MANA gets it right on Pacific migration

May 23, 2014 by
Many Pasifika migrants work in fruit-picking through the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme.

Many Pasifika migrants work in fruit-picking through the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme.

by Byron Clark.

Following questions directed at Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse from opposition MPs and media regarding a meeting with businessman and National Party donor Donghua Liu, who in Woodhouses words “had ideas about investor policies and his experience as a migrant coming in” Woodhouse rejected the idea that the meeting was controversial, claiming there were “hundreds of examples” of people who don’t donate to political parties who have access to him and other ministers.

The MANA movement responded by issuing a press release inviting the minister to make a house call “to discuss the matter of a struggling family of three children, one of whom has a medical condition which a medical expert said would be exacerbated in a hot Pacific climate and advised strongly against the child being forced to live there”.

Significant was the statement from MANA co-president John Minto: “MANA wants to discuss with the Minister why the government discriminates against Pacific people from Tonga and Samoa while it puts out the welcome mat for anyone from Australia – irrespective of skills or any other criteria. An Australian can get off the plane, get a job and no-one bats an eyelid but Tongan and Samoan people face demeaning discrimination to enter New Zealand.”

While locally there isn’t a groundswell of support for opening New Zealand’s borders to people from the Pacific, regional labour mobility has been a key demand of Pacific countries in the ongoing negotiations for a successor to the Pacific Agreement on Closer Economic Relations (PACER). “The reality is that without substantive commitments on labour mobility and development assistance, [Australia and New Zealand] will be the major beneficiaries of this Agreement.” Robert Sisilo, Lead Spokesperson for the Forum Island Countries (FICs) told the Solomon Star News on May 5th.

“We have three main demands on Labour Mobility, namely the legal certainty of the RSE and SWP labour schemes, removal of the caps or increasing the current numbers and to include employment sectors in which the FICs have a comparative advantage such as healthcare and construction.”

The Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme allows workers from a number of Pacific countries to come to New Zealand for fruit-picking jobs in the provinces. It was created in response to labour shortages. While under the scheme employers must give New Zealand citizens hiring priority, few citizens are moving to rural towns to take up the low wage work.

In many ways the scheme has been hugely positive for Pacific island countries, for whom labour could be considered an export, but workers who come here are at risk of the all too frequent abuses of migrant labour: underpayment of wages, violation of labour laws, substandard accommodation, and the threat of deportation if they complain about any of the above.

One ridiculous seeming example of the tight control RSE workers are put under is the actions following a group of Vanuatu workers entertaining people at a multi-cultural day in Nelson, this activity as well as busking at weekend markets were deemed to be illegal secondary employment, as the workers were only here to pick fruit. Presumably, these workers are not among Michael Woodhouse’s “hundreds of examples” of people who have access to him.

Giving workers from the Pacific the same rights in New Zealand as Australians would not immediately stop the abuses happening to RSE workers, but it would remove the threat of deportation and in doing so make it easier for those workers to join unions and have grievances addressed, at the very least it would mean no one stopping them from busking on their day off.

Taking the side of migrant workers is a principled stand in an election year where the Labour Party is hoping to ride a wave of anti-immigrant populism by talking of cutting immigrant numbers from the current 31,000 per year to somewhere between 5000 and 15,000. NZ First has gone further with policy to ban migrants from living in the major cities until they have been in the country for five years, and the Green’s have been largely silent on the issue. In this instance MANA is showing itself to be a genuine party of the dispossessed.

Filed Under: Immigration & Open Borders, Mana Party, Pacific

Copyleft: Marxism, the internet and publishing

May 20, 2014 by

copyleft

by DAPHNE LAWLESS

On 23 April this year, Lawrence & Wishart (L&W), publishers of the most well-known English translation of the Collected Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, issued a “take-down notice” to the Marxists Internet Archive (MIA – http://marxists.org). L&W demanded that MIA remove from their website all the works to which L&W held copyright.

Since the late 1990s, MIA has been a vital resource for activists, making the writings of Marx, Engels, Lenin and hundreds of other socialist and revolutionary writers available free online worldwide. US leftist Scott McLemee, writing in Inside Higher Ed, describes the website like this:

It makes available a constantly expanding array of texts by scores of writers (not all of them Marxists and some not radical by any standard) in an impressive range of languages, and all at no charge. The site draws more than a million readers per month. … More remarkable even than MIA’s long-term survival as an independent and volunteer-staffed institution, I think, has been its nonsectarian, non-exclusionary policy concerning what gets archived.

The reaction to this from socialists and radicals all over the Internet was immediate and outraged, including a petition with thousands of signatures. L&W claimed to be Vaguely Surprised at this, explaining that they would be selling digital issues of the Works to universities and public libraries.

“Income from our copyright on this scholarly work contributes to our continuing publication programme,” stated L&W. “Infringement of this copyright has the effect of depriving a small radical publisher of the funds it needs to remain in existence.” They accused protesters of being part of “a consumer culture which expects cultural content to be delivered free to consumers, leaving cultural workers such as publishers, editors and writers unpaid”.

But MIA spokesperson David Walters responded that this was missing the point:

We have a political difference with L&W … Removing [the Works] from generalized Internet access and bouncing [them] ‘upstairs’ into the Academy is the opposite of ‘maintaining a public presence of the Works.’ It restricts access to those having current academic status at a university that is subscribing to the service…

It is not public access. This is the opposite of the general trend toward making things available for free on the Internet … The MIA existed from the get-go because we wanted to open up the privileged, access-only libraries at universities… The history of the workers movement should in fact be ‘free’.

We’ve seen this argument before, in many different areas where zero-cost distribution of intellectual property such as text, video and music via the Internet is debated. On one side, the social benefits of free information for all who wish to use it; on the other hand, the rights of content producers – and copyright holders – to be paid for their “intellectual property”. Who’s in the right?

Copyright as relation of production

It’s interesting that Karl Marx, living in an era where the most advanced information technology was the printing press and the telegraph – anticipated this very question. In his Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy, he argued that “the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production”.

“Relations of production” means the social organisation of who works, who gets the goods, who gets paid and how much. New technologies lead to new relations of production, as the market and society rearrange to accommodate them; but then those new relations can hold back or strangle even newer innovations. One example would be how private cars and tarmac roads were initially a great advance on horses and muddy tracks, but the society which has grown to accommodate them holds back the next movement towards efficient public transport based on renewable energy.

In the Middle Ages, one copy of a 200-page book took weeks, even years, of work by monks and other professional hand-writers. With the printing press, a new copy can be produced and sold for maybe an hour’s pay. With the Internet, the PDF and the tablet reader, the cost of A copy of any book has been reduced to zero. Which means that everyone who made their living through the old technology must adapt to change, or go out of business – in the same way that the music industry has suffered over the last ten years.

The problem is that the “intellectual property” industry got very, very rich during the 500 years that the printing press was the cutting edge. One issue is the question of “copyright”, which is a classic example of a new relation of production. Copyright was developed 400 years ago so that authors had the sole right to decide who made copies of their work – for a period of 21 years after publication. But over the years, as authors increasingly sold their copyrights to capitalist publishing houses in exchange for a steady income, the industry pushed governments to extend copyright further and further, to protect their income stream.

Now, copyright lasts for the whole life of the author plus several decades – 50 years in many countries, 70 in the United States. That last extension was pushed by the Disney corporation, which dreads the day that Mickey Mouse will become “public domain”. Now Disney is notorious for patrolling the world to protect their copyright – for example, preventing preschools in New Zealand from painting Donald Duck on their walls.

No-one should be opposed to authors, artists, and musicians having their creative rights respected and earning a living from their work. But overwhelmingly the current copyright regime benefits not the artists, but the corporates who buy their copyrights from them. Walt Disney is long dead, so it’s hard to see why the corporation that bears his name should continue to “own” his work and characters forever. Copyright – a relation of production established to help authors – has turned into a means to expropriate their property to the benefit of publishers, such as L&W.

Hypertext

The “permanent” privatisation of written culture which the current regime establishes can only impoverish creativity worldwide – the “open source” argument isn’t just for computer software. In fact, the “free” culture of the Internet enables more value to be created from rearrangement of existing work.

For example, the problem with traditional academic publishing is that its method of linking texts together – footnoting and references – is extremely slow compared to the “one-click” links available on a World Wide Web page. McLemee points out that reading Capital – which was a product of its time and place, and written in a difficult style – may be hard work for a new modern reader, without the help of Engel’s commentaries on Marx’s work.

But these commentaries are packaged together with Capital on MIA in a way that they were not in the original Collected Works, or would be in L&W’s library proposal. David Walters in the MIA statement accused L&W of a “cognitive disconnect”, wanting to “destroy [the] enhanced functionality which MIA gave to the MECW material [by] embedding it with the writings of other Marxists.” In other words, L&W’s proposal would make the works less accessible and valuable, to protect L&W’s income stream from them – a classic example of relations of production holding back productive forces.

Prefiguring

McLemme argues, finally, that MIA “seems to embody what Marx himself identified as the goal of his work: a society of “freely associated labour”, in which everyone gives according to ability and receives according to need.” So this website, and by extension, other free digital cultural exchange sites, are perhaps an anticipation of a communist future. And it is against this that L&W – formerly the publishing house of the Communist Party of Great Britain – have decided to make their stand for private intellectual property. The irony is delicious, and yet tragic.

It’s hard to resist James Butler’s conclusion that L&W have been “stupider than a latter-day [King] Cnut, and infinitely more craven.” You’d be hard pressed to find a better example of how new forces of production create new social groups who revolt against the old relations. Butler stunningly refutes L&W’s plea on behalf of small “radical publishers”:

Radical publishers are a necessary evil, but they are not necessary in themselves, and no obligation exists to keep them running out of sentiment. If we accept the internet changes things, then the old models of radical distribution are likely to change profoundly.

It is this very “changing things” in the Internet era that L&W has tried to hold back. “Tried”, because, very soon after the controversy became public, the question became moot. The disputed Marx/Engels works suddenly “appeared” online in 50 PDFs for free download. L&W’s plan to sell digital versions of the works went up in smoke, in perhaps an hour’s worth of work by anonymous Internet forces.

Contrary to L&W, this isn’t a case of a parasitic “consumer culture” – on the Internet, everyone can be a producer and a consumer. Socialists who want to overthrow market relationships in the rest of society have a lot to learn from the new Internet commons.

Read more at:

Filed Under: Intellectual property

WGTN conference keynote: Elections and community struggle (featuring Hone Harawira)

May 16, 2014 by

hone mana

Opening night of Capitalism: Not Our Future, a conference on struggle, solidarity and socialism.

2014 is a General Election year for Aotearoa/NZ. The last General Election saw the lowest turnout since women won the right to vote. This year, Fightback will be supporting the MANA Movement, whose stated mission is to bring rangatiratanga to the poor, the powerless and the dispossessed. Are elections relevant? Do they change anything? Why do we participate in electoral work?

A discussion featuring:
Hone Harawira (MANA Movement).
Sue Bolton (socialist councillor for Moreland, Australia).
Heleyni Pratley (Fightback).

5:30-7pm, Friday 30th May
19 Tory St
[Facebook event]

[Click here for more information on Capitalism: Not Our Future]

Filed Under: Events

May 2014 issue of Fightback now online

May 12, 2014 by

may 2014 fightback cover

This issue of Fightback magazine comes out in preparation for our Capitalism: Not Our Future conference, to be held in Wellington over the first weekend of June 2014. Please check out the programme here.

 

If capitalism is not our future, what is? The bureaucratic states of Eastern Europe were a far cry from the endless possibilities of a post-capitalist future. But “the collapse of communism” means that it’s almost impossible for the average person to envisage any kind of future which doesn’t entail production for private profit, mindless consumption, and the steady erosion of both human civilisation and the ecosystem itself.

 

The Marxist answer is that the answer can’t be known in advance – it can only come about through the struggle of the working people. And this forms the centrepiece of this month’s issue. Auckland writer Dean Parker takes us through the history of May Day, the international working people’s holiday. Fightback’s own Ben Petersen discusses why we still need worker organisations today, while our comrades from the Committee for a Worker’s International (CWI) give a perspective on where the New Zealand union movement can go from here.

 

If there’s any part of modern society which shows clearly the truth of Marx’s insight that forces of production outrun relations of production, we can see it in the “digital economy”, where the increasing sophistication and speed of the Internet has meant a crisis of existence for the music and video industries. Fightback’s Byron Clark looks at why Kim Dotcom’s Internet Party resonates for so many people – even those who “can’t afford a computer”.

 

The “utopian” side of Marxism is further explored in the notes from a recent talk by Wellington Fightback member Joel Cosgrove on the nature of socialism. “Democracy, freedom and imagination” are not words that most people would have associated with the old Warsaw Pact nations. But they’re words which capitalism has taken and twisted, turning dreams of self-realisation into alienation and the massive accumulation of useless commodities. Socialists will have to re-learn this language to appeal to the digital outlaws and precarious workers of the 21st century.

 

Finally, we have a couple of snapshots of how hard the struggle for this better world is in the here-and-now. In Venezuela, a revolutionary government struggles against all odds to peaceably move to a post-market future, despite right-wing uprisings and corruption within the state. Meanwhile, China continues to push forward to becoming the dominant capitalist power on the globe – with its attendant costs in human misery and environmental catastrophe – while still claiming to promote “socialism”.

 

The fight for a post-capitalist future is therefore, in large part, a fight to determine what “socialism” means in the 21st century. If you’re interested in making that happen in the coming months and years, join us in Wellington on Queen’s Birthday weekend.

 

2014 May Fightback V3

Filed Under: Print edition PDFs

New Zealand’s Union Movement: A socialist perspective

May 9, 2014 by

maritime march

By Committee for a Workers’ International. Abridged version of a full perspectives document to be found here.

New Zealand employers are seeking to maintain their profits by increasing productivity. In most cases this means people working harder and faster for less money and fewer conditions. Very little is being invested by employers into research and development.

For example, in 2011 only 17% of businesses with 100 or more employees invested in research and development (R&D). Of the businesses with 50-99 employees only 13% of businesses invested, while just 10% of businesses with 20-49 employees put funds towards R&D. New Zealand employers prefer to continue their efforts intensifying the exploitation of the working class.

Since the onset of the crisis, employers lobbied the National government for industrial law changes which have been passed, including the implementation of 90-day work trial periods without rights to grievances for unjustified dismissal, the narrowing of the interpretation of unjustified dismissal, and the narrowing of prospects for reinstatement where a dismissal is held to be unjustified. Such measures are designed to make labour more flexible for employers and to further discipline working people for the employers’ needs.

Other changes, such as enabling the employer to require a medical certificate for only one day of sick leave (previously employers were only able to require proof on the third consecutive day), have the stated aim of improving productivity. They are also about increasing employer control over the workforce.

A range of changes have encroached more directly on union rights such as the tightening up of union right of entry to workplaces. This is now only with the permission of the employer and the burden placed on unions to prove an employer is being unreasonable by denying access.

The reintroduction of youth rates – “starting out” rates – will not impact on worksites where unions, notably Unite and FIRST Union, have written youth wages out of union agreements but it will increase the exploitation of thousands of young workers in unorganised workplaces.

The government also changed the review process for the adult minimum wage by limiting consultation to only the Council of Trade Unions and Business New Zealand. It has narrowed the factors that should be considered in the annual reviews by excluding social factors and wage relativity factors.

This is an attempt to send a clear message out against sections of the union movement, like Unite Union and the Service and Food Workers Union (SFWU), which have run Living Wage campaigns. Firstly Unite ran a campaign to have the minimum wage to be indexed at 2/3rds of the average wage, with an immediate increase to $15 per hour. Next, the SFWU has lead a public campaign which has got traction for a living wage which would allow for a decent standard of living and the ability for ordinary people to properly participate in their communities.

Due to the pressure of these campaigns both Labour and the Greens have accepted the need for a $15 minimum wage. If they do come to power in 2014 the claim for $15 which Unite pushed in the 2009 to 2010 period will be less relevant. Workers have moved on from the $15 per hour demand and organised low paid workers are now looking for considerably more.

If Labour and the Greens take power they may make some minor changes to the minimum wage, but against the backdrop of a fragile economic situation they will be under intense pressure from employers to ensure these changes are mere window dressing and that there are various factors that would allow employers to opt out. The only way a real living wage will be won will be via a union-led industrial campaign.

At an institutional level, the government has made the major change of merging the Department of Labour, the Department of Building and Housing, the Ministry of Science and Innovation and the Ministry of Economic Development into one Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment. This has set the tone for the function of the former Department of Labour to become more business orientated with the stated aim that “The purpose of MBIE is to be a catalyst for a high-performing economy to ensure New Zealand’s lasting prosperity and wellbeing…. We are working to support the government’s Business Growth Agenda.” The false idea of the prosperity of business being synonymous with lasting prosperity has been pushed by this government. But there has been no increased prosperity for ordinary people.

Lastly, the government is now in the process of passing legislation that will enable employers to declare that bargaining is frustrated and they will not be required to conclude bargaining. This is essentially removing the right of workers to a collective agreement. The International Labor Organisation (ILO) says the proposed legislation would contravene their principles. There has been a huge amount of union submissions so far, but the government announced in December 2013 that it is proceeding to the second reading regardless.

The trade union response to legislation changes

The main form of opposition to the changes has consisted of public rallies held after work hours, stopwork meetings, and legal action to secure the best possible interpretations of the changes. On some occasions union leaders made bold statements about mounting a more serious opposition, in 2010 for example one union leader said there would be “chaos in the factories” if the extension of the 90-day legislation to all workplaces came to pass. Unfortunately this sentiment was short-lived and the leaderships continue to be conservative on the question of strikes.

Clearly these new laws need to be challenged with industrial action. Public rallies held after hours and brief stop work meetings do not sufficiently impact on the employers profits and should be seen at best as a starting point to build towards more generalised forms of strike action. The role of socialists is to establish an organisation with the type of authority in the working class from which we can competently argue such basics.

The problem is not one of union resources or worker apathy. The problem is political, that unions have in large part become wedded to pro-market and capitalist ideas. The attachment of some unions to the Labour Party, which proposes no economic alternative to neo-liberalism, means that those unions don’t fight for a fundamental alternative to the system either. Without being tied to Labour’s politics, and by linking with other fighting organisations, these unions could play an exciting part in producing deep social change.

An increasing number of union and left activists have become de facto apologists for the conservative perspective in the bureaucracy by arguing that the economic conditions are not right for strikes or that there is not the right attitude amongst workers. Others say there are too few resources or not the right information. The truth is that most unions have plenty of resources and most workers respond well to campaigns that will improve their work conditions and living standards. The problem is purely political.

The bulk of union leaders today do not adhere to an alternative to capitalism. Such an alternative is the only thing that can provide relief and the necessary changes for working people.

What we need most is a new type of politics to dominate the union movement. This means a return to socialist ideas which provide a genuine political and economic alternative to the profit driven system. When people have a vision for a better type of society this translates into a more fighting attitude on the ground.

Therefore the task of rebuilding the union movement along fighting lines will be best done in combination with the tasks of building a serious socialist political organisation as well as a new workers party that can challenge Labour’s grip. These ideas will get the best reception from those who have the most to gain – the union rank and file.

Bosses seeking to undermine traditional sectors

During the last upturn, the employers sought to increase profitability by placing emphasis on increasing absolute surplus value. For example, in 2004 workers in New Zealand were working longer hours than in any OECD country except Japan. In more recent times however employers are now seeking to increase surplus value by further rationalising and flexibilising the labour process.

In particular, the employers in the traditionally unionised sectors want access to the flexibility and casualisation that exists in other sectors. This is what was behind the 2012 attacks on the conditions of meat workers throughout the country. It is also what is behind the attacks on port workers in Auckland – an ongoing situation where there is currently something of a stalemate.

The link between profitability and the recent attacks on meat workers shows the way in which the employers want to offload their profit woes on to workers. Beef and sheep still account for over 15% of New Zealand exports. The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry has stated that there have been profitability difficulties in the industry since at least 2009. In fact profitability issues for the meat sector go back decades, hence the decline in beef and sheep farming and exports.

The locking out of over 100 CMP company meat workers in the Manawatu area from late October 2011 to late December 2012 was followed by the locking out of over 800 AFFCO workers in several meat processing plants for more than three months in 2012. The lockouts represented a new level of employer hostility in that the lockouts weren’t started as retaliation to union-led industrial activity but were started to attempt to force union workers to accept deep cutbacks.

Talleys purchased the AFFCO plants in 2011 and were demanding more flexibility in the workplace. The company’s demand for greater flexibility was connected to its requirement for more control over the workplace. Greater flexibility is then imposed and used to increase exploitation and therefore squeeze more profits out of the workforce.

Many AFFCO plants are now antiquated. Instead of resolving efficiency problems through investing in plant and machinery to create state of the art workplaces, New Zealand capitalists have focussed on making the workforce leaner, making it work harder and faster.

At the Ports of Auckland Limited the employer attacks against the wharfies (stevedores), including lockouts, have been fundamentally about trying to reduce the conditions and power of workers in traditional union jobs and force them down to the flexibilised conditions of the broader workforce in New Zealand.

A TV report about the dispute, in January 2012, said that “Businesses say it’s a battle between old and new work practices” and Kim Campbell of the Employers and Manufacturers Association said, “I think it’s do or die personally, and that really is a serious matter.” The Auckland ports director told TV3 News that “Our singular focus is on addressing old-fashioned workplace practices that are a handbrake on flexibility and productivity.”

Essentially employers are now going after core industrial workers in an attempt to make those workers subject to the neo-liberal workplace conditions of job insecurity, work insecurity (less guaranteed hours of work), income insecurity, individualisation of bonuses and benefits and other elements of the neo-liberal work environment. When other parts of the workforce are unorganised and working in these conditions then the core workforce is more vulnerable to the types of attacks that are happening now.

In the stalemate at the Ports of Auckland the Maritime Union employment agreement has expired and the employer has attempted to gain traction for a scab union. This dispute needs to be seen as a wake-up call to the union movement. A setback for one of the most well paid and highly organised sections of the working class is a setback for all workers.

Service sector workers struggle for income security and job security

Care workers have also been struggling over the last two to three years with strike action taking place at the workplaces one of the country’s largest rest home companies. Additionally, in this period, the Service and Food Workers union has won an important legal decision which held that overnight stays must be compensated at the minimum wage. Unite Union has continued to progress and build amongst fast-food and cinema workers, and this included a long round of strikes and other actions at McDonald’s outlets throughout the country. As always the key demands of Unite members have been around secure work and guaranteed hours.

Key slogans for the workers movement

Service sector struggles are connected with the struggles of workers in traditional union jobs. The service sector campaigns are generally offensive campaigns against already existing casualisation and flexibilisation. The struggles at the ports and in the meat works were defensive struggles against casualisation and flexibilisation which the bosses have sought to impose.

In order to unify the struggles of the working class over the next period unions should adopt a general slogan along the lines of “Secure Work, Secure Hours, Living Wage”. Joint industrial action, across sectors, should be organised. This type of campaign would be the best way to win improvements to the minimum wage and give workers the confidence to challenge the existing anti-worker laws.

Industrial tactics

A feature of some industrial disputes of late has been the unwillingness of union leaders to blockade or put ‘hard’ pickets on workplace entrances to defend against scabs and to stop the supply chain. This is a concerning trend apparent during a number of recent disputes. There have been some situations where there has been a systematic allowance of scabs through the gates and the normal operations and supply have continued.

This is dramatically different to only seven and a half years ago when, in the National Distribution Union versus Progressive Enterprises dispute, key warehouses were systematically blockaded and flying pickets were established to stop the operation of make-shift dispatch centres with force. Similar tactics were used by other unions at the time. Socialists must fight for the restoration of militant tactics in the trade union movement. This is not a mere ideological point. With employers becoming more aggressive, militant industrial tactics are necessary.

See also

Filed Under: Union movement

Socialists and trade unions

May 9, 2014 by

bunny st mcdonalds strike unfuck the world

By Ben Petersen (Fightback – Wellington)

Socialists have a long relationship with trade unions. There are exciting chapters of history where socialists have led important working class battles, such as the fight for the eight-hour working day. Today, socialists will often meet in union offices and often will seek to involve unions in our campaigns.

This is not just a coincidence. The socialist movement has important contributions to make to the trade union movement, and needs to consider these organisations to achieve radical change.

Common ground

The socialist movement is a project for revolutionary change. Socialists want to overthrow today’s society based on exploitation, and build a new world where ordinary people have control over their lives and communities. The agent for this change is the working people themselves.

Trade unions are organisations for working people. Trade unions seek to organise workers in a particular industry (such as teachers, construction workers, or dairy workers). A trade union should then represent workers and their interests. Unions fight on the job for better pay and conditions, or for better legislation from government to protect workers or strengthen their bargaining position.

The overlap is obvious. Socialists seek to empower working people to change the world and trade unions are organisations for working people to defend their interests. Socialists participate in trade unions because they provide an important space to build an alternative.

Unionism is a living question

Often socialists talk about trade unions as a question of the past. Historical events are remembered and eulogised, but can be presented in a way that is divided from the present. It is important to remember the important events in union history, such as the great strikes in 1913 or the lockout of the waterside workers in 1951, but this is not to rote learn a historical narrative. Socialists study the radical past to learn lessons to build from today.

Radical unionism is not an identity. Radical unionism is not confined to particular historical periods or militant industries. Unionism is not confined to white men in overalls. The first strike in New Zealand was by Maori forestry workers who demanded to be paid in money or gunpowder, instead of in rations.

Some industries have long traditions of unionism, such as waterside workers and the West Coast miners. But today’s economy is much broader than these industries. There are thousands of workers in education and health care, or in service industries.

For socialist unionists, it is important to be part of building the unions in these areas. Capitalism is a system that serves to exploit. This exploitation changes and develops over time. Capitalism in Aotearoa today has important education industries, and a vast civil service that administers capitalism as a whole. To challenge capitalist exploitation, it is important for trade unions to be in all sectors of the economy.

When workers are organised they can exercise their collective power. A unionised workforce can therefore dictate the terms of their exploitation by going on strike or refusing to work for shit pay, work long hours, or in unsafe conditions. This process is a challenge to the authority of the capitalist system.

Reforms for revolution

Of course, socialists have a vision that looks much further than limiting the forms of exploitation that working people submit to. Any radical that is true to their ideals dreams of overthrowing capitalism and building a new world based on co-operation and social ownership. So for some, this can seem contradictory – if unions are fighting to reform and limit exploitation, is it really a place for revolutionaries?

Fighting for socialism will be a long and complicated process. Achieving a revolution will not be by simply convincing a majority of people that change is necessary, but by building a movement that makes change possible.

One of the challenges in fighting for revolutionary change will be a question of confidence. If working people do not have the confidence in their ability to fight and win a pay rise, do we think that working people can have the confidence to fight for fundamental social change? Winning these small gains can help to show oppressed people their collective strength, and only this strength can open the road to more fundamental change.

Even to be aware of this collective strength is not enough. The power of working people has to be organised and developed. To enable a world where working people run their own communities will need organisation. A socialist future will be built on participatory democracy. To make this democracy possible, working people will need the experience of participating in and organising their workplaces and communities. If working people don’t yet have the organisation to win a pay rise, it won’t be possible to have the organisation to run an alternative society and an economy to support it.

If socialists are serious about working class power, we need to understand that this will not just fall into place. It will need to be built.

Problems of unions

Part of the challenge is that this is not a simple task. The existence of unions is not enough. Many unions today are run by bureaucrats that are more interested in a cushy job than in working class power. Proportionally, wages have decreased for decades, but unions have failed to resist the slide. Failing to protect working people, the union movement has struggled to make itself relevant for working people today. Union membership has decreased to the point were as few as 7% of workers in the private sector are union members.

In many unions, the leaders are divorced from the workers that they are supposed to represent. Union officials often haven’t worked in the industries they nominally represent, and are on wages that are well above that of the industry they organise. Spaces for union members to democratically engage in their union are weak or non-existent. Unions have become ‘professionalised’, where the services of union officials replaces the activity of activists in workplaces.

Socialists support trade unions as organisation for workers to fight for their interests. Therefore, socialists do not support practices that undermine unions, and seek to challenge them.

The militant minority

Socialists support unions because we believe in the power of ordinary people. The role of a socialist in a union can be varied. Socialists will always try to be good unionists at their work, but this can take different paths, depending on a range of factors.

Being a union radical can mean assisting with initiatives in the union and building organisation for the next fight with the boss. It could mean opposing a rotten leadership and building rank and file networks to challenge entrenched bureaucrats. Sometimes socialists may work for unions to contribute to building the organisation as an official.

But always, radical unionists seek to build the capacity for the working class to fight against their oppression.

See also

Filed Under: Union movement, Work rights, Workers in Struggle

Democracy, Freedom and the Realisation of the Imagination – or ‘What is Socialism’

May 7, 2014 by

capitalism democracy

By Joel Cosgrove (Fightback – Wellington)
(Notes from a talk in the “Introduction to Marxism” series)

We spent last week talking about capitalism (a social/economic structure which is based on the production of things for profit). The flip side of a discussion of capitalism is a discussion of socialism.

Clearly this is an hour long discussion so I’m not interested in stating a definitive answer to this question. But I am keen to start a discussion, because to be honest, I’ve been a revolutionary socialist since 2005 and I’m still learning, still pondering this question.

Let’s start with three points to build a discussion around.

• Democracy
• Freedom
• Imagination

Outside of the fact that things are good grouped in threes (which we all know people work well with), these are points that I think are important within my conception of Socialism.

Democracy
First off, I think this is a useful place to start. I think we can agree that there is more than one idea of democracy, a word which comes from Dēmokratía – Demos being the Greek word for ‘people’ and Kratos meaning “power” or “rule.”

Bryan Roper, a member of the International Socialist Organisation in Dunedin, has written a great book titled The History of Democracy: a Marxist Interpretation. In it, he talks about the polarisation between Athenian and Roman democracy, and the way in which that difference has been reflected in the application of democracy over the centuries.

To grossly generalize, in Athenian democracy you had an environment where the people were compensated to take part in the democratic process. Even though, in Greece at the time, the “people” didn’t include women, slaves or foreigners, still it was definite progress.

With Roman democracy you had an environment where those who had the time or money could take part. So what you had is a democracy where the rich could take part and the poor had no way of taking part.

It won’t be much of a surprise to say which of these examples of democracy was generally imitated. It wasn’t until 1892 that MPs in Aotearoa were given an annual salary and it wasn’t until 1944 that MPs were considered to be working fulltime. Needless to say, the history of democracy is also the history of struggle for representation by the working class. It is no coincidence that the changes above came about in a period when the Liberal government was enacting progressive reforms in the 1890s and the first Labour government was bringing increased working-class representation.

Still, within this dynamic, the history of democracy has been a history of struggle against the dominant expression of it; namely, a Roman model that structurally excludes the poor/working class. I think we can see the same thing in current practice, where hundreds of thousands of people are disengaged from the political process.

I don’t think it is a big call to say that the democratic frameworks we have currently are a bit shit. Because in part democracy is about more than putting your hand up, casting a vote every three years. It’s the environment surrounding the act of voting which frames the level of democracy we engage in. I’m not going to engage in much depth with the issue of three-yearly voting in elections. But Parliament is a relatively powerless thing, when it has no real ability to engage in the question of what is made in and what quantity. Clearly though, we need a process that involves actual participation as opposed to token involvement.

Building on that, the real gaping hole is in the workplace; namely, the lack of democratic decision making. We spend most of our time in the workplace and yet we have little say over what goes on, on what is produced. We’re not going to get on top of issues like climate change without democratization of our workplaces.

If you look back historically at the Soviets in Russia, the Factory Councils in Italy and Spain, what links them all (broadly) is a direct link between the workplace and the political decision-making bodies. But there is also a direct democracy that gives people some collective control over their lives. These are the stories that have inspired me, examples of people taking control over their lives. Yet, for some people, the fact that the Russian Revolution didn’t immediately lead to everyone having a beach house and a pool to get a tan by is some sort of indictment of the experience, as if freedom is just carefree idleness. The thing for me though, is that with this newfound freedom from their former lives under an autocratic Tsarist regime came more responsibility, not less, part and parcel with the freedoms that were won through struggle.

That unflinching determination makes sense when viewed as a fight for more responsibility, for the right to have a real say in how society is run – which echoes in part to the older tradition of Athenian dēmokratía.

Freedom/Liberty
I’m going to paraphrase both Immanuel Kant and Spiderman in saying “with freedom, comes great responsibility”. And also, “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need” – twelve words by Marx, that he took from the French radical tradition.

For me, freedom is a term that has become hijacked by the Right. We’ve got to be aware of the neoliberal co-option of language, especially the powerful liberatory language of the Left. The dominant (right-wing) perspective lacks a collective framework for individual freedom. For me, my individual freedom is predicated on a broader collective freedom. If society as a whole is unfree, then there is little real basis for my personal freedom.

This is important when talking about socialism, seeing the world as a totality and not the individual as some abstract decontexualised Ayn Randian superman. All too often, when you look at the “freedom” of the Right, near the surface somewhere is the oppression that this freedom rests on. But for me, freedom and imagination are interlinked to a large extent. You can’t have real freedom without…

Imagination
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” – Einstein

This is the point where I hope there aren’t too many sniggers. But I passionately believe that without an ability to imagine, we’re stuck with the status quo that we currently have. Furthermore, I think we’ve seen a gradual limiting of the space within society in which we can dream/imagine something different, something new.

You only have to look at Margaret Thatcher’s well known phrase “there is no such thing as society,” or the survey result that came out a few years ago which showed that people could more easily imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, to see how dangerous capitalism sees the imagination as being.

If we start with the Thatcher quote, I think we see a key battleground. Not just the right to dream, but the right to dream/imagine collectively. This collective imagination is tied back to my conception of freedom, based around a relationship between the individual and the collective. On top of that, we need to be able to imagine the future; otherwise we end up trapped in the present. As Marxists we need to be able to imagine this concept of a future society, based on our critique of capitalism and our understanding of the limitations of previous attempts at building an alternative to capitalism (France, Germany, Russia, China, Cuba etc). From there we need to be able realise and develop these ideas in practice.

This is where we gather together as a small group of people dreaming of revolution, of a fundamentally changed way in which society is run, where we have a totally different conception of democracy, freedom and the imagination than the bullshit we are presented with currently.
The challenge from this point of collective dreaming is the realization of these ideas on a small scale (let’s not pretend we are a revolutionary army of thousands), which right now, could be going on a poster run to promote the next Intro to Marxism session, opposing white supremacists in Christchurch, or helping make a banner for the anti-Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement march this Saturday.

At its core though, my point is a call for radical critical thinking and corresponding action.

Filed Under: Society

Why the Internet Party is resonating

May 4, 2014 by

te kotahitanga o otangarei

By Byron Clark (Fightback).

In the March issue of Fightback we examined the politics at the then new Internet Party. The verdict at that time was that “there is no sign that it represents a progressive force”. There have been some developments since then, Kim Dotcom has dispelled the idea that he is a libertarian, confirming in his The Nation interview that he supports a welfare state. Later at the members-only picnic held at his Coatesville mansion he also spoke in favour of free education.

The policies released on their website, internet.org.nz, are all supportable (though the one about a digital currency seems like a silly gimmick). The main difference between the Internet Party and the Green Party -at least in the areas they share policy- appears to be a question of emphasis. If Dotcom were to fold the party if it failed to get over the 5% threshold for seats in parliament, something he indicated he would do, it could have been expected that the Greens would gain his endorsement.

This isn’t what happened. In what came as a surprise to many, he looked further to the left and sought out an alliance with the MANA movement. While Fightback opposed an alliance, the outcome of talks at the MANA AGM was to continue discussions between the two parties. Fightback remains opposed, but will continue to participate in the MANA movement, provided there is no compromise of core policy or principles.

The Internet Party has only got as far as it has with MANA because its message has resonated with a significant number of members. The greater chance of changing the government post-September 20th appears to be the only significant gain for MANA, and that wouldn’t be enough on its own to get people excited. The Internet Party has signed up over 2000 members in a matter of days, attracted 700 to its launch event and is equaling MANA in the polls (not to mention three other parties currently in parliament) before even officially registering. This level of support is not insignificant.

Some in MANA, as well as commentators watching the saga unfold, have questioned how relevant an ‘Internet Party’ is to ‘someone who can’t afford a computer’. This might have been a valid point had the party emerged 15 years ago, but fails to see that internet access today is seen by most as an essential utility for full participation in society. Its notable that those making this political criticism are doing it largely via Internet platforms such as social media, and purporting to do so on behalf of those who don’t have the same level of access to those platforms.

One of the Internet Party’s core policies, increasing access to high speed internet and halving the price is a policy in the same league as halving the cost of electricity. It will appeal to a late night World of Warcraft player of course, but it will also appeal to a single parent aiming to escape life on the DPB through an internet delivered distance learning course. The latter actually benefits more from the policy, even if the former might be closer to the idea of an Internet Party supporter we have in our minds.

Examples of the crossover between the demographic targeted by MANA and the the policies of the Internet Party are easily found. Wahine Paewhenua of Te Kotahitanga Marae in the Whangarei suburb of Otangarei told The Herald that when they surveyed a newly formed youth group about what they’d like to have available, computers and internet access were to top of the list. The Marae now has an IT hub with twelve computers connected to ultra fast broadband.

“Before there was nothing happening for the children and the youth. Now they just have so many projects,” she told the Herald, adding that a lot of children in the area didn’t have internet access at home and that those involved in the project also wanted to roll out the programme to the senior citizens as a lot of them didn’t have a telephone.

“Otangarei has a very transient and poor population and to run a project like this is a big ask, but this has the potential to upskill people with the many opportunities that are available,” said Piripi Moore, project manager of the hub.

This sort of project is something MANA would support in principle, but the policies to make it happen are under developed. In contrast, the Internet Party places them front and centre. The “missing million” who didn’t vote in 2011 are over represented among youth, Maori and the poor, three groups that often intersect. No doubt many MANA members including in the leadership are in favour of an alliance as they see the potential for Internet Party policy to mobilise these groups. The growth in MANA’s membership since media coverage of the proposed alliance lends credence to that idea.

While there are local branches forming and an online forum for developing policy, the Internet Party is not holding an AGM until after the election, so its membership is not having the democratic discussion about an alliance that is going on within MANA. Yet some members have been vocal about their support.

On his Facebook page Hone Harawira shared an email he received after appearing on Nine to Noon. “My husband and I are geeks, that is to say, privileged, well paid, middle-class etc. We are natural supporters of the Internet Party and I want you to know that I don’t have any problem with an alliance between MANA and the Internet Party because from my perspective, the two have a lot in common – as Internet Party supporters, we believe that good internet access is a way out of poverty.” The email went on to say;

“I am appalled by Duncan Garner’s casual racism when he talks like this: ‘Dotcom wants internet freedom. Many of Hone’s rural supporters in outback Hokianga and Kaikohe don’t even own computers, let alone have super-fast broadband at their doorstep Hone wants jobs, opportunities and better wages; Dotcom wants to stay in NZ.’

He’s talking as though he can’t imagine a world where your supporters in Kaikohe and the Hokianga use computers to access the web, and this speaks volumes about the kinds jobs he sees them doing.

A big reason for our support of the Internet Party is that we believe that the people of rural Hokianga and Kaikohe should have computers as well as super-fast broadband because it’s a path towards jobs, opportunities and better wages for them as it has been for us and our family. If poverty is an inability to participate in society then the internet is a powerful tool that can break down the barriers that prevent participation.”

Indeed MANA and the Internet Party are not necessarily the strange bedfellows a casual observation would make them appear.

The risks of an alliance

Members of MANA, and no doubt voters as well, have been skeptical of Kim Dotcom because of the treatment of his own workers, the fact he is a foreigner lacking knowledge of Te Ao Maori (the MANA AGM was the first time he had been on a Marae), his class position, and the presumed politics that come with that. People have noted his use of the phrase “social fairness” during his address to the MANA AGM rather than “social justice” or “social equality”. The difference in meaning here is subtle but significant.

The woman who emailed Hone is correct when she says “good internet access is a way out of poverty,” but it’s only a way, not the way. It’s the way used by Kim Dotcom in his rags to riches story. Providing the opportunity might be “fair,” but it can’t work for everyone – not because of individual failings, but because capitalism is not structured in a way that means everyone can be an entrepreneur and become wealthy. If the focus on innovation and entrepreneurialism that Dotcom and party president Vikram Kumar are so keen on overshadows MANA’s goal of lifting everyone out of poverty, that becomes a problem.

Internet Party members have also raised their own worries about the alliance. “My biggest concern is that the Internet Party is not going to be taken seriously by voters because it is choosing to make an alliance with the Mana party,” writes a member going by the name Alana Hyland on the party’s policy forum “Everyone that I have talked to about the Internet Party has told me that they weren’t going to vote for the Internet Party because “they’re joining with the crazy racist group”. I think the Internet Party would do better on its own.” Responses to a photo of Kim Dotcom and Hone Harawira the former shared on Twitter seem to be of the nature Alana talks about: “You had my vote. You lose it if you align with that racist idiot!” and “Hone is the biggest racist I’ve ever seen in a while” (sic).

These views of course are ignorant and incorrect, and we shouldn’t judge the party based on its supporters (its worth commending the Internet Party for a clause in their constitution stating “the Internet Party will also maintain and promote economic, cultural, social, ethnic, age and gender diversity and equality within the membership, candidacy and organisational structure of the Internet Party.”)

That said, how many potential Internet Party voters share the “Mana are racist” view, and would stay home on polling day rather than vote for an alliance? iPredict and other media are estimating the number of seats an alliance would win by adding together the poll results of both groups, yet this wont be an accurate prediction if a significant number of supporters of each party abstain.

Moreover, a joint list would have to mean a shared policy platform. At the AGM, Dotcom criticised MANA’s support of the Hone Heke (Financial Transactions) Tax and Capital Gains Tax, instead endorsing ‘luxury taxes.’ While Dotcom says he supports taxes on the wealthy, he appears to mean taxing consumption, not property or business. After Harawira’s principled opposition to raising GST, and endorsement of the Hone Heke Tax, it remains unclear whether Dotcom will compromise on this point. While it is entirely possible for a capitalist to support progressive working-class struggles, this also must mean betraying their class and making sacrifices, and Dotcom’s choices so far seem more opportunistic.

Perhaps MANA’s best course of action would be to adopt the Internet Party’s progressive policies and continue to advocate lowering the threshold for entry to parliament, remaining independent. As we go to print, results of the negotiation remain to be seen.

Filed Under: Internet Party, Mana Party, Society

Dean Parker: Let’s remember the martyrs on May Day

May 1, 2014 by
May Day 1971, Wellington Aotearoa/NZ.

May Day 1971, Wellington Aotearoa/NZ.

By Dean Parker, originally published by the NZ Herald.

The fight for workers’ rights has been a long and bloody one, with deaths on both sides of the political divide.

Go down to the Queen’s Wharf on the waterfront and you’ll see the beginnings of a heritage trail with cut-out effigies of figures from the past and background information.

These figures are described as “Lovers of Auckland”, Tamaki Makaura, Tamaki of a Thousand Lovers.

It’s a catchy theme for a heritage trail but problems arise when dealing with major historical events of waterfront history. Such as the strike of 1913.

Last year the trail included, as one such lover of Auckland, the figure of a 1913 Police Special together with a plaque saying, more or less, that this bloke loved Auckland so much he came down to the wharves and beat a whole lot of other Aucklanders’ heads in.

Following reservations about the wisdom of this, the 1913 exhibit was removed and never replaced.

Today being May 1, May Day, International Labour Day, it’s worth remembering a similar attempt elsewhere to commemorate one side of history, the bosses’ side – and the consequence, and all of it rooted in May Day history.

If you’re ever in Chicago, head west on Randolph. You’ll cross over two arterial routes, the river and then the thick cordage of midwest railway lines. Just as you reach a third artery, the Kennedy Expressway, pull up. You’ll be in a bleakish urban clearing of concrete surrounded by characterless offices and warehouses.

There’s a pedestal there. It’s a bit knocked about, but evidently once served a purpose. If you approach and bend forward, you’ll see inscribed on it, “In the Name of the People of Illinois I Command Peace”.

But there’s nothing there commanding anything. The pedestal used to host a2.7m bronze statue of a 19th-century Chicago policeman with a raised hand.

The bronze policeman had stood there, firm and unyielding, until 1927 when a Chicago street car driver deliberately jumped the rails and rammed his tram into it.

It was re-erected and stood on its pedestal for four decades until, in 1969, it was blown up by the urban guerrilla group, the Weathermen. It was replaced and blown up again.

A suggestion was made that the Chicago City Council investigate having a series of duplicates made out of fibreglass so as each was blown up it could be the more easily replaced.

This was opposed by the Mayor who wished the statue restored in its original bronze. The Mayor had his way, but a 24-hour police guard was engaged.

After 12 months the bill for securing the statue had reached US$67,440 ($78,800).

Rather than expending further civic finance, the council came up with a novel cost-cutting alternative. Instead of bringing the police to the statue, the statue was brought to the police, removed from its pedestal and placed in the lobby of the Chicago Central Police Headquarters.

There it remains.

The genesis of the bronze policeman was a period of international labour agitation for an eight-hour working day: eight hours labour, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.

Nineteenth century Chicago had been the centre of that agitation.

In May, 1867, 10,000 union members had marched through the city and struck for the eight-hour day. Some employers caved in. Most took advantage of a time of unemployment to bring in jobless from out of town. The strike was defeated.

Twenty years later the eight-hour day movement was again a force.

Meeting in Chicago, the Federation of Organised Trade and Labour Unions of the United States and Canada resolved, “That eight hours shall constitute a legal day’s labour, from and after May 1, 1886”.

The date may have been chosen to commemorate the May strikers of 1867, but just as likely is that the delegate who sponsored the motion, a carpenter, figured the beginning of spring would see the building trades back in business after the winter lay-up and more willing to settle.

Nationwide a total of 340,000 workers struck on May 1, 1886, a Saturday. Almost a quarter of those were from Chicago.

In the world’s first May Day parade, Lucy Parsons, a labour and women’s rights speaker, together with her husband Albert and their two children, led 80,000 Chicago workers up Michigan Avenue, arm-in-arm, singing.

The following Monday, 200 eight-hour day supporters marched to the McCormick Reaper Plant (now the International Harvester Company) to join a picket. Chicago police under orders of a minion of Cyrus McCormick II – of McCormick Reaper – turned up and fired on the crowd, shooting two men dead.

Next day 2500 protesters gathered in the evening near Chicago’s Haymarket Square to condemn the shootings.

Waiting were 176 armed police. This time someone got the retaliation in early and threw the first-ever dynamite bomb, killing one policeman and injuring others.

The police immediately fired back, killing four and wounding 20.

The leaders of the protesters were rounded up and four hanged. One was Albert Parsons.

Two years after the Haymarket deaths a Chicago businessman put up $10,000 for a statue to be erected in the square to commemorate the police action.

The statue was sculpted: a policeman with raised hand and the inscription, “In the Name of the People of Illinois I Command Peace”.

The policeman who modelled for the statue was later removed from the force for trading in stolen goods.

In 1889, in Paris, at a meeting of the International Labour Congress celebrating the centenary of the storming of the Bastille, a delegate from the American Federation of Labour requested that May 1 be adopted as International Labour Day, upon which the working class would march for the eight-hour day, for democracy and the rights of workers to organise – and would remember the labour martyrs of Chicago.

And that is how workers come to celebrate May 1, and how there is a bronze statue of a policeman, arm upraised, in the lobby of the Chicago Central Police Headquarters, a warning to all about taking history lightly.

Filed Under: History

China: Capitalism and resistance

May 1, 2014 by
30,000 Chinese factory workers are on strike at Yue Yuen factory in Guangdong Province.

30,000 Chinese factory workers are on strike at Yue Yuen factory in Guangdong Province.

By Ian Anderson and Wenchan Cao (Fightback).

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the largest political party in the world with a membership of 82.6 million. The CCP claims to run a system of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics.’ In fact, it’s closer to a system of ‘capitalism with Chinese characteristics.’

Although China is ‘developing,’ this is development marked by increasing inequality. Private companies and their cronies have joined with international capitalists in exploiting the Chinese working class.

Hong Kong Marxist Au Loong Yu characterizes China as ‘bureaucratic capitalist.’ In the last 30 years collective state-owned enterprises were converted by the bureaucracy into profit-generating businesses. In practice there is little-to-no line between party bureaucrats and the capitalist class; one third of the millionaires in China are members of the communist party, and many more have family ties. Bureaucrats profited from turning China into a ‘sweatshop for the world.’

Although Mao’s era was harshly repressive in some respects, public management did have some benefits in terms of economic security. This security has been forcibly stripped away, in line with international attacks. State sector workers have come under attack, and many former peasants have become rural migrant workers.

This has not been a completely peaceful transition. Famously, the bureaucracy violently crushed student resistance in the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. Less famously, workers played a key role in this struggle.

The Beijing Workers’ Autonomous Federation, a rare case in contemporary Chinese history of an independent workers’ organization, supported the student movement. The BWAF was politically diverse, with socialist currents and currents that later came to support capitalism. However, they were unified in opposing bureaucratic privilege, economic attacks, and in calling for greater democracy.

The BWAF threatened a general strike. On June 4th, the CCP sent tanks into Tiananmen Square, crushing political resistance for at-least a generation. Workers were ultimately punished more harshly; while student leaders were imprisoned, workers were executed.

Au Loong Yu argues this was the last organized, independent, political opposition by workers within China. However other struggles have broken out, isolated but growing.

In the early part of the 21st century, thousands of workers resisted the privatization of state-owned enterprises. More recently, in 2010 tens of thousands of workers at manufacturing plants (including electronics manufacturer Foxconn, and manufacturers for Honda and Toyota) went on strike, winning wage rises.

Official unions in China are part of the state bureaucracy. To carry out militant struggles, workers must either temporarily take over their union at a branch level, or form their own independent short-term organizations. This is not just an economic challenge, but a political and social challenge, a demand for free association.

Bureaucratic capitalism is a system of both economic and social control. Au Loong Yu argues:

The CCP can always make episodic economic concessions from time to time, but it never allows political concessions, even if it is as basic as the right to demonstrate.

Growing up in China, I personally experienced this social control. The material in the education system is highly limited. The ‘Marxism’ taught in schools, in contrast to the questioning and critical spirit of Marxism, teaches students never to question the party.

As in many Western schools, school uniforms also enforce social repression. One ridiculous rule from my previous high school was — students are not permitted to show their legs, regardless of how high the temperature is.

Sexuality is frowned upon. As a young queer woman, I could not publicly disclose my sexuality without fear of legal consequences.

Any individual challenging this repression could be arrested anytime. And the CCP would claim that they are doing the right thing and helping the Chinese people to have the ‘right mind’ and be ‘mentally healthy’.

However, collective resistance is growing. The current ongoing strike of 30,000 workers, at the world’s largest shoe-producing factory, is an inspiring example. Strikes disrupt the production necessary both to Chinese bureaucratic capitalism, and global capitalism. They show the power both of free association, and collective action.

There is not yet an organized, sustained and independent political opposition in China. Solidarity – between workers and students, between workers at different plants, across the globe – can build on these existing outbreaks to forge a political opposition. Only organized, popular democratic struggle can pave the way for real socialism.

Filed Under: International