The sad state of student politics

This week saw the start of the university second semester and, with it, the bi-annual circus that is University Clubs Day.  While helping to man the Workers Party stall at Canterbury University on Tuesday I cast my eye around to see how many of our political rivals had turned up and to answer the burning perennial question  - would the campus political clubs be once again outnumbered by the 57 varieties of fundamentalist Christianity on offer? (sadly once again the answer was yes)

In these days of widespread student apathy Clubs Day affords one of the few opportunities to verify the existence of many of the campus branches of the mainstream political parties, most of whom are completely invisible for the other 363 days of the year (except on those rare occasions when the local MP or party leader deigns to set foot on campus).  So at UC Clubs Day this semester it was interesting to note that the parties with the strongest presence there were WP, the Greens and Act (and of these, WP is the only one that organises weekly public events on campus!).  We also had a small coterie of Young Labourites who arrived late with the Labour Party carpetbagger candidate for Christchurch Central, PR-man Brendan Burns in tow and a lone Young Nat who turned up to plan the party banner, chuck some leaflets on the table and then promptly cleared off.  Finally a mad Libetararianz supporter also turned up to berate one our comrades for wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the image of the “mass murderer” Che Guevara (apparently he was more bloodthirsty than Hitler!).

It may seem a little surreal that a parties like National and Labour which between them command the support of some 85% of the electorate should be so lacking in terms of student foot-soldiers, but then as Bryce Edwards has shown in his recent excellent series on political party membership in NZ, one of the most notable phenomena in NZ politics in recent years has been the shift from the old paradigm of class-based mass membership parties to small professional electoral-focused parties which rely very little on donations of time or money from their own members.

The tide turns against APRA and Alan García

Workers rally in the Plaza Dos de Mayo, Central Lima - ITA

Having been re-elected for a second term in 2006 (his first term as President ended in 1990 with his fleeing the country to avoid corruption charges), Peruvian President Alan García is once again mired in unpopularity with a general strike called this week by the main CGTP union federation against spiralling inflation, low wages and an ever-widening gap between rich and poor.  It followed an earlier week-long strike by miners in the Andean nation.

During the general strike on Wednesday protesters blocked highways, took control of local media outlets and marched in their thousands in the main urban centres.  Even the tourist train from Cusco to Machu Picchu was prevented from operating, and across the whole country over 200 protesters were arrested.

As journalist Juan de la Puente noted on the Peruvian radio station RPP, “the strike has served as a grand umbrella for regional and local demands” uniting many disparate groups.  De la Puente also warned that the strike could play into the hands of “regional caudillos“.  Indeed the strike appeared to be strongest in Central and Southern Peru where the clashes with police were often fiercest, while in Lima only 5 000 took part in Wednesday’s main demonstration.

There is no such thing as a “humane” immigration policy

Labour’s new Immigration Amendment Bill, which proposes a raft of draconian measures aimed at further restricting the flow of working class migrants into New Zealand (especially from the so-called “Third World” countries) has this week drawn considerable criticism from liberal left commentators such as Gordon Campbell on Scoop and Idiot/Savant at No Right Turn (see here and here).

The proposed new law, which would among other things allow asylum seekers to be deported even when they are liable to face torture in their home country, immigration officials to enter homes and workplaces without a warrant and the compulsory photographing of all people entering the country (including NZ nationals) certainly deserves to be opposed.  Yet there is a certain naïveté in the way in which liberal commentators such as those mentioned above go about opposing it.

A strange sort of protest

How typical of New Zealand that the most high-profile protest of the year to-date should take place at the instigation of a right wing business lobby group (the Road Transport Forum, which represents the major trucking companies) and despite all the breathless media hype about the possibility of the country’s major urban centres being brought to a complete standtill, pass off almost entirely without incident.

While in Spain similar protests last month over the rising cost of fuel led to pitched battles with riot police and at least 1 death, here in good ol’ godzone the protesting truckies were warmly applauded by the authorities for their “responsible” conduct and the day ended with the government promising a “working party” to look into the protesters’ concerns.

Is this all down to the fact that as liberal commentators are forever telling us, New Zealand simply doesn’t “do” class struggle?  Supporters of this line of reasoning need only look to the other major protest to make the news in the past 48 hours, a march in Auckland by some 10 000 people against violent crime to find evidence for this contention.

However, contrary to the opinion of some other NZ left wing bloggers, I don’t think we can dismiss these kinds of protests as simply exercises in political theatre or empty rhetoric.

The two souls of Socialist Worker

Below is an FAQ on the issue of abolishing GST on food, currently being circulated in the trade union movement by members of the Socialist Worker-dominated Residents’ Action Movement (RAM).  For a document drawn up by ostenibly revolutionary Marxists, it contains a smorgasboard of howlers such as that “customers ultimately dictate the course of a business” and that “greatly increased GST revenue being generated as a result of record fuel prices and the rise in the cost of other goods and services…will tend to offset the removal of GST from food” (so workers paying more for fuel is a good thing?!).

Is this the same organisation that still calls on its website for “socialist revolution, not reformed capitalism“?  Or has it perhaps simply developed a split personality?

Dispelling some myths about immigration

In today’s NZ Herald there is a very interesting report on a study by two Wellington economists which casts some serious doubt on the widely-held notion that new immigrants to NZ are to some degree responsible for the current unaffordable level of house prices.

The study’s authors say that

Our overall results raise doubts about whether the strong positive correlation that exists between immigration and house price appreciation over the time at the national level is in fact causal…

Indeed the only “immigrant” group which appears to exert any upwards pressure on house prices are  returning NZ expatriates:

We find that neighbourhoods which experience relatively high population growth from returning New Zealanders have greater house price increases than the rest of their labour market area and neighbourhoods with relatively larger inflows of foreign-born immigrants experience slower house price growth relative to the labour market area in general.

So much for this particular immigration myth.  But what about the other arguments that are often made by advocates of tighter immigration controls?

Below is the text of a talk I presented as part of a debate with Workers Charter activist Brian van Dam at the recent Marxism 2008 conference in Auckland, which debunks some of these other misconceptions and sets out why I believe it is in the interests of workers to oppose all immigration controls:

A return to the Great Depression?

Among certain sections of the far left there has always been an unfortunate tendency to see in every downward movement on the stock market the imminent demise of global capitalism.

In New Zealand no group typifies this tendency better than our good friends in Socialist Worker (aka the Residents’ Action Movement - RAM).  Back in the mid 90s, following the formation of the National-NZ First coalition government, they were claiming that the “working class is on a knife-edge between hope and despair” with the looming economic crisis giving them no choice but to “join the fightback”.

Sadly NZ Capitalism Inc. weathered the economic turbulence of the mid-late 90s rather easily, with the number of work days lost to industrial action falling continuously year-on-year and no sign of food riots or mass bankruptcies.

Brian Roper on the Fall of the Roman Republic

It was a pleasant surprise to tune into National Radio last night to hear what was apparently the second part in a series on the history of democracy by Otago University marxist academic Brian Roper (based on his forthcoming book), this one looking at the decline and fall of the Roman Republic (podcast available here).

Brian does a good job of describing the incredibly limited and circumscribed form of democracy that existed under the Roman Republic, in which the right to participate in the Senate and to elect Consuls was limited to a small group of aristocratic families. This compares rather unfavourably with universal male suffrage enjoyed by the inhabitants of Classical Athens (well, except for the slaves and foreigners!). All the same, for its time the Roman Republic was undoubtedly at the forefront of political and social evolution. Indeed, as Brian points out it has had a major impact on the design of the current US political system (which may explain many of that country’s current failings).

In terms of his explanation for the fall of the Roman Republic, Brian more or less follows the same line of argument as the great marxist classical historian Geoffrey de Ste. Croix, author of several highly influential books including his magnum opus The Class Strugge in the Ancient Greek World.

Essentially, Ste Croix contends that it was the very success of the Roman military machine and the increasing wealth that this success brought which, probably more than anything else, contributed to the outbreak of civil war between the Populare and Optimate parties and the destruction of the Roman Republic in the 80 year period between 107 and 27 BCE.

Antonio Machado and the legacy of 1898

This year marks the 110th anniversay of the event known in Spanish history as “el desastre” - the defeat of Spain at the hands of the United States in the war of 1898, which destroyed the last remnants of Spanish imperial power and opened bitter divisions in Spanish politics and society.

Galvanised by this shock to the national psyche, a group of Spanish writers and poets known as the “Generation of 1898″ emerged who sought to create a new, modern, progressive national identity in place of the old decaying conservative Catholic order.

The most well-known member of this group (although not a “charter member” like Miguel de Unamuno or José Ortega y Gasset) was the poet Antonio Machado.

Below is an essay I recently wrote which looks at the intersection between the poetry of Antonio Machado and the cultural and political legacy of 1898.

Venezuela: Orinoco steel industry nationalised

By Community Reporters of Merida for Aporrea.org

(see original report in Spanish here)

Translated by Tim Bowron for The Spark


9/4/08

MERIDA, Venezuela. Steel workers and the trade union Sutiss have won their fight for the nationalisation of the steel industry firm Ternium-Sidor after months of strikes, confrontations and repression by the National Guard. This morning, at 1.22am, vice-president Ramón Carrizales, the envoy of the National Executive, finally opened a way forward to a solution in the conflict between the trade union alliance and the trans-national corporation’s management. During this conflict the workers had denounced before the Minister of Labour the multiple contractual irregularities and the prevailing conditions of capitalist exploitation, but in spite of all this they were not listened to by the Minister.