In this edition of Socialist Review we celebrate two anniversaries: twenty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe and ten years since the Battle of Seattle.

It's not just in your pay packet that you will feel the pinch. National is preparing to pare back the public service - to hack away at health and squeeze education. Not that Labour would have done any different if they were faced with this dilemma. Even in the boom years while profits soared, the privatisation of education continued apace. School fees were normalised and student fees rose year on year.
The "social wage" includes roads, rail, TV, radio, parking, libraries, galleries, buses, parks and so much more. Freely available facilities and services save working people thousands every year. Tax ensures businesses pay a share of the load. Cutbacks on the social wage are attacks on the living standards of all.

This issue is available as a PDF: here

Change we can believe in

A lot of things have changed in the world since the last issue of this magazine. New Zealand has had a change of government, America has had a change of president; but much has also stayed the same: Israel is still laying waste to the Gaza strip and the world economy is continuing its tumble into recession.
This issue of Socialist Review is about change: the change that has happened with changing faces in politics at home and abroad, the change that can happen in Palestine, in Afghanistan and in the rest of the Middle East if workers there unite to overthrow imperialist ambitions in their region, and the change that must happen in the working class in New Zealand and around the world if we are to protect ourselves from the economic crisis, and more crises in the future.

This issue of the magazine can also be downloaded as a pdf: Download (2.7Mb)

On Thursday, August 22, Cadbury workers in Dunedin were hit by what the ODT called a “bittersweet bombshell” the loss of 145 jobs, or a quarter of the workforce over the next two years.
“Bittersweet Bombshell” sounds like the name for a new line of confectionery – chocolate-coated strychnine, perhaps. This new round of redundancies, following the loss of around 1400 jobs over two years, 700 in the last four months alone, is certainly a poison pill for the city.
Cadbury, the ODT, the Dunedin City Council, the Labour Party and even the trade unions all agree that the bitterness of the redundancies is sweetened by the promise of $51 million worth of spending on equipment.
Local job losses

You can download this magazine as a PDF here: Download (4.7Mb)

A decade of shallow economic recovery looks like it is coming to a messy end, as the cheap credit that fuelled an international housing boom dries up.

Weakness in the US economy has become obvious as a record number of homeowners faced foreclosure on their properties in May. To make things worse, food prices around the world have increased drastically.

In New Zealand, companies are closing factories. Dunedin-based PPCS Ltd., the nation's biggest meat processor, said in April it would shut two abattoirs and fire 604 workers. Fisher & Paykel Appliances Ltd. announced at the same time it was closing its Mosgiel dishwasher manufacturing plant, with the loss of 430 jobs. Dunedin’s Tamahine Knitwear sacked a further 50 workers when it shut down in April.

In the United States, the Democratic party (and its big business backers) is choosing whether Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama will get the chance to run for president. After two disastrous terms under George Bush, a Democrat presidency looks increasingly likely. In New Zealand we are also facing an election “choice” between the openly pro-business National Party, which is increasingly lurching right, with law and order proposals (sending young offenders to boot camp) that are designed only to push an already overloaded prison system into chaos and a Labour Party that unleashed anti-terror police on children and old people in the Ureweras.

Anticapitalist special edition

 On 6 October many of the world's rulers will be attending the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Brisbane to discuss ways to further the agenda of privatisation and free trade. Just a few days earlier at the Commonwealth Business Forum in Melbourne some of the world's richest bosses will be meeting to try and launch a new round of trade negotiations ahead of the next World Trade Organisation (WTO) summit in Qatar.

Labour Alliance, Greens - Business as usual?

When Labour, Alliance and the Greens won a majority of seats in the 1999 election, we were all happy to see National and ACT out of power. National dominated governments had ruled in the interests of the rich throughout the 1990s. And National and Act were promising to take the New Right policy agenda much further...

It is clear that the Coalition Government is about launch a further wave of attacks against workers, students, beneficiaries and the health and education systems. We need to know what they are planning on doing, why they are doing it, and how we can fight back.

In the 1990s there is far greater anger about the failure of capitalism, and the Labour and National governments that manage it, to deliver the goods. The reality for workers, beneficiaries, Maori and students has been falling incomes and rising debt. Most recognise that the New Right policies of Labour and National have only served to benefit the small wealthy minority that rules our society. But most also thought that New Zealand's first MMP election would bring about real change.