Having been tied up with end-of-semester seminar presentations for the past three weeks I have been unable to post much yet about the rapidly approaching 2008 NZ general election. Over the next few weeks however I hope to be able to blog much more frequently as the campaign really heats up and the inevitable debate and controversy on the left between the proponents of lesser-evilism, “don’t scare the horses” gradualism and principled revolutionary politics ensues.
Adding to the mix this election is the fact that the Workers Party has just managed to achieve official party registration, meaning that this November for the first time in NZ history there will be an anti-capitalist option available to tick on every ballot paper in the country!
Meanwhile Socialist Worker will also be running on the party list with their “broad left” vehicle the Residents’ Action Movement (RAM), and the surviving remnants of the once-mighty Alliance Party will be keeping the banner of left social democracy flying for another election as well.
To kick things off I’ve set up a poll for readers of this blog (including overseas readers – we are internationalists here after all!) to express their views on the best approach for the left in the upcoming elections – located at the top of the sidebar at right on the main page, or alternatively click here.
Let the voting begin!
October 7, 2008 at 11:46 pm
It may be just me, but the questions in your poll seem a wee bit loaded.
October 8, 2008 at 11:36 pm
I voted “abstain”, but obviously I don’t believe that “if we boycott the elections the state will lose all its legitmacy and the workers will spontaneously overthrow capitalism!”
Personally, I couldn’t give a fuck if people vote or not in this day and age – I’m not going to myself though.
Principled anarchists aren’t actively opposing individual people voting if they want – we are against electoralism as a political strategy. There’s a difference.
But anyway, you were just (jokingly?) caricaturing a few options for the poll, so I shouldn’t take it so seriously
In solidarity,
Asher
p.s: Added a link here from my blog. Now I have a trifecta of WP members on my blogroll, scary.
October 8, 2008 at 11:50 pm
Cheers Asher – I returned the favour and added you to my blogroll.
As you correctly surmised, the poll is intended primarily as a piece of light-hearted political entertainment, not a faithful reproduction of the actual positions of the various groups/tendencies on the NZ far left.
October 9, 2008 at 6:03 pm
I would support the traditional labor party. It’s a cardinal rule, that when workers move politically, they do through the groups they are familiar with, like the PPP in Pakistan, PSUV in Venezuela etc.
Tonight Blogrolling.com was hacked.
October 25, 2008 at 12:08 am
Renegade Eye wrote:
“It’s a cardinal rule, that when workers move politically, they do through the groups they are familiar with, like the … PSUV in Venezuela etc.”
That’s an odd comment since the PSUV is a new formation whereas the Venezuelan workers appear to have been “moving politically” for about a decade. There is absolutely no valid comparison between the PSUV and the bourgeois NZLP. In fact I suspect judging from Cullen’s mocking rmarks about Chavez that Clark, Cullen and co would run a mile rather than be seen as in some way akin to the PSUV.
Cheers,
John
November 1, 2008 at 2:36 am
the PPP is a populist party led by rich landowners and Shia- and Sindhi-factions of the Pakistani bourgeoisie which adopted some socialist slogans because they were popular around 1970, it never was (unlike the NZLP) a (reformist) party of the working class with a certain limited level of autonomy from the ruling elites; a membership in the “Socialist International” doesn’t mean, that a party is social democratic or reformist in a classical sense