PACIFIC: Tongan Workers’ Struggle

The fight of Tongan public employees is the advance guard of a popular movement for democracy in Tonga. Tonga has had a Feudal style monarchy since it came under British protection in the mid 19th century. Today the monarchy has adapted to capitalism by forming a capitalist class exploiting workers and peasants. The huge and growing gap between the rich capitalist class and poverty stricken masses is what has led to the growing discontent and anger of the current industrial dispute. At stake here however is not only the struggle for democracy, but also the struggle for socialism.

Tonga’s traditional society was a lineage mode of production in transition to a tributary mode. The chiefs, who ruled the whole community, were in the process of becoming a ruling class along the lines of Hawaii. The arrival of the missionaries added impetus to this process, changing the rank system in the tributary mode of production into a feudal –style monarchy with nobles acting as local agents of an international capitalist class.

International capital has a profound influence on Tonga, through the governments of Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank institutions impose imperialism in the region.

If we want to understand why the strike lasted so long, and was fought so bitterly, we must look not at the greed and recalcitrance of the King, but at the shadow of imperialism that hangs over Tonga. The fact is that, whatever the King's attitude was toward the strikers, the ability of his government to accede to their demands was and will remain severely limited, by outside control of the Tongan economy.

Australia used this year's Pacific forum to insist that future economic aid to small island states like Tonga would be tied to the 'reform' of these countries' economies. 'Reform' usually means cuts to state spending.

The Solomon Islands butchered its public services and was brought to its knees last year. The same sort of ‘reform’ is currently laying waste to Papua New Guinea's economy. The attempts of the Howard government to force IMF 'reforms' on countries like Tonga are entirely consistent with its role as the Deputy Sheriff of US imperialism in the South Pacific. US foreign policy demands the use of the IMF and the World Bank to force open markets in the developing world for Western consumer goods, while at the same time cutting the price of raw materials extracted from the developing world, and the price of labour bought there by Western multinational companies. Where necessary, this process of 'globalisation' can be enforced and protected by the armed forces of the US or US allies.

Of course, the demands of the Australian government and the IMF can only collide head-on with the demands of workers in Tonga. The long-overdue pay increases strikers were demanding threaten to blow out a budget that imperialism is pushing Tonga to cut. The Australian government will not be happy about the strikers winning their demands and forcing Tonga to set a bad example. Imperialist pressure on the Tongan state will intensify.

The aggressive unilateralism in pursuit of US interests has already been felt in the Pacific region, in the form of the Australian-led and US-initiated military intervention in the Solomons. This intervention was justified by a need to 'restore order' to the Solomons, but order had only broken down because of the West's sabotage of the country's economy - under IMF 'reforms' imposed by Australia and New Zealand, a third of public sector workers had lost their jobs, with predictable consequences. The real reason for the intervention was to set an example for the Pacific, and to keep at bay US rival France, which had been making overtures to the Solomons government.

Like the United States, Australia has announced that it reserves the right to invade its neighbours 'pre-emptively', if it feels that its security is threatened. 'Security', of course, is understood in economic as much as military terms. It is not at all difficult to imagine the crisis that still threatens to develop in Tonga being resolved by a military intervention initiated by the US and Australia, and including New Zealand forces.

Solidarity with the PSA Strikers!
NZ and Australia Hands Off Tonga!

The refusal of the Tongan Public Service Association workers to accept a New Zealand-brokered deal was to be commended. The NZ and Australia governments have an interest in maintaining the control of the Monarchy over the economy so that the profits of the multinational corporations are guaranteed and protected. NZ politicians tried for a compromise between the people and the Monarchy. But compromise was only ever possible on the terms of the ruling class and would not change the system for the benefit of the people.

The workers refused to do a deal with the Monarchy that required them to accept arbitration in advance. It shows that the workers know that arbitration will leave the Monarchy all powerful and not change the real causes of the poverty of the workers.

Workers must not compromise with the Monarchy as it exists today as a ruling class that exploits the working class to enrich itself and its overseas backers.

Against the class system!

The recent pay deal is only a symptom of this class system where the Monarchy acts as the agents of international capital to profit from the privatisation of Tongan assets and to super-exploit the labour of the commoners.

This means that the wealth cannot be redistributed to the people who produce the wealth, without the Monarchy's control of the economy being taken over by the people, and the wealth being redistributed according to the people's needs.

We support the demand for a referendum to make all the MPs elected by the people, as put forward by the pro-democracy movement. However, this is a reform of the existing constitution and does not directly challenge the rule of the Monarchy over parliament.

The PSA workers have shown that the current wage crisis is a symptom of the class system in Tonga. By holding out for a 60-70-80% wage increase they were leading the challenge to replace the Monarchy's power with the power of the people.

The national strike was resolved following a proposal by politicians for political change. Clive Edwards proposed to amend the Tongan constitution, making it possible for the people to elect a 39 member parliament. From those 39 members a Prime Minister would be elected, and so would Cabinet Ministers. This is a step in the direction of democracy. But a constitutional amendment is not enough. Workers need to continue to lead the people in the demand to hold a Constituent Assembly based on universal suffrage (everyone voting) which could open up a full-scale constitutional debate and decide on a new constitution for a new Tonga, ruled by the people, for the people.

Meanwhile, the Tongan working masses must be on their guard against their leaders being bought off by the ruling elite.

The Next Step

Finau Tutone, the Chairman of the Public Servants Association, said that the next step for the Civil Servants was to form the Friendly Island Workers' Association, to be followed later with the formation of a Union of Workers for all Tongan workers.

We Agree: Workers and poor farmers can form a movement to defeat imperialism and its local capitalist agents. Then a government by and for the real people can be formed: A workers and poor farmers government.

This would not be possible to sustain without the support of workers internationally. The democratic revolution becomes permanent as part of the socialist revolution.
For a socialist pacific

www.wsws.org/articles/2005/aug2005/tong-a19.shtml
www.tongaonstrike.com

 From Class Struggle 63 Sept/Oct 2005

Socialist Republic(s) of Australasia?

The Australian ruling class is making a play to takeover its poor cousin kiwi capitalists. Aussie corporations already own large chunks of the NZ economy and dominate banking, energy, transport and retail sectors. But last month the Qantas chief headed a joint conference of business, government and academic bigwigs calling for a common currency and further economic integration. What’s going on? And where to workers fit into these plans? The Communist Workers Group has not got fully worked out position on these questions. So Class Struggle opens up a debate among workers on Australasian Union.

NZ the seductive semi-colony

The drive to integrate the two economies has been going on for 200 years. NZ began its colonial life as part of NSW, and was a self-governing colony within Australia until 1901 when it refused to go into the Australian federation. There is still a clause in the Australian federal constitution that allows NZ to join as a state of Australia.

The colonial capitalists in NZ led by then Prime Minister Dick Seddon had delusions of grandeur, of beating Australia as the “Britain of the south seas’’ with plans to rule the Island states to the north on behalf of the British Empire. From 1901 to 1984, NZ applied a policy of economic nationalism. This was the social democratic ideal that NZ was an independent nation whose economy could be controlled for the benefit of all. It tried to insulate its economy from Britain and Australia so that it could keep as much of the wealth generated in NZ as possible. And depending on which political party ruled this wealth was to be distributed among the various productive sectors in NZ.

However, the weakness in this national plan was that to develop industry internally, NZ had to turn to investment, technology and marketing agreements with overseas firms. So by the 1980s economic insulation had not stopped Aussie and UK (and increasingly Japanese and US) firms acting as the Trojan horses of globalisation and setting up ‘branch plants’ behind the protectionist barriers, and from sneaking profits offshore by ‘transfer pricing’.

Studies of foreign ownership since the early 80’s show that NZ was no longer run by a bunch of local families and the British banks, but that UK firms like Unilever, Aussie firms like Comalco, Japanese companies like Nissan and US corporations like Mobil had a dominant stake in the economy. NZ was still overseas owned but that ownership and control had shifted so that NZ was now, according to Bill Sutch, NZ’s foremost economic nationalist, only a ‘book entry’ in the accounts of the Multinationals.

Globalisation whacks home

What the century up to 1984 proved was that capitalism could be implanted and thrive under state protected hothouse conditions only until the local firms got too big for the domestic market. Once the biggest firms outgrew the market protectionist barriers had to come down, the economy deregulated and opened up to the global market. Barriers to trade and investment were largely removed and the NZ economy was now up for sale to the highest bidder.

Overseas companies moved in to buy out poor performers or undervalued companies or state enterprises (some already carved up for sale by asset strippers like Brierley and Alan Gibbs) like NZ Rail, Telecom, BNZ, Air New Zealand, NZ Steel etc. Ownership and control of homegrown industry rapidly passed from local and state hands into Australian, British, Japanese and US corporate hands.

CAFCA which documents trends in foreign investment produces statistics which back this up. Direct Foreign Investment (DFI) grew rapidly after 1984. By 1995 DFI in NZ had reached nearly 47% of GDP, and made about half the total profits. (Bill Rosenberg, Foreign Investment in NZ: The Current Position). Rosenberg showed that the overseas corporations tend to be the biggest, but employ fewer workers and pay less tax (25% average). They accumulate profits of the order of $30,000 per worker a year (compared with $20,000 for local firms). Today the foreign domination of the economy is higher still. Between 1994 and 2003 foreign corporations made over $42 billion in profits. http://www.canterbury.cyberspace.org.nz/community/CAFCA/keyfacts.html

What all of this proves is that the NZ economy has been integrated into the global capitalist economy so that the main industries are owned and controlled by large monopoly corporations with their bases in the Australia UK, US, EU, Japan and the rest of Asia. China too, looms on the horizon as a major economic force in NZ. This is all part of the globalisation of production under the influence of the monopoly corporations (to say it is no longer imperialism is so much globalony). What motivates the corporations is access to cheap resources and labour and the lowest cost barriers imposed by national governments (taxes, environmental and labour laws etc) as possible. This explains the drive to free trade and investment agreements allowing global capital free movement in search of lowest costs and biggest profits.

Aussie bosses own a third of New Zealand

Of all the overseas countries to increase its stake in NZ, Australia now dominates. It owns 100% of the trading banks, NZ Rail, NZ Steel, major road transport companies, shopping malls and supermarkets (Westfield).

To facilitate the smooth operation of Australian capital to further its ownership and control of NZ capital, the bosses are now making a play to remove all the barriers to form a common market like the EU. What is planned is a common currency which would be run by the Australian Reserve Bank, a single stock market, and a common border for citizens and travellers. This would certainly reduce the compliance costs for Australian capital.

But Australian capital is itself dominated by US (and to a lesser extent Japanese) capital. The Australian-US free trade agreement has opened up Australia to US investment. So an Australian-NZ common market would facilitate the ability of US capital to piggyback into NZ and increase its holdings and profits. The US (along with its Canadian partner-state in NAFTA) already owns a large slice of key industries such as merchant banking, power and communications, forestry, tourism etc.

Australia and NZ as ‘Pacific Powers’

Jane Kelsey’s recent paper “Big Brothers Behaving Badly” (http://www.arena.org.nz/)

attacks Australia’s and New Zealand’s role in forcing free trade onto the small Pacific nations. In particular she accuses them of bullying these nations to remove tariffs, export subsidies and any protectionist measures for agriculture, so they can sell more goods. As Kelsey points out in the case of Tonga’s agreement to remove $6 million tariffs on NZ meat exports (mainly mutton flaps) will be a cut of 40% of state revenue for services to a people made up of 80% subsistence farmers!

Behind all this is the plan of Australia to subordinate NZ and the rest of the South Pacific into its ‘EU-style’ Pacific Economic Community in the interests of Australian imperialism. NZ grandiose delusions of 100 years ago that it could be a junior imperialist power in the South Pacific are now fully deflated. Via its subordination to Australia, NZ, along with the rest of the South Pacific, is being further incorporated into the US imperialist bloc as a semi-colony of US imperialist finance capital.

What’s it got to do with the workers?

But this is the way the capitalism operates. It doesn’t matter which country owns capital, workers are still exploited. The question is: what is the workers position on the future of NZ as a semi-colony exploited by imperialism? And in particular being dominated by its nearest imperialist big brother, Australia? Should we fight to remain economically independent of both Australia and the US? Or should we fight to speed up the move towards a united states of Australasia in preference to union with the US? Then, maybe we should remain neutral in what is like a game of musical chairs where it doesn’t matter which boss sits down on us when the music stops, we still get shat on?

Our starting point has to be to distinguish between our interests as workers and those of the bosses. We fight for our interests and oppose those of the bosses. We fight against the bosses measures to make us boost their profits and pay their debts whatever the nationality of the boss. Our basic fight has to be the defence of our jobs and conditions. Without these the working class becomes divided and demoralised. Regardless of the nationality of the companies that own industry we demand nationalisation without compensation. Any closure or sacking of workers has to be met by occupations under workers’ control.

Because the Aussie and NZ bosses are heavily integrated, struggles against them must obviously unite NZ and Aussie workers - but not at the expense of foreign workers. For example we should fight for a common border to allow free movement of workers. But the common border has to be an open border. We don’t beg our bosses to legislate to protect our jobs at the expense of foreign workers. On the contrary we unite with the workers of all countries against the global corporations that exploit and oppress them, so that the demand for nationalisation becomes socialisation on a global scale.

Workers’ control means workers’ planning

How would this solidarity between Aussie and Kiwi workers operate? If we take those sectors where Australian and NZ capitalist ownership is most integrated, the unions should also be integrated. In Banking, NZ workers cannot fight the Aussie banks without the support of Aussie workers. As soon as we get into wage and job negotiation the boss plays one off the other. We need to call for the nationalisation of the banks under workers control. The division of the banks assets between Australia and NZ workers would automatically raise the need to unify the two countries.

Same with NZ Steel, 100% owned by BHP the largest mining corporation in the world. BHP jointly owns the huge Cerrejon Zona Norte coal mine in Colombia where it ‘manages’ its relations with the indigenous Wayuu and the unions by using the notorious paramilitaries to kill their leaders – the same death squads that recently entered Venezuela to kill President Chavez. http://www.thewest.com.au/20040607/business/tw-business-home-sto126156.html

The US United Mine Workers and United Steel workers unions have taken solidarity action with the Colombian miners. Australian and NZ workers need to demand the nationalization under workers control of BHP!

Same with Toll Rail that now owns NZ Rail. Nationalising Toll Rail under workers control would call for workers in both countries to exercise ‘joint control’ and pose the question of a single shared planned economy. Automatically the demands for workers control mean workers planning and a workers state. Would this be a single socialist republic or a union of socialist republics? We can’t say until workers have come to power and decided democratically what workers states would look like.

For Occupations and Nationalisations without compensation under workers control!

For a workers’ planned economy!

For a Socialist United States of the Pacific! 

From Class Struggle 56 June-July 2004

HANDS OFF THE SOLOMONS! NO TO THE KHAKI GREENS!

From Class Struggle 51 July-August 2003

The recent invasion of the Solomon Islands by a force led by Australia and New Zealand represents a new stage in the recolonisation of the Asia-Pacific region. Like Iraq, the Solomons has been occupied in the name of humanitarianism, but in the interests of imperialism. The Facilitation of International Assistance 2003 legislation provides the 2,000-strong military force with both wide-ranging powers and immunity from prosecution under local law.

The legislation was drawn up not in Honiara but in Canberra and Wellington. Such was the contempt in Canberra for the parliamentary deliberations in Honiara that the documents were leaked to sections of the Australian media before they were even tabled in the Solomon Islands. The invaders have tried to argue that their actions are legitimate because they are backed by the people of the Solomons and by the Pacific. But the Solomons parliament which approved the invasion is notoriously corrupt and unrepresentative, and the invaders are lying when they say that other Pacific governments are united in support of their actions.

Green Party MP Keith Locke's disgraceful speech to parliament justifying the invasion showed up the hypocrisy of the pro-invasion left. Locke argued that the invasion was justified because Solomons political leaders like Prime Minister Kamakeza supported it...then went on to acknowledge the corruption of the Solomons political system and to urge its reform!

While corrupt MPs voted for invasion, the Fijian-based Pacific Concerns Resource Centre (PCRC) pointed out that the invasion flatly contradicted the wishes of the National Peace Conference held in August 2000 by representatives of dozens of organisations drawn from many sectors of Solomons society. This conference had called for the demilitarisation of Solomons society, not an invasion led by an Australian army recently responsible for war crimes in East Timor and Afghanistan. The PCRC recognised the blatantly imperialist nature of the invasion, condemning plans for "a governing council of about 12 people led by a chief executive with a light infantry company on standby, a judicial team of 20, prison staff, a group of accountants and other financial managers to administer the economy".

Others have pointed to the presence of small numbers of Fijian and Tongan troops in the invasion force as 'evidence' for Pacific peoples' consent. It's true that, desperate to avoid being the next targets for intervention, Fiji and Tonga have joined the invasion force, but neither of these countries can be called even a bourgeois democracy - one government runs an apartheid system, and the other is an absolute monarchy! Proponents of the invasion do not mention the deep uneasiness of Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu, larger countries with closer ties to the Solomons and traditionally more independent foreign policies.

It’s about imperialism

In 'An Un-Natural Disaster?', an article in Class Struggle #48, we exposed preparations for the invasion in the mass media, the Australasian political establishment, and Australia’s intelligence services. We also pointed out that the social crisis in the Solomons has been caused by the super exploitation of the islands by imperialism, and by the intensification of this super exploitation over the past few years by the ANZAC suits who run the IMF in the South Pacific.

Last November, at the insistence of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Solomon Islands government sacked 1,300 employees – that’s about 30 percent of the public sector workforce. The number of government employees had already been halved from 8,473 to 4,337 between 1993 and 1999.

As part of last November’s ‘reforms’, the Solomons government gave control of its finances to an Australian, Lloyd Powell, for whom the post of Permanent Secretary of Finance was created. Powell is the executive director of the New Zealand-based company Solomon Leonard, which has a proven track record in overseeing austerity programs in the Cook Islands, Vanuatu and Tonga.

Is it any wonder that the slash and burn policies of the IMF and Powell have created economic and social crisis in the Solomons? John Howard and Helen Clark are now using the crisis as an excuse to force neoliberalism on the Solomons at the point of a gun.

Humanitarian Aid - for ANZAC profits

The attempt by the Australian government and media to dress up the Solomons intervention as an act of humanitarian charity is a sham. Australia and New Zealand are interested in the Solomons for economic and strategic reasons.

In a pro-invasion ‘analysis’ called 'Our Failing Neighbour', the Australian Strategic Policy Institute noted: “Prior to the 2000 coup there were about 100 Australian companies doing business in Solomon Islands, with about 30 having operations there. Since the breakdown in law and order this has declined to only a handful having operations on the ground. This amounts to significant economic loss for Australia.”

Howard and Clark are also worried about instability spreading west from the Solomons to the mineral-rich island of Bougainville, where ANZAC troops only recently helped quench a decade-long independence struggle.

Anti-war movement, unions should act

The movement opposing imperialist war and occupations in the Middle East must focus some of its attention on the invasion of the Solomons. If we can’t oppose imperialism on our own doorstep, then we have no chance of helping to defeat it farther afield.

The anti-war movement should demand that all foreign forces stay out of the Solomons, and that Lloyd Powell and the rest of the IMF be kicked out of the country. The New Zealand and Australian governments should forgive the debts they are ‘owed’ by the Solomons, and should fund the recreation of the public sector jobs that the IMF destroyed last year.

The people of the Solomons have a right to defend themselves against the ANZAC invaders. Because of its isolation and underdevelopment, the Solomons lacks a strong workers’ movement, and has no socialist movement at all. Opposition to the invaders may be led at first by tribal or religious forces, but this will not make it illegitimate.

The anti-war movement in wealthy countries like New Zealand has no right to condemn oppressed people in super exploited nations who turn to religious ideas and tribal organisation in an effort to understand and combat their oppression. It is up to the left and the workers’ movement of Australasia to aid the people of the Solomons, and in doing so advance progressive and pro-worker ideas in the country.

The Australasian union movement has a shocking record of support for ANZAC imperialism in the Asia-Pacific region. In 1999, for instance, Aussie trade unionists gave money and labour to build the walled compound that became the headquarters of the UN army of occupation in East Timor. It was from these headquarters that ANZAC thugs launched attacks to crush workers’ and students’ protests with guns and batons, once the reality of occupation had set in for the 'liberated' East Timorese.

Today Australasian unions should aid the victims of imperialism, not the bullies. Strikes and blockades should be organised to stop the movement of supplies and reinforcements to ANZAC troops in the Solomons. The struggling trade unions of the Solomons should be aided, so that they can defend their members against continued IMF cuts and the restrictions on civil liberties which the ANZAC occupiers will introduce.

Khaki Greens hail invasion

Across Australasia, the anti-war movement while united in opposing a US invasion of Iraq is divided over a US-backed invasion far closer to home. The Green and social democratic politicians who tried to dominate the movement against an invasion of Iraq are amongst the loudest supporters of John Howard's latest military adventure. Bob Brown, the leader of Australia's Khaki Green Party, has actually criticised Bush and Howard for not being keen enough, saying that the invasion of the Solomons was 'long overdue'.

Here in New Zealand, the Khaki Greens have shown similar enthusiasm. Greens Foreign Affairs spokesman Keith Locke gave pre-emptive backing to the invasion in a July the 1st speech to parliament. Locke told MPs that he was “not really concerned about the New Zealand troops operating in an insensitive way because they have a very good record internationally”. Does Locke know anything about history? Does he think that the murder of civilians in Vietnam and Korea and the mass execution of POWs in North Africa counts as ‘very good’? Locke went so far as to identify the Greens with the National Party's attitude to the Solomons, saying "I think Bill English was right" in a reference to the National leader's earlier statement to parliament.

Like his friend Bob Brown, Locke has spent years urging the Australasian political establishment to launch an invasion of the Solomons. He’s also been a cheerleader for military intervention in Bougainville, East Timor, Kosovo, and (under UN auspices) Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s doubtful whether any other sitting MP has been such a wide-ranging advocate of the use of New Zealand armed forces overseas as Keith Locke.

Impressed by the size of protests against the invasion of Iraq, some people have argued that the anti-war movement is also an anti-capitalist movement. But the pro-war position of many 'peacenik' liberals and Greens and the gutless silence of the Alliance tell us otherwise.

How can we understand the pro-invasion stance of the Greens? Are they contradicting themselves by opposing New Zealand occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan but supporting a New Zealand occupation in the Solomons? We don’t think so. The Greens are a pro-capitalist organisation rooted in the least efficient section of the New Zealand capitalist class – struggling and small businesses that have nothing to gain from the continued globalisation of the New Zealand economy supported by their more prosperous cousins who back National and ACT.

But the Greens’ business backers oppose globalisation because of their bottom line, not out of concern for workers at home or the Third World. They disagree with Helen Clark not over support for imperialism, but over where exactly and under what banner the army should repress workers and peasants and help extract superprofits. The Greens’ patrons have no chance of competing with the hotshot multinationals carving up the Middle East under the banner of the US (as opposed to the French and Germans), so they naturally opposed the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and called New Zealand military support for these wars a waste of money. It is in the Asia-Pacific region that the green capitalists hope to mark their mark.

The invasion of the Solomons has exposed the politics of the Green Party just as surely as the war on Afghanistan exposed the Alliance. To be sure, the Greens have some honest, hardworking pro-worker rank and file activists, but this doesn't change the class location of the bulk of the party's membership and class nature of the politics their leaders push. By its very nature the Green Party is a futile avenue for pro-worker activism. Now's the time for lefty Greens to get out of this rotten organisation and become full-blooded reds!

Instead of busting their guts for careerists like Locke, they should join the revolutionaries around the world and mobilise the working class to take direct action against the wars of recolonisation which are the survival-mechanism of capitalism in the twenty-first century. The anti-war movement can only develop an anti-capitalist backbone if it attracts the support of the organised working class. Unlike their local capitalists, workers do not have an economic interest in wars of recolonisation.

Keith Locke's pro-invasion speech is online at http://www.greens.org.nz/searchdocs/speech6482.html