wealth is irrelevant to the debate of wealth inequality isn’t it? You’re completely missing Martyn’s point. He’s not saying wealth distribution is irrelevant, I’m saying it’s not his argument, which was primarily about income distribution.
The problem with all your numbers is that it doesn’t take into account the educational and experience disparity between government employees and the private sector. The studies that took into account those factors concluded that the bureaucrats bureaucrats total compensation is roughly similar to the private sector.
In reality, labour’s share of income has actually risen over the past few decades in nonfinancial sectors. The reason for the greater inequality and increasing capital’s share of income in the overall economy can be attributed solely to sector shift towards financial services.
Personal motivation is a facet of your personality. It cannot explain everything with genetics and environment, since you can place two identical twins in the same exact environment and end up with two very different personalities.
You’re also avoiding Martyn’s point, which is that your genetics has just as much if not to do with how you ended up as your environment. The famed Dunedin studies are very good examples of this. Students who went to shitty gang infested schools ended up with the same grades, test scores, and had the same high school attendance rates as students who went to wealthy schools. Their unify trait? All of them applied for the better schools but only some were admitted(using a lotto).
For the more statistically challenged. Wealth have risen but not at the same rates as income. The 1% just got better at preserving thier wealth. The perception of young people is “your rich, whaaaaa. I want some for free.”
This is why we should have finishing schools and boot camps. Your daddy got you a promotion? That’s nice, now let’s see you defend that right on the fields of battle.
You sure are right Chris, the problem we have is the PMC have ringfenced the ‘high ground’ and not believing in democracy have emerged as the arbiters of who gets what.
Maori and unemployed – decolonise and throw money at it, no matter how effective or absurd the recipient, stateless trans activist fear grifter, bend over backwards by offering citizenship and free transitioning surgery, poor, vulnerable white males burn them to the ground, throw in a bit of performative weeping and rending of garments and then forget about them.
It doesnt matter what label these people put on themselves (Left, progressive, indigenous etc) they are all pigs at a trough. Literally – what used to be known as ‘Champagne socialists’. Typical cases in point. Highly paid long time union boss admits he has rental property (S)? for his retirement (What’s wrong with that you ask, the 35% extra cost on housing the average family has to pay due to the presence of speculators in the market) and, the Waipereira Trust who is merely a commission agency (so doesnt do anything except award contracts) is paying its 15 Senior Managers around $390K on average.
How can any of these people have the right (or the brass balls) to say they represent the downtrodden? You can sit there and say well you woud do the same in their place. But that’s where the pedal hits the metal, some have been there and not done it because they honestly believed in what they were doing.
Can you imagine Norm Kirk stacking up a beach lodge and a few rentals? No. Because at one point, many of us did have principles that went far beyond enjoying the fruits of our privilege and it used to be that the prerequisite for political office was to care about the country and it’s people and not about the power and wealth it would bring. Because make no mistake, our politicians and leaders are almost all ‘to a man’ about themselves first and the people second. Or in many cases, their virtuosity second and the people third.
Sadly Chris is right, intersectionality has terminated any collective togetherness and it will now be through only the direst of circumstances that we will come back together. Either economic collapse or worse still, some kind of civil war brought about by the deep divisions being created by the authoritarian muppets in our halls of power and their friends the PMC. It will take an existential threat to make people move together and none of the options are good.
Throughout the world laws are being made to curb these eco terrorists who exibit their anger at life under the guise of saving the plant. zThe only want us to exist on their terms.
Fantail, can you please explain what PMC means? The closest explanation googled is Private Military Company which doesn’t fit with your (i’m sure) very cogent comment. Selfish though I am, 30 seconds on your part will save me 10 minutes of guessing. Thank you for your trouble.
Professional, Managerial Classes ie: those who think they have the education and power to make decisions unilaterally for the other 90?% Particularly, middle and senior governmental, quango and other workers who see their role as setting standards and direction for the rest of us.
Chris do you think the wealthy think they are beyond the borders of the common or working folk? Could there ever be an uprising now the neo liberal agenda is so deeply ingrained in society? (I think part of this agenda was setup to protect the powerful from the people) I f u think there has never been an uprising in a western country since those times. Interesting read. Thought provoking.