memes such as this distort the realities on the ground

This article, by Fightback member Ian Anderson, is a reply to Jessica Ward’s article Iceland: Become Part of the Heard (here).

This article is not a criticism of the people of Iceland, it’s a criticism of the way their story has been told. Globally circulated articles and memes have made extraordinary and only partially true claims; that Iceland’s constitution was rewritten by the people, that they have deposed their government, that they’re undergoing a total economic revolution.

For example, Jessica’s article claims that “members of parliament as well as the bank directors are being tried for their crimes against the people.” While it is true that some bankers have been jailed, members of parliament were cleared of charges.

In his speaking tour, Hordur Torfason conceded that parliamentary capitalist order had largely been restored in Iceland. However, he said that the movement had raised “awareness.” While awareness is important, critical thought is necessary to developing revolutionary consciousness and activity.

While the people have won concessions, the capitalist government of Iceland remains intact. As explained in an earlier Fightback article, (Iceland’s “peaceful revolution” – myth and reality, http://tinyurl.com/cu694hy) parliament was restored to power and is now directing the constitutional process. The right-wing parties have regained influence and may win in 2013, according to supporters of the constitutional process (http://tinyurl.com/cjkwm6x).

Narratives of a “peaceful revolution” prevail. Torfason underlines that movement leaders intervened to stop protestors from clashing with police. However, police have inflicted violence on protestors. There is no such thing as a peaceful revolution.

The capitalist state in Iceland retains a monopoly on violence. The police, and the army, hold the arms and enforce capitalist domination. When previous revolutions have not addressed the capitalist state’s monopoly on violence, they have been drowned in blood.

In Chile 1971, Salvador Allende was the first Marxist to be elected to national presidency in a capitalist state. Chile saw sweeping nationalisations and social programs, under the slogan “The Chilean way to socialism.”

In Chile 1973 however, a military coup led by Augusto Pinochet, and backed by the West, restored full state power to the capitalist class. Over the following years Pinochet’s government killed and disappeared thousands of dissidents. This is why Venezuela’s Chavez said of the Chilean revolution: “Like Allende, we’re pacifists and democrats. Unlike Allende, we’re armed.”

Right now throughout most of the Western world, non-violent civil disobedience makes tactical sense. In Aotearoa/NZ, we are nowhere near seizing power for the people; the Icelandic people may have come closer to this goal, but they have not achieved it. We must not lie to ourselves. If there is any chance of the masses holding democratic socialist power, this will mean overthrowing the capitalist state.

Daphne Lawless

Why does the New Zealand state own for-profit companies, anyway? We’re taught at school that the purpose of state ownership is to enable economic planning and fulfil social welfare functions. But the State-Owned Enterprises of today aren’t doing any such thing. In the last month, we’ve had announcements of at least 1000 jobs at Telecom, while Solid Energy have cancelled the $10 million in funding they provide to West Coast communities (to compensate for the ongoing despoilation of their environment).

Meanwhile, especially since the government abolished its Charter, Television New Zealand certainly has no public service character which distinguishes it from its commercial competitors. And with power prices for working families going through the roof, we certainly don’t get any benefit from state ownership of power generation.

The justification for the state hanging on to these large corporations is to keep them in “Kiwi” hands, and to pay the state a dividend on their investment. New Zealand has had a history of failed privatisation – both Air New Zealand and our national rail network had to be taken into public hands after being run down by their new private owners.

Why, then, are the National government so insistent on the part-privatisation of Mighty River Power, in the teeth of mass opposition? And why are they throwing a fit at the Labour/Green plan to bring in a “single buyer” of wholesale power? To understand this, we have to understand the real motives for the corporatisation and privatisation of state trading assets.

Corporatisation and privatization

We are almost four decades into a slow-motion crisis of capitalism. The old Keynesian-interventionist consensus was based on the government, as collective capitalist, using its economic leverage to expand opportunities for profit for the  capitalist classes. This “picking winners” and “demand management” approach is now strongly associated with the Muldoon government of 1975-84 – which happens to be the era when the strategy ran out of steam. All the government investment and administrative diktats in the world couldn’t make the New Zealand economy profitable in the era of the oil shocks and “stagflation”. What was needed was a new way for government to guarantee private sector profits.

The 1984-90 Labour Government pacified the left and the union movement with “social liberal” reforms on women’s rights, Tiriti o Waitangi issues, homosexual law reform and the anti-nuclear stance. This left them free to take a neoliberal machete to traditional models of welfare and public service. The old Keynesian consensus was dead – in particular, the idea of the State sector as a “sponge” to absorb excess labour from the market was doomed.

Labour politicians like Richard Prebble went around the country screaming about the amount of people employed by the railways and the state forestry service to do not very much. But this was always a social welfare issue, rather than a simple issue of business inefficiency. “Make work” schemes, money-losers though they be, encouraged social cohesion and passing on of skills from one generation of workers to another – they were also a payback to the unions for allowing real wages to be eaten away by inflation. [Read more…]

Fightback is endorsing the Aotearoa Not for Sale national day of action against asset sales, on April 27th 2013. The day of action has already been endorsed by the Council of Trade Unions, Unions Auckland, Unite, the Mana Movement, Occupy and Socialist Aotearoa among others.

“The government is set on asset sales despite opposition from 80% of the general population, and 90% of tangata whenua,” says Fightback member Ian Anderson. “We cannot take this passively, or vote and expect capitalist parties to represent us. We must fight in the streets, in workplaces and communities, to take control of assets.” Fightback supports full nationalisation of assets under community control.