Editorial: Change we can believe in PDF Print E-mail
Tuesday, 03 March 2009 11:39

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.
After nine years of failure to deliver on promises to improve conditions for working class New Zealanders, the Labour Party lost the general election last year. Labour no doubt are secretly delighted to have left office just as the global economic crisis hit. Within a year or so, no doubt, Labour politicians and campaigners will be talking about the good old days under Helen Clark. But as Socialist Review has consistently shown, Labour are no friend of working people. What poor reforms they did offer - like Working for Families - were made possible by an economic recovery and, worse, were overshadowed by the massive profits made by the richest New Zealanders. The combined wealth of the Rich List New Zealanders increased faster under Clark than it did under the previous National Government.

Differences between NZ and US

John Key and the National Party ran on a platform of change, and did their damndest to leave it at that. Their victory was not an endorsement of their policies, but rather a repudiation of Labour and its pro-business orientation.
In the US, Barack Obama also ran on a platform of change. But this was backed by a grassroots movement bigger than anything seen in the US for decades. But Obama was the candidate of big business, breaking all records in election spending, and in the White House he will preside over a vast state machine that's intertwined with capital in countless ways. He'll be commander in chief of armed forces that are occupying two countries - Iraq and Afghanistan - and supporting Israel's war on the Palestinian people. Without continued pressure from the support base that got him elected, it is this reality that will shape Obama's policies.

Nightmare in Gaza

In the Middle East, Gaza has been plunged into a living nightmare as Israel's war on Palestinians claims more victims every day - men, women and children alike. This is the end logic of a racially-based state. Israel claims to be a democracy but at the same time it is has to be a Jewish-majority state. This is substantially the same as South Africa, which claimed to be a democratic white state by creating barbed-wire compounds they called Bantustans or homelands. This racist logic is a deathtrap for the Jewish people. The only way forward is to fight for a democratic, secular, non-racist state for Jews and Palestinians.