International Socialists

Does it Matter for the Left?

Alf King

STRANGE AS it might seem today, in the early 1990s the Alliance seemed ready to topple the Labour Party from its perch as the major opposition party. In the first MMP election in New Zealand in 1996, the Alliance won 13 seats in Parliament with just over 10 per cent of the total vote, and in 1999 they won 10 seats with 7.7 per cent of the total vote. These results are in stark contrast with those of the 2005 election where they received a miserable 1600 votes – 0.07 per cent of the votes cast.

Does this precipitous decline in support have any significance for the left in NZ? Does the survival of the Alliance even matter for the left? Some on the left would say that it doesn’t, arguing that the Alliance represented social democratic reformism, at best, and misled people into thinking that capitalism could be reformed via the parliamentary road to socialism. Such beliefs, some would argue, divert people from true revolutionary struggle.

I disagree with this argument, especially in the current political environment in which levels of struggle are low and support for many forms of progressive politics seems muted. I would argue that the low vote for the Alliance signals that the audience for genuinely socialist and even softer left wing policies is small at present. For surely if people cannot even support the moderate reforms proposal put forward by the Alliance this is an indication that our more radical ideas would find it hard to gain traction.

If the Alliance was getting 10 per cent of the vote that would mean that there was a much larger group of people with whom we shared some common viewpoints – thus providing the basis for some forms of joint campaigns. In addition, the presence of a sizeable pool of Alliance supporters would increase the number of people who may be attracted to socialist politics.

So while we should not be involved in attempts to revive the Alliance we should be ready to work with its members and become involved in joint campaigns to promote policies designed to make the world less friendly to capitalism and more friendly to workers.