International Socialists

"The most left-wing government anywhere in the world in the last 25 years."

Yeah, right.

 

The noxious former Nat Party health minister Simon Upton, who wrote that line, as well as some Labour enthusiasts might like to kid themselves that this has been some kind of radical left departure from the last 18 years of New Right economic and social policy disasters. But sadly both are wrong.

 

An overview of the Labour/Alliance coalition's major policy areas highlights this.

 

 

Labour and the Alliance in government: The reality

 

 

Education

 

 

Health

 

 

Foreign policy

Social spending

• Spending on health, education and housing has increased by several hundred million dollars - but - taking inflation into account, social spending has effectively stood still - and is even less than the increases National implemented in the late 1990s.

 

 

Industrial relations policy

• Nothing caused more howls of indignation from the right than the Employment Relations Act. But, as we argued at the time, the Act was intended, like much of the current government's policy, to adjust rather than reverse anti-working class policies. The ERA has not led to a massive strike wave - but it has strengthened the power of union officials over rank-and-file union members. National's newly released industrial relations policy now promises only minor changes to the ERA , showing the ruling class's real lack of concern over the industrial relations "revolution."

 

 

Nationalistaion

 

 

Tax

 

 

Overall policies

Overall it is clear that the policies of the present government, far from representing a clear break from the last 18 years of New Right attacks and a return to traditional social democratic ideals, are in fact designed to further consolidate and cement in place the neoliberal agenda. The government has tinkered with, not fundamentally reversed, these policies. Far from dismantling any of the cornerstones of the past two decades' attacks, Labour and the Alliance have actually entrenched them still further.

 

 

Alliance disintegrates

The sad spectacle of the Alliance tearing itself apart is a classic example of the basic problems every reformist government has faced - and therefore how ultimately they are doomed to fail. Once in power, the Alliance MPs found themselves under the same pressures all reformist politicians come under.

 

The Alliance repeatedly supported Labour when it voted against progressive legislation introduced by the Greens, such as the bill to reinstate the Emergency Unemployment Benefit for students unable to find work over the summer.

 

When Jim Anderton left the Labour Party in 1989, he took with him thousands of the best left-wing elements - the party's activist core. Today, the activist base of his new Progressive Coalition is a bunch of former Social Creditors.

 

But it is very important not to see the Alliance's failure as being the failure of individual politicians. The reformist road has and always will be a dead end.

 

Writing about the attempts of early socialists to transform Australia's Labor Party at the end of the 19th century, Verity Burgmann wrote:

 

Labor socialists who neither left in disgust nor ceased to be state [ie parliamentary] socialists, displayed a remarkable ability to find excuses for each betrayal and to assure themselves that, with a slight change in tactics in internal party politics, with getting the numbers on this vote or that, with the defeat of right-wing Labor MPs at pre-selection battles, betrayal would never again happen. The whole process happened over and over again in this period, and is still going on today.

 

 

Who to vote for?

So, if these betrayals are inevitable, why on earth should revolutionaries still call for a vote for a reformist party like the Alliance?

 

Well, basically for all the same reasons that we have in the past.

 

Firstly, we recognise that what a tiny group like the ISO says isn't going to actually effect the election outcome. But, there is a layer of people around us - our contacts, new members, regular magazine readers and website users - who do believe - either as active members or supporters of the Alliance - that reformist parties can bring about the things they claim to stand for.

 

Because of this, we want to show that we're not sectarian and we don't just stand around criticising reformists. By getting involved in real struggles and standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Alliance activists, by calling for a vote for the Alliance, we can start to have a dialogue with an increasingly disillusioned layer of people around the Alliance who could potentially be won over to revolutionary politics.

 

Secondly, socialists have always argued that the best way to dispel illusions in reformism is for people to see the behaviour of those parties in practice. Nowhere can this been seen more clearly than in the sad case of the Alliance! Unfortunately, because there is no realistic alternative to the left of the Alliance, most of their disillusioned former left-wing members are likely to either drop out of politics altogether, or switch support to the Greens.

 

But the Greens - despite having some policies to the left of the Alliance including opposition to the war - aren't a realistic option. The Greens, although they have many good activists as active members and although they have taken some principled stands in parliament, are not an alternative for socialists to vote for. As we argued in the last issue of our magazine, the radical veneer of the Greens - represented by the likes of Sue Bradford and Keith Locke - will, in the end, get sold out by the middle class substance of the party. The Greens are made up of a contradictory combination of young supporters and those who want to fight for workers' rights and the environment and a middle class core of professionals and small  business owners.

 

If there was a much bigger revolutionary organisation in Aotearoa, with real roots in workplaces, working class communities and social movements, it would be possible to present a genuine alternative to the reformist politicians and union officials. It is at times like this that illusions in a major reformist party are so completely shattered that such an organisation could draw in many former Alliance members by winning them to our ideas. By relating to mainstream left politics now, rather than standing on the sidelines criticising, we can try and build the basis of an organisation that is big enough - and has the political clarity - to win disillusioned members of reformist parties to socialist politics.