International Socialists

MMP promised a radical change to New Zealand politics. Yet we now have an even more right-wing goverment in power.

Editorial Comittee

MMP promised a radical change to New Zealand politics. Yet we now have an even more right-wing goverment in power.

Why has nothing changed under MMP?

In the run-up to the first MMP election there was a widespread expectation that the new electoral system would bring about real change.

In the twelve long years from 1984 to 1996 the fourth Labour Government, and the National Government which followed it, implemented policies that benefited the small wealthy minority that rules our society.

Everyone else - workers, students and beneficiaries - suffered wage cuts and poorer working conditions under the Employment Contracts Act, rising university fees, debt and pathetic allowances, and benefit cuts in order to help make the rich even richer through massive tax cuts.

The effect of all of this was to increase inequality in New Zealand at a faster rate than any other advanced capitalist country during the 1980s and 1990s. By 1994, according to the right-wing Economistmagazine, New Zealand had become the third most unequal advanced capitalist country behind Australia and the US.

It was this, combined with the lies and countless broken promises of both Labour and National, that created unprecedented anger and disillusionment with New Zealand's system of government. A majority (53.9%) voted in favour of a change to MMP in the 1993 referendum because they thought that if the electoral system was made more representative then governments would be forced to act more in accord with what people wanted them to do.

Anti-Asian racism

This didn’t happen. Yet again politicians promised one thing before the election and delivered something else after it. This time the biggest liars were in NZ First. Anti-Asian racist, Winston Peters and his “corporate warrior” cronies, built support through the racist scapegoating of Asian immigrants for problems such as unemployment, hospital waiting lists, education cuts, and the alienation of Maori land.

NZ First said that Asians were taking “our” jobs, using “our” schools and hospitals, and buying up “our” houses and “our” land. In all of this Winston Peters failed to point out that as a former National Cabinet Minister he himself had helped to create the problems in these areas. In reality these problems have not been caused by immigration but by the tax cuts for the rich, wage & benefit cuts for the poor, policies introduced by both Labour and National since 1984.

And not all Pakeha have been involved in land rip-offs - it is the government, capitalists and farmers who between them control the overwhelming bulk of the total land area and fisheries.

NZ First also campaigned on an anti-big business, anti-National platform. Winston Peters initially built popularity through highlighting the extent to which New Zealand's biggest companies were engaging in enormous tax scams to avoid paying tax, and then consolidated this through racist attacks on Asians and rhetorical attacks on National.

This political bullshit undermined support for the Alliance which had failed to consistently denounce Peters as the racist that he is. It also obscured the real cause of the major problems that we face – capitalism.

Capitalism and democracy

The system that we live under - capitalism - centrally involves the exploitation of workers by capitalists. We produce the goods and services, they accumulate the profits. This exploitation is only possible because as workers we are systematically excluded from real control over our workplaces, the allocation of resources, social institutions like schools, hospitals, and universities, and government.

This fundamental lack of democracy is at the absolute heart of capitalism. It can not survive as a system unless the majority of the population who work for a living are subject to the authoritarian dictates of the boss, the manager and the politician.

The parliamentary swindle

It is obvious that in most areas of society there is no democracy. But this does not matter, our rulers tell us, because there is democracy in parliament. We get to elect who governs us every three years and if we don't like what they do when they are in power we can throw them out at the next election.

Now most of us know that this doesn't work. Despite the fact that the overwhelming majority opposed the New Right policy agenda, Labour and National both adopted and implemented this agenda. And despite the fact that 51% voted for parties which presented themselves as anti-National (Alliance 10%; Labour 28%, NZ First 13.4%), National was kept in power by NZ First.

In the weeks following the election in October 1996 a National Business Review opinion poll showed that 63% of NZ First supporters opposed a coalition with National and that a similar majority wanted NZ First to enter a coalition with Labour. But this did nothing to stop Peters from forming a coalition with National in order to land himself the Deputy Prime Minister spot.

Karl Marx aptly summed up the situation when he described parliament and elections as a "democratic swindle." As the American revolutionary socialist Hal Draper put it, for Marx parliamentary elections constituted a swindle because representative democracy is a form of democracy which prevents genuine democratic control from below.

At first glance this isn't very clear. The point is that parliamentary elections appear to be democratic when in reality they function to exclude the majority from participating in government. Just think about the way the system works.

First, it involves electing a small number of representatives to rule on our behalf (predominantly wealthy, white and male). Once they are elected they can do what they like for 3, 4 or 5 years (depending on the country in question). We have no way of recalling them if they fail to represent us. In short, elections act to exclude the majority of citizens from direct active participation in government.

Second, in order to fund expensive advertising campaigns parliamentary parties need money and the overwhelming bulk of this money comes from big business. Labour, National and Act all received massive corporate funding compared to the Alliance prior to the last election.

This made it easier for National to emerge as the dominant party, for Labour to re-emerge as the dominant party to the left of National, and for Act to get over the 5% threshold to gain eight seats. And it made it extremely difficult for the Alliance to get its message across, despite the undoubted popularity of many of its policies amongst the working class.

Big business pays, and in politics it generally gets what it pays for - governments that act in the interests of the ruling class.

Third, within parliament itself power is heavily concentrated in Cabinet. In fact major decisions tend to be made behind the scenes by Cabinet Ministers in conjunction with top-ranking bureaucrats (particularly those in Treasury) and business leaders.

Fourth, the real power in society lies outside parliament. The key decisions about our workplaces and the allocation of economic resources are made behind closed doors in the boardrooms of the big companies. Company directors and chief executive officers (CEOs) decide whether or not we will have a job next week, whether, when and where new investments will be made, and so forth. We have absolutely no say in these decisions whatsoever. Indeed, the entire society outside parliament is generally organised in a hierarchical and authoritarian manner (the only significant exceptions being within some working class organisations).

Why socialists are for democracy

Our society is riddled with inequalities of class, gender and ethnicity. Unemployment, hospital waiting lists, housing shortages, falling real wages, less employment security and poorer working conditions, pitiful welfare benefits and poverty, dearer power and phone bills, violence: these are the realities we face in our daily lives in capitalist society today.

In the day-to-day struggles socialists argue for more democracy within our own organisations and movements. Why do we argue for more democracy?

Experience has shown that those unions which are more democratic are more effective in defending and advancing their members interests. For example, the Engineering Union is one of New Zealand's least democratic unions and it is also the least effective. It has staged countless sell-outs of the workers it supposedly represents and has consistently failed to generate agreements as good as those obtained by the more militant and more democratic unions affiliated to the Trade Union Federation. In contrast to the Engineers, the Seafarers Union successfully defeated the attempt to deunionise the Cook Strait Ferries in 1994, and has secured much better contracts for its members since then. This is because the union has a long history of rank-and-file militancy and democratic decision-making through regular paid stop work meetings.

And when Maori, women or students are fighting, the most successful movements and campaigns have been those which are most democratic. For example, the fees campaign at Otago involving mass occupations each year from 1993 to 1996 has been built through regular meetings of activists in the Education Action Group in which the major decisions have generally been made by the majority involved. The direct participatory involvement of everyone involved in organising a protest is central to the success of that protest.

Strikes and protests are essential to defend our interests within the system. But because the system operates to benefit a small minority of wealthy rulers at our expense, there are ultimate limits to our day-to-day struggles. As socialists we argue that there is no solution to the big problems we face - inequality, unemployment, poverty, sexism, racism - as long as capitalism exists. In order to create a society in which there is genuine equality, democracy and freedom we have to get rid of capitalism through a revolution.

A revolution is a movement of the immense majority, acting in the interests of the majority. These mass largely spontaneous movements throw up new forms of democracy - workers' councils or soviets. It is the workers' councils which form the core of the new radically democratic workers state.

As British socialist John Molyneux argues: "the reason that we can predict this role for workers' councils is not that it has been laid down in tablets of stone by Marx, but that every workers' revolution, and every attempted workers' revolution in this century, has created such bodies or the embryos of such bodies. The first workers' council or soviet, as it was called, arose in St Petersburg in Russian during the 1905 revolution. Later examples are the Russian soviets of 1917, the workers' councils of Germany in 1918-19, and the Central Workers' Council of Budapest in 1956. Examples of embryonic councils are the factory councils in Italy in 1919-20 and the cordones in Chile in 1972."

Workers councils govern every level of society from workplaces, to schools hospitals and universities, to the democratic institutions of the workers' state itself. Society itself becomes fully democratic. And once society becomes democratic it is possible to end class exploitation and inequality, women's oppression and all forms of racism.

This is the future socialist society that we must fight to build in order to eliminate inequality, exploitation, crisis, and war. And that is why we want you to join the International Socialist Organisation. We need you to help us build a democratic organisation fighting for a democratic world.