The departure of Anderton and the
gang of right opportunists is well overdue. Their desperation for the
privileges of Cabinet Office have overcome any remaining vestiges of principle
they might have once had. The naked
opportunism by which Anderton claimed to remain leader of the Alliance, while
openly plotting its destruction has done immense damage to the project of left
social democracy and strengthened the forces of the right.
The split has played right into the
hands of the Clark regime, which has long sort to undermine proportional
representation and now senses the chance of an absolute majority in parliament.
Even if this bid fails, Anderton and Co. have already surrendered any
resistance, so long as the spoils of Ministerial office are theirs. Despite
this clear sycophantic position, the Clark regime showed its contempt by citing
the split as grounds for an early election, thereby depriving Anderton of any state-funded
advertising budget, and appealing to voters for a clear majority. Nonetheless,
Anderton’s local popularity is likely to see his return to parliament and
perhaps to government.
This split was brewing from the very founding of the New Labour Party
in 1989. The NLP was formed from an important alliance between a wide range of
community activists, steeled in battles against Rogernomics, and a significant
split from the Labour Party. Anderton’s resignation from the Labour Party was
an important blow against the neo-liberal policies of the Lange-Douglas regime.
But he and his Labour left supporters brought many of the right-wing practices
to New Labour.
The tenuousness of the alliance
underpinning New Labour was evident in the close call of vote after vote at the
founding conference, broadly reflecting the division between the Labour left
and the community activists, culminating in the election of unemployed movement
leader, Sue Bradford, as vice-president against Anderton’s opposition.
But despite a bare majority for the
activist left on most issues, Anderton and the left social democrats ultimately
held the upper hand because they were more skilled in the committee bureaucracy
and the electoral politics that is the mainstream of a party focused on bourgeois
democracy. While the NLP pledged to combine electoral politics with organising
the parliament of the streets, in practice the former goal dominated, the
Labour left bureaucrats consolidated their position, and mass mobilisation was
reduced to stunts supporting the electoral machine.
Anderton personified the
bureaucratic skills of the left social democrats. Faced with majority
opposition, he nearly always got his way by repeatedly threatening to resign,
bullying and victimising. Initially concentrating early on economic policy, he
repeatedly used the blackmail tactic to force through a policy programme that
would not alienate his supporters. Because party members generally saw
parliamentary elections as the path to change, Anderton could get his way because
he was the only MP, and many members were in awe of this. This tendency was
only reinforced as the party accumulated more MPs over subsequent elections and
the community activists progressively failed to renew their membership.
This right opportunism was also
reinforced by the ‘left’ opportunism of prominent members of the Alliance
bureaucracy who saw the parliamentary party system as a short cut to mass
mobilisation. For these, parliamentary representation provided the funds for
offices and organisers who could then work for ‘real change’. The problem with
this short cut, however, was that servicing the MPs took much time and energy
and was ultimately subject to the demands of caucus. The use of parliamentary
services for purposes other than that allowed by parliament also opened these
left opportunists to charges of misusing funds, which were laid when the split
with Anderton and Co. came.
As a left social democratic party,
the NLP led some effective actions, playing a leading role in the proportional
representation victory and building an
electoral alliance against neo-liberalism, uniting with Mana Motuhake, the
Greens, the Liberals and the Democrats under the balance of the Alliance.
Finally gaining the balance of power in 1999, they gained a series of minor
progressive reforms as junior partners in the Clark regime’s coalition. But
many of these reforms were won against the opposition of Anderton and his
rightist supporters within the Alliance.
The brewing tensions came to a head,
first with the resignation of the Greens from the Alliance, and then with the
commitment of NZ troops to the US war in Afghanistan, where the Greens’
principled opposition to the war exposed the majority of the Alliance caucus as
compradors for US imperialism.
Social Democratic Betrayal
Votes on war have long been the
undoing of social democrats. Despite their avowed commitment to social justice
and peace, in the face of inter-capitalist hostilities the social democrats
have repeatedly sided with the capitalists of ‘their’ country against the
capitalists of other countries, regardless of the human cost.
This was first most clearly seen at
the beginning of the First World War, when the MPs of the largest socialist
party in the world, the German Social Democrats, voted funds for the German war
effort. The support for the war by the German socialists and many other social
democratic parties (organised in the ‘second international’ or ‘socialist
international’) irretrievably split the international socialist movement.
Lenin identified the cause of the
split in the emergence of imperialism from the late nineteenth century. The
superprofits accumulated by the vast monopolies in the imperialist countries
from their world-wide operations allowed them to bribe, coopt and buy-off the leading
sections of the working class in their home countries. This was the ‘labour
aristocracy’ at the forefront of the trade union movement and even socialist
parties in these countries. These sections of the working class were able to
gain real material benefits from this, even though the position of the
international working class as a whole was seriously weakened.
Against this, the remaining minority
of the international socialist movement called for international workers’
resistance to the inter-imperialist war. The Russian Social Democrats led a
successful rebellion of the Russian military against the war, culminating in
the 1917 revolution. Other less successful revolts followed in Hungary,
Austria, Germany and Britain. The radical minority socialist parties coalesced
in the ‘third international’ or ‘communist international’.
The split in the socialist movement
has persisted to this day, with the socialist international (which still
includes the New Zealand Labour Party) committing to capitalism (‘with a human
face’) and enthusiastically supporting imperialist wars from the Suez to
Vietnam; during World War II the New Zealand Labour government went as far as
banning the Communist Party newspaper and jailing most of our central
committee.
Following the departure of the
Anderton faction and the Democrats in particular, the Alliance is left
undisputedly as a left social democratic party, committed to progressive
reforms of capitalism and strengthening the position of many peoples’
movements. The question is whether the
Alliance can overcome the traditional limits of social democracy.
The Alliance has considerable
resources, until the election at least: 3 fulltime MPs, including one
experienced high profile Government minister, a number of fulltime paid
officials, an experienced electoral machine, perhaps 2000 members and a larger
mailing list, and a large state-funded broadcasting budget. But this will be
dedicated exclusively to the attempt to win an electoral seat or 5% of the national
vote on July 27th.
In the wake of likely electoral
defeat, the Alliance will have the choice of repeating the mistakes of the
past, rebuilding a social democratic party, and making every more compromising
accommodations with the capitalists’ representatives in parliament. The Social
Democrats that dominate the parliamentary caucus and the party bureaucracy will
pursue this path as they see no alternative to capitalism, albeit with a ‘human
face’.
With the departure of the Alliance
right, there is a chance, however, for a change of direction. The Alliance can
reconstitute itself primarily as a mass campaigning party on the side of the
people against capitalism and using parliamentary elections only as a means to
this end. This approach is advocated by the minority of mass activists within
the party. #