International MayDay, One Class! One Fight! Occupy, it’s our right!

On this day ever since the hanging of four workers in Chicago in 1886, arising out of a strike for the 8 hour day, workers around the world have come together in marches, rallies and strikes, to celebrate their common membership of an international working class that continues to struggle against all its class enemies for its emancipation from the chains of capitalism.

The struggle continues because international capitalism cannot survive without a constant increase in the exploitation and oppression of every worker who produces its profits. In the process it destroys resources, steals land, closes factories and expels workers from production. Most destructive of all, it recruits jobless workers to go to war and invade countries like Afghanistan and Iraq to seize their scarce resources.

When workers resist and try to reclaim their countries, their resources, schools and factories, they are asserting their right to own and control the means of production necessary for life. Here we can see the common factor behind all of these struggles; it is the spontaneous struggle of all those excluded from production or trapped in wage slavery, to assert their class independence and take control of the means of production to meet their basic survival needs.

Mayday 2006 Unite all the struggles around the world

Today many such struggles are taking place around the world. Peasants are fighting to retain or get land; factory workers are fighting to survive closures; women workers are fighting to keep their families together and against violence; young workers are fighting for an education, and decent jobs, a living wage and social rights. Unemployed recruited into imperialist armies or warlords militias are refusing to follow orders. Iraqis, Afghans, Africans, Melanesians, Colombians, etc. are resisting imperialist occupations and fighting for their national independence.

Peasants and agricultural workers in the Solomon Islands, in Bolivia and Brazil, India and China, Nigeria and South Africa, resist the removal of their land for capitalist agriculture, or extraction of oil, gas, timber or minerals etc. by the giant multinationals based in the imperialists countries. Many of these peasants are indigenous peoples who retain their own social structures and cultures. Their universal response to these attacks is to occupy the land.

Take the land, but join forces with workers and also take the trucks, the ports and the banks!


Industrial workers, whose wages and conditions deteriorate under the increasing exploitation forced on them by the IMF, World Bank and WTO, resist in many countries. In Latin America, around a third of the work-age population is without work, and another third lives in the ‘black’ economy of undocumented, super-exploited, dangerous, virtual slave labor. Where workers are cast out of production, their instinct is to occupy and continue production.

Turn the occupations into expropriations!

In the United States the 12 million undocumented ‘illegals’ have poured into the country from the South, West and East, and perform the most menial, dangerous and servile work. They are under immediate threat of being criminalised, arrested, deported, or turned into ‘guest’ workers regulated and repressed by Bush’s Department of Homeland Security. Wherever ‘illegals’ stand up and fightback, as they are doing today in the US, they are criminalized, deported or locked up in the Guantanamos of this world.

Long live the ‘illegal’ worker! We are all ‘illegals’!
Close down the Guantanamos!

Women workers continue to bear the brunt of the worst exploitation and oppression. On top of the burden of child care and support, women still do the low-paid, menial, insecure work. As the capitalist crisis of the 80s and 90s has shifted much industry from core capitalist states to the ‘third’ world, women have filled many such jobs in the maquiladores of Latin America, the shantytowns of Africa, and factory dormitories of China and India, and borne the brunt of family breakdown, rape and murder. Because of this women take the lead in struggles for land rights, indigenous rights, factory occupations, and human rights. They are asserting their right to break out of domestic slavery and to take ownership and control of the means of production.

Forward the woman worker!
Abolish domestic slavery!

Young workers are also among the most vulnerable, facing, unemployment, discrimination and ‘precarite’ - lack of job security. In December of last year the unemployed youth of the migrant communities in France rebelled against the police as the agents of capitalist repression. In March of this year university students, high school students and workers in auto, rail, and the state sector took to the streets to stop the latest reactionary labor law giving bosses’ freedom to hire and fire young workers. They occupied universities, schools, and blocked railways and roads to prove that they too can take over and control, if only symbolically for now, the means of production, distribution and exchange.

Occupy the schools and universities under student/worker control !
For free education to all!
 
Soldiers are workers or peasants in uniform, drafted to fight the wars of their bosses by killing and looting the peoples of the colonies and semi-colonies. They are mainly poor, unemployed youth drawn from peasant, migrant, or stateless families. If these troops refused orders the capitalist military machine would disintegrate. In Bolivia, Venezuela and Iraq some ordinary ranks have mutinied against their officers and sided with the masses under attack.

For rank-and-file control of the military! For the formation of rank and file councils!
For workers' and peasants' militias!


Socialism is the only way out

Global capitalism in the 21st century is in a crisis in which the forces of production are being destroyed so that capitalists can continue to profit. Marx long ago predicted that capitalism would ultimately dig its own grave by creating a working class that would overthrow the private owners to claim social ownership of the forces of production.

This is where we are today. Peasants, factory workers, women workers, youth, conscripts; the majority are being cast out of production. This is what Marx and Engels meant in the Communist Manifesto when they raised the slogan: “Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains”! Despite all those doomsayers who claim that socialism is dead, or those wheeler-dealers who claim that capitalism can be reformed by ‘democratic’ , ‘humane’ politicians, the system has them all in its grip. The producing classes cannot survive by placing any hopes in reforming the system. This can only lead to further social destruction, climactic disaster and fascist barbarism.

The only solution for the worlds’ workers is to expropriate the means of production from the private owners for our own use. When we are excluded from production, or forced into slave labor, we must occupy and put the means of production under our own control. Where workers have done this as in Argentina and Venezuela, they have proved that bosses are superfluous.

We are one class; the working class, and one fight; the fight for socialism

Standing between workers and socialism are all the enemies of their class. They are those who seek to contain and divert the workers struggle to expropriate the capitalists into compromises, deals, and sellouts to save the bosses skins. These are the false friends of workers – the union officials who are paid by the bosses state to prevent workers from running unions democratically; the political parties funded by the bosses state with false names like ‘labor’ , ‘socialist’, ‘worker’ or 'communist', that promise workers, land, jobs, health and education, but instead cut jobs, wages and benefits to guarantee bosses good profits.

Today the most dangerous class enemies of all the peasant, wage slaves, women, youth, and conscripts, who are struggling to take control of the means of production, distribution and exchange, are those false ‘socialists’ who tell the workers to put their faith in strong leaders who can bring about socialism from ‘above’; in particular, those in the World Social Forum who look to Castro, Chavez and even Lula, to solve their problems for them.

No! To defeat the class collaborationist World Social Forum we must build a new revolutionary communist international. The only guarantee of socialism is the independent, armed organisation of our One Class! Peasants, factory workers, women, and youth workers, united in workers councils everywhere; and our One Fight! Turn occupations all into expropriations as the basis of a socialist planned world economy!

Communist Worker Group (NZ) Member of the Leninist-Trotskyist Fraction

From Class Struggle 66 April/May 2006

Bolivia: Students Occupy the University of Technology, Oruro (UTO).

Today the University of Technology at Oruro in Bolivia is into its third month of occupation by students, parents, teachers, miners and poor farmers. They want to use this occupation to reignite the popular struggle for socialism in Bolivia. On 21 September we posted a call for international solidarity in support of this occupation and for the campaign to free Cezar Zelada on Indymedia. Zelada has since been freed on bail and awaits trial. We also reprint our resolution in support of the occupation sent to the students Committee for Defence.

Since the end of August, the UTO, in Bolivia, has been in the hands of a Committee for the Defence of the University comprised of students, parents, workers of the main union organisation (COD), miners of Huanuni and other workers’ organisations. Over 500 hundred students of the UTO occupied their university and demanded the resignation of their Rector. They have formed a joint student, teachers and workers ‘tri-government’ with a student majority to replace the administration and create a ‘new’ university.

On September 2, a student congress met and made a Manifesto. It states that their fight is the same as the masses fight. That the time has come to end the corrupt, exploitative university system, which is part of capitalism. It calls for support from all the exploited people of Bolivia to make this fight their fight. It demands a living minimum wage pegged to inflation; work for all by reducing the hours of work but not the wage; for social insurance financed by the employer’s state; for the self-determination of the Quechuas, Aymaras and Tupiguaranis; that control of the gas (Bolivia’s main resource) and all other means of production are taken over by a Workers’ state; in short, for a transition from capitalism to communism (social property, self-government of the masses without a state).

Political differences among the students and the local unions has led to a split between those who want to restore the Rector and work with him to gain some reforms in funding to reduce the costs of education, and those who want to continue the strong line of building support between the students, the rank and file of the miners and workers in the COD, and extend the struggle to other universities in Bolivia. CWG backs those who want to deepen and extend this fight rather than do deals with the administration and trade union bureaucrats to contain the struggle within the limit of Mesa’s parliamentary regime.

Now into their third month of occupation, the Oruro students, teachers, workers and poor farmers continue to be a flaming beacon showing the way for the Bolivian masses that have twice risen up in insurrections in 2003 and are the vanguard of the struggle against the policies of US imperialism in Latin America. They have sent out an urgent call to workers in Bolivia, Latin America and all over the world to support their struggle.

Pass a resolution of support for the occupation in your union, workplace, university or school!

INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY with comrade Cesar Zelada, well-known Peruvian student activist, was arrested on Monday 13 September in La Paz (Bolivia) under the false accusation of terrorism. Cesar traveled to Bolivia taking the greeting of the Peruvian students to the students, workers and people of Oruro, who continue a heroic and exemplary occupation of their university. The accusation of terrorism, clearly false, is the fashionable pretext to repress the popular struggle. We know well as the Peruvian regime does it. We support Cesar. We salute the heroic fight of the students and people of Oruro. We demand of the Bolivian government the immediate and unconditional freedom of Cesar Zelada and we call for the widest unity in action until we have won his freedom.

Comité Organizador de una Liga Trotskista Internacionalista (COLTI) de Perú

For more information see peru.indymedia.org/news/2004/09/10912.php

__________________________________________

Message of Solidarity sent to UTO by CWGNZ
 
Comrades of the Occupation of University of Technology Oruro,

Dear Comrades of the Committee of Defence,

The Communist Workers Group of New Zealand is in strong solidarity with your occupation of the university and in your fight for student and worker control of education.

We agree with the program of demands that makes the university a base for the transformation to a communist society. We endorse your struggle to win the support of rank and file teachers, workers and poor farmers.

From Class Struggle 58 October-November 2004

Maori Party Debate: Anti-Communist means Anti-Maori

Jesse Butler made a number of replies to the CWG’s Open Letter to the Green Left Weekly (see next post) in response to Butler’s article after it was posted on the indymedia news service. Here we reprint one of Butler’s replies and our response to him.

To the CWG,

Once again we are bombarded with the outdated rhetoric of the communist party, now focusing on Tariana's reasonable comment to work with anyone, including National, to obtain equality and justice in Aotearoa.

Where is the alternative system of the communist party? I hear a lot of bullshit from the sidelines yet very little in the way of an alternative game plan.

You’re not still waiting for your 'revolution' are you? Do you mean to say that the vast majority of the masses would rise up against the system that supplies them security, income and a future to your unarticulated communist system?

Surely, you are not suggesting another failed communist experiment experienced in Russia, China and North Korea to happen here in Aotearoa?

Communist dictators make Donald Brash look like a lollipop. And you want the New Zealand public to take you seriously?

No, I’m afraid your ramblings are blinded by ideology and obviously flawed in the political reality of this country.

My advice to you is to wake up and get off the sidelines, and have a real go at the opposition like we are. Basically put up or shut up.

We need all hands on deck against the neo-liberal onslaught, and sometimes that involves getting inside next to them so we can beat them at their own game.

Jesse Butler

The CWG replies:

Jesse’s response to our criticisms of his article shows very clearly that Green Left Weekly and Socialist Worker were wrong to print his accounts of the hikoi and the formation of the Maori Party. Jesse’s anti-communism would make Joe McCarthy and Ben Couch proud!

Anti-commie, anti-Maori

It's sad to see some supporters of the Maori Party engaging in a red baiting that belongs to the days the Cold War, because it was Maori who were regularly asked to go abroad and die in the US's wars against 'communist tyranny' in Korea, Malaya, and Vietnam. Thirty-two of the thirty-five Kiwi troops who died in Vietnam were Maori - what did they die for? Hasn’t Jesse learnt anything?

And Vietnam and Korea weren't the first wars that New Zealand fought against 'the communist menace'. The Waikato and Taranaki wars were crusades against communism, fought for the interests of settler capitalists who were infuriated by the Maori refusal to sell collectively-owned land.

Te Whiti and his followers at Parihaka was targeted by the warmongers not because they wore feathers in their hair but because they praised 'the miracle of collective labour' and refused to sell their collectively-owned land.

The gardens of the Maori kingdom in the Waikato were destroyed not because the people who worked them were using collective land ownership and labour to feed the fortress city of Auckland, where would-be land grabbers railed against 'the socialistic natives'.

The CWG remembers the communism of Te Whiti, as well as the communism of Marx and the communism of the occupied factories movement in today's Argentina. We want to see the foreshore and the whole of Aotearoa run collectively.

That’s why we reject the Maori Party.

Different party, same mistakes

The Maori Party's strategy is to capture the balance of parliamentary seats, and try to get good deals for Maori, and especially for iwi commercial interests, by using the balance of power in negotiations with the major parties. This strategy cannot succeed for two reasons.

In the first place, the ability of the major parties to influence the economy in favour of Maori business is limited, because the New Zealand economy is mostly owned offshore, by US and US-Aussie companies.

The domination of the Kiwi economy by US and other imperialisms means that iwi businesses have little chance of succeeding, or even surviving.

They do not have the capital to compete with the multinationals, and as little fish will inevitably be swallowed up by the big fish. But even if Maori capitalism were a viable venture, the Maori Party would not benefit many Maori, because very few Maori are capitalists.

The vast majority of Maori are workers or the dependents of workers. All Kiwi workers have an interest in better pay and conditions, and better social services like health and education.

These interests clash with those of capitalists, because capitalists make their profits from the wages of workers. It's no coincidence that employers' groups have been at the forefront of campaigns against pro-worker arguments and policies like the minimum wage, the right to strike, paid parental leave, and increased funding for public health.

Brown bosses are no more pro-worker than white bosses, and the mini-capitalists of the iwicorps are now fighting class wars of their own. Look at Ngati Whatua bosses wanting to sell off housing their own people won back in the Bastion Pt struggle. Look at the struggles against Robert Mahuta and more recently Tuku Morgan by Tainui Maori sick of corporate cowboy behaviour.

The Maori Party's strategy has been repeatedly tried and repeatedly found wanting over the past few years.

The tight five of NZ First and then Mauri Pacific tried to advance Maori interests in coalition with National, and ended up supporting the privatisation of Auckland Airport and rimu logging on the West Coast. In return they got fat salaries and some nice undies. Nice for them, but not so good for their supporters, who booted them out in 1999.

Mana Motuhake entered government in 1999, but Willie Jackson and Sandra Lee were as unable to win concessions as the tight five before them. They couldn't even stop Labour junking its weak-as-water Closing the Gaps scheme after National kicked up a proto-Brashian fuss. In return for his non-existent policy wins Jackson ended up having to back the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, on the grounds that 'The SAS boys are Maori and they want to go'.

Tariana played a key role in the Pakaitore occupation in 1995, but got sucked into the Labour Party by the promise of winning those elusive policy concessions. We all know how she got on there.

The hikoi could have turned into an alternative to parliamentarism – there were militant elements on it that rejected the failure of repeated attempts to work 'within the system'. Why get blisters walking from Te Hapua to Wellington, if you can influence policy from the comfort of the cabinet room?

Back to the future!

For these advocates of extra-parliamentary protest action, the hikoi looked back to the great days of the 1970s and early 80s, when Maori and their supporters waged a series of struggles which shook the Kiwi ruling class to its core.

The Great Land March of 1975, the epic occupation of Bastion Point, the struggle to reclaim the Raglan Golf Course, and the hikoi to Waitangi in 1984 were all examples of Maori direct action against 'the system'.

Before it got tied up in the red tape of the 'Treaty process', the Maori direct action movement managed to win a whole series of victories.

Make no mistake: Bastion Pt was won back by direct action, not parliament. The Maori land at Raglan is no longer a golf course because of direct action, not some cabinet seat.

Language nests exist today because Maori kicked up a stink in the streets in the 70s and early 80s, not because of Tau Henare or Tariana.

The partial victory Tariana helped win at Pakaitore in the mid-90s stands in stark contrast to the same woman's utter failure to influence Labour policy as a cabinet minister.

And the hikoi struck far more terror into the hearts of the establishment than the electoral triumphs of Tau, Willie and the rest of them combined. 'Wellington under siege!' the Herald screamed.

There was a palpable sense of relief when Tariana turned the final day of the hikoi into an electoral rally, and went on TV with Gerry Brownlee to announce her openness to a coalition deal with National.

Tariana played the same role in Wellington as Dame Whina played after the Land March. Dame Whina told the militant young Maori who set up an occupation of parliament grounds to pack up and go home and work inside the system, and the militants were right to refuse, and to lay the ground for the occupations that were to come!

Today Tariana is telling us to forget about the old hikoi, that the 'next hikoi will be the ballot box'. We should refuse her call too, and organise occupations of threatened sections of foreshore up and down the country.

While Tariana sets out her election stall and promises the same things as Tau and Willie promised, the theft of the foreshore proceeds, the American mansions go up on wahi tapu, and the 'free' trade deal gets closer and closer. Labour and the bosses aren't stopping, so why should we?

Browns and reds unite!

We can make sure occupations and other direct actions are successful by building on the tradition of Maori-communist struggle which Jesse mocks.

We have already mentioned the armed struggle to defend the collectively-owned and worked Waikato from capitalists in the 1860s, and the passive resistance to privatisation which Te Whiti is famous for, but Maori struggle against capitalism didn't stop in the nineteenth century.

There is a long history of collaboration between revolutionary socialists and Maori, a tradition which includes the solidarity the Tainui Maori showed to the Red Federation of Labour during the revolutionary General Strike of 1913, through the socialist and trade unionist presence in the occupations of the 70s, to the anti-Springbok protests of 1981, right up to the present day actions of communist Maori activists like Justin Taua.

Communists have always understood that only the muscle of organised workers can win crucial struggles like the Maori struggle for land rights. Unlike Tau or Tariana, communists recognise the common interests of Maori and Pakeha workers, and the importance of getting them together on the picket line.

Since we've mentioned it already we'll use the example of Bastion Pt to illustrate the point we’re making in more detail.

By the 1930s almost the only piece of land the 'friendly' tribe of Ngati Whatua possessed was a small strip of coast near Bastion Pt.

Auckland city authorities wanted to strip Ngati Whatua of this piece of land and the village that stood on it, but they reckoned without the alliance which Ngati Whatua's Tainui ally Princess Te Puea had made with the Pakeha-dominated trade union movement and with the Communist Party.

Tainui solidarity with the workers' movement went back to 1913, when iwi leaders urged Maori not to undermine the General Strike by signing on to do the jobs of strikers.

Communist Party unionists returned the favour by championing the grievances of Waikato Tainui, who since returning from exile in the Rohe Potae in 1883 had struggled relentlessly to regain their confiscated lands.

When word went out that the government was about to move on the Maori village near Bastion Point in 1937communists in Auckland's trade unions swung into action.

Ron Mason, who was organising with the General Labourers Union, put out an urgent call to the city's builders, and four hundred of them descended on the threatened settlement.

With the help of Ngati Whatua and Tainui, the builders worked non-stop to fortify the village, laying tall palisades in a concrete foundation. Workers prepared to defend the village, and the government backed down.

It was not until sixteen years later, in 1953, that the government was finally able to burn the village of Orakei to the ground.

It is no coincidence that this act of ethnic cleansing took place after the defeat of the radical workers movement in the Great Waterfront Lockout of 1951. Without the support of organised labour Ngati Whatua were weakened. The fortunes of the workers' movement and Maori have always been linked.

When the struggle for Bastion Pt and surrounding land revived in the 70s, trade unionists and a new generation of communists were amongst the vanguard.

Unionists took the issue into their organisations, raising thousands of dollars in aid and bringing in work teams to help the occupiers build a new village on Bastion Point. Communist organisations turned their dinky printing presses to the task of publicising the cause.

When Muldoon sent in the armed forces to crush the occupation at Bastion Point, trade unionists and communists stood on the picket line, and thousands of workers walked off the job around Auckland in a spontaneous protest strike.

Carpenters and truckies who had been called out to a mysterious 'big job' refused to work, when they found that they were being asked to help demolish the Bastion Point settlement.

Solidarity continued into the 80s, when Ngati Whatua were finally able to recover their land. The degeneration into corporatism of the leadership of Ngati Whatua doesn't wipe out the victory of Bastion Point, but it does show once again that without a strong workers' movement the Maori flaxroots are weak.

Occupy for sure!

Today we need to revive the spirit of Bastion Point by building on the support for the hikoi shown by unions like the National Distribution Union, the Service and Food Workers Union, Aste, and the Manufacturing and Construction Union.

Neither Pakeha nor Maori unionists will ever back a party that makes overtures to National, but many of them will back occupations of a foreshore which all ordinary New Zealanders value and worry about losing.

By occupying the foreshore and inviting ordinary Pakeha to join them, Maori can take the wind out of the sails of the right-wingers who say that the hikoi was about Maori privatisation, while at the same time thwarting the iwicorp opportunists who think that Maori sovereignty means Maori capitalism.

Sea farming and tourism ventures can be controlled by workers, not by brown or white capitalists.

And if the foreshore and its industries can be socialised, then why not the whole economy? A movement to socialise the whole of Aotearoa can take inspiration from the occupied factories of Argentina and the collective farms being established in Venezuela, as well as the indigenous communism of Rangiaowhia and Te Whiti.

This is the argument that the CWG made on the hikoi and has been making at Maori Party hui.

The argument from which this reply is taken can be read in full here:

From Class Struggle 57 August-September 2004

Let;s Occupy the Foreshore, not Cabinet!

An Open Letter to supporters of the Maori Party

Kia ora comrades,

We were proud to march alongside so many of you on the great seabed and foreshore hikoi. The hikoi has already taken its place beside the Great Land March of 1975, the waterfront lockout of 1951, and the anti-Springbok campaign of 1981 in the history of resistance to injustice in Aotearoa. We salute the courage and endurance of the marchers who defied the threats of politicians, the slanders of the media, and the verbal and physical attacks from racists and made Labour’s confiscation of the seabed and foreshore into a burning issue up and down Aotearoa.

We were proud to hikoi with you to Wellington, but we won’t be travelling to Wanganui for the launch of the new Maori Party. It’s not that we’ve changed our minds about the seabed and foreshore – on the contrary, we think that events since the passage of Labour’s legislation confirm the arguments of the hikoi ten times over.

We won’t be with you in Wanganui because we believe that the Maori Party represents a sharp turn away from the path of the hikoi. We don’t recognise the spirit of that great struggle in the Maori Party. In fact, we think that some of the pronouncements of the would-be leaders of the new party – Tariana Turia, Peter Sharples, and the rest – represent a betrayal of the politics of the seabed and foreshore hikoi. We think that you are setting out on a hikoi to hell, and we want to try to convince you change direction before it’s too late.

Hikoi to the Ballot Box?

We’ve been disturbed by some of the korero at pro-party hui held around the North Island, and by the statements that leaders of the new party have been making through the media. Movers and shakers like Tariana and Sharples have announced that they want the new organisation to be a ‘centre’ party, which can sit between National and Labour and negotiate with both to get the best deal – or, at any rate, the biggest number of Cabinet seats - for Maori.

Tariana tells us that the new party will be open to people of all political persuasions. Tuku Morgan has welcome at pro-party hui, and National’s Georgina Te Heuheu is being courted as a possible candidate in next year’s general election. Sharples has claimed that the new party ‘will have the same basic philosophy’ as Labour, and that Labour ‘would be fools to treat us as enemies’. On television with Gerry Brownlee soon after the hikoi, Tariana refused to rule out a coalition between the new party and National after the next election. Tariana’s by-election campaign manager Matt McCarten has defended the overtures to National as a ‘strategic’ measure designed to increase the Maori Party’s bargaining power. According to Tariana and McCarten, ‘the next hikoi will be to the ballot box’ and into a coalition with one of the big parties.

But why were we on the hikoi in the first place? Why did Maori and their supporters need to march all the way from Te Hapua to Wellington? What were all those blisters for? Wasn’t the hikoi necessary because Maori seats in Cabinet were not able to get a better deal for Maori? Hasn’t Tariana tried and fail to influence government ‘from the inside’? And didn’t Tuku and the rest of Tau Henare’s brat pack try and fail to do the same back in the late 90s?

New Party, Old Mistakes

We think that Tariana is repeating the mistakes she made after the occupation at Pakaitore back in ’95. Tariana won a lot of mana as a leader of that occupation, which defied the power of the state and won back a piece of the Wanganui River foreshore for Maori. After the Pakaitore, Labour dropped Tariana a line, telling her that she should occupy parliament. Tariana bought Labour’s line, and the rest is history.

Tariana lost a lot of her mana by becoming a Minister in a government which helped the US invade Afghanistan and Iraq, and which continued to implement National’s right-wing economic and social policies at home. Tariana’s decision to dump Labour for the hikoi has made her a hero again, but now she’s talking about going down the same old parliamentary road. Not only has Tariana not learnt from her mistakes, she’s hasn’t even learnt from the mistake of Tau and his New Zealand First mates. She’s talking about the possibility of going down Tau’s own road to nowhere, by forming a government with the Nats!

Local Battle, Global War

But why is the hikoi through parliament so hard? Why did Tau and Tariana fail? Why did Mat Rata fail? Why did Apirana Ngata fail? Why are Maori still second-class citizens, after more than a hundred years of Maori seats?

To answer these questions, we need to step back and look at the big political picture. We hikoied to Wellington, because Wellington is the political capital of Aotearoa. Wellington is where parliament sits and the big bureaucrats draw their salaries.

But Wellington is not the place where the most important economic and political decisions affecting Aotearoa are made. To go to the real heart of power, we’d have to hikoi to Washington DC, or to the Wall Street Stock Exchange in New York City. Aotearoa is an economic semi-colony of the United States, and that means that the US dictates the economic direction and general political programme of both National and Labour governments.

Multinational companies based in the US and other imperialist countries control most of the biggest businesses in Aotearoa, and wealthy Americans are snapping up our land. US money has effective veto power over important economic and political decisions in Wellington. US military and spy bases are dotted around Aotearoa, and Labour’s participation in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is driven by a fear of offending US money and the US government. ‘Free’ trade treaties like GATT only tie government hands more tightly.

The US exports its own economic problems to the rest of the world, and calls its export globalisation. In Aotearoa, globalisation has meant the privatisations and cuts in education and health spending of the 80s and 90s. Globalisation continues today, as Labour works hard to win a ‘free’ trade deal with the US by removing remaining barriers to foreign investment and the purchase of land, opening the door to GE, and doing the US’s dirty work in ‘little Iraqs’ like the Solomons and East Timor.

It’s not hard to see why Labour is crapping on Maori. Those cheeky darkies who descended on Wellington are a threat to the smooth progress of globalisation in Aotearoa. The Maori Land Court and the Waitangi Tribunal threatened to tie the government up in red tape, when it wanted to get on with reducing the barriers to the US buy-up of coastal land, and the US colonisation of the sea farming business. And the Maori demand for better funding for kohanga reo, housing and other necessities runs straight into Labour’s concern to keep government spending down so that it can cut company tax and woo US investors.

How they Hikoi in Bolivia

The hikoi was a challenge to the politicians and bureaucrats in Wellington and to the globalisers in Washington DC. It was our local front in the global war against the imperialists’ globalisation. It’s no coincidence that many young people on the march identified with the Iraqi resistance, and that some wore the head dress of the Palestinians fighting colonisation in Gaza and the West Bank. And, there’s no doubt the hikoi scared the shit out of the local agents of globalisation. Helen Clark was too afraid to show us her face, when we made it to Wellington! (Of course, Helen will be much less worried about a Maori Party which refuses even to call her the enemy. She’ll be keeping that Cabinet seat warm for Tariana...)

Maori and working class Pakeha have to understand that winning seats in parliament and at the Cabinet table means nothing, as long as their country is owned offshore. To defeat the enemy, we have to think globally, even as we act locally. We may have a powerful offshore enemy in US imperialism, but we also have a power offshore ally too, in the international working class. From Iraq to Argentina, US imperialism is being resisted by working class and oppressed people. When we talk about strategy and tactics, we should be looking at success stories overseas, not at local failures like Tau and Tuku.

We all know about Iraq, but too few of us are aware of the massive anti-US revolts that have been shaking South America for two years now. South America’s workers and peasants are fighting US imperialism, and they are winning. In Argentina, workers have reacted to globalisation by occupying hundreds of factories that US-owned companies wanted to close down. In Venezuela, the CIA has twice tried to overthrow the anti-US government of Hugo Chavez with military coups. Bush wants to get control of Venezuela’s oil reserves, but he’s been defeated, because millions of workers have taken to the streets, and others have occupied their factories.

In Bolivia, workers and peasants last year staged a hikoi of their won, pouring into their capital city La Paz to protest the US-backed government’s plans to wipe out coca farming and steal the country’s natural gas. In La Paz the Bolivians built barricades and stormed government buildings. President Sanchez de Lozada needed a US helicopter to sneak him out of the country, as his government collapsed and the people took over the capital. That’s how a hikoi should end!

Unity with Workers, not the Nats

There are many lessons to be learnt from the victories in South America. In Bolivia, protesters united across ethnic lines, because they had a common interest in getting rid of Lozada, a wealthy businessman nicknamed ‘the Yank’ because he spoke with an American accent. The Indian coca growers the US was trying to ruin united with mixed race urban workers, against a common enemy. In Aotearoa, we need the same sort of unity between Pakeha and Maori workers. Many Pakeha trade unionists and leftists marched to Wellington, but the majority of non-Maori were sucked in by Labour’s promises that its legislation would protect their access to beaches.

Now, only weeks after the first reading of Labour’s bill, the Department of Conservation has teamed up with Tourism New Zealand and some local councils to promote plans to charge the public for access to popular beaches, including Coromandel’s Cathedral Cove. In the south, Clutha District Council has plans to make motorists pay for access to the road that follows the scenic Caitlins coast. In the Hawkes Bay, locals are up in arms over local government’s decision to allow a US billionaire to desecrate the beautiful Cape Kidnappers by building chalets and tunnelling into a cliff. Pakeha are beginning to understand what Maori have been so angry about!

We all know that the politicians and the media slandered the hikoi, by telling the country that it was made up of greedy Maoris who only wanted to privatise the foreshore and exploit the seabed to line their own pockets. The hikoi challenged those slanders: at hui after hui speakers reiterated their support for public access to the foreshore, placards on the march called for Pakeha to join in, and Hone Harawira constantly emphasised that the seabed and foreshore issue was one for ordinary Pakeha as well as Maori.

By the time it reached Wellington, the hikoi had attracted a significant minority of Pakeha members, and the media had to drop some of its more outrageous slurs. But now, just when Pakeha are beginning to grasp the real meaning of Labour’s legislation, Tariana and other Maori leaders are discrediting all the arguments of the hikoi, by extending the hand of friendship to Labour, and even finding kind words for National! The Pakeha who took part in the hikoi were mostly left-wingers disillusioned with Labour. They understand Labour’s pro-globalisation agenda and oppose its involvement in wars in the Middle East as well as its racism at home. These people will be disgusted by Tariana’s and Sharples’ overtures to Labour.

And the great majority of working class, Labour-voting Pakeha will be even more angered by the Maori Party’s overtures to National. Seeing Tariana cosying up to Gerry Brownlee will only reinforce these workers’ misunderstanding of Tino Rangatiratanga, and tie them more closely to Labour. For their part, working class Maori who have broken with Labour over the seabed and foreshore will also be alarmed to see that ‘their’ new party considers Brash and Brownlee possible coalition partners. If Tariana isn’t careful, these workers will rush straight back into the arms of Labour!

Occupy the Foreshore!

Tariana’s ‘hikoi to the ballot box’ cannot solve the problems of Maori. It can only result in another generation of Maori being chewed up and spat out of Wellington’s political machine. Only direct action which takes back land and resources – land and resources stolen from working class Pakeha, as well as Maori – can reverse the tide of globalisation in Aotearoa. The time is ripe for Maori and Pakeha to unite and occupy threatened sections of the foreshore. We need to revive the spirit of Bastion Pt, Pakaitore and the seabed and foreshore hikoi, and safeguard places like Cathedral Cove, the Caitlins Coast, and Cape Kidnappers with direct action! Let’s occupy the foreshore, not Cabinet!

Kia kaha,

Communist Workers Group  
From Class Struggle 56 June-July 2004

New Zealand: State Cuts Health Spending

“For Sale: WWI era hospital, do up and reap the rewards. Resort style location.”
 
By a health sector worker

The closure of Hamner Hospital, also called Queen Mary Hospital, is something the Labour party promised wouldn’t happen when it campaigned in 1999 against National’s closures of provincial hospitals. But under Labour capitalism is continuing to cut the health sector: spending cuts continue and privatisation rolls on. Do we need to prove it more clearly to you? Well then, if you need more evidence of spending cuts and privatisation, we need to “open the books”, and get all the real information out of the bureaucratic state machine – not the press releases of this Labour government. They won’t tell us the hidden truths – and they will be trying to hide (or justify) the spending cuts.

Open the books

The contractor is the District Health Board, the source of finances is the tax payer. It is public money and therefore public services. Ultimately, the funder is the taxpaying 'community' –actually ‘the workers’. On that basis we are entitled to transparency on contracting and the other details which go into the decision to award/renew or change a contract. The elected District Health Board members are supposed to have access to the details of contracts, etc. We should demand that they open the books. How else would we know if they were doing their job? We are as a class entitled to the information.

Community Dumping

Where funds saved from closures of hospital services are not put into providing community services, on the same scale, a cut to health spending has occurred! And a cut in health spending is a dumping of care responsibilities onto the community. In other words, the unpaid labour of workers as a class will go into meeting those healthcare needs, as best it can. What was paid for and provided to the working class as a “social wage” is cut and the previously socialised “work” becomes another unpaid burden on the working class.

When a hospital closes and replacement services are funded in local communities the trend is that they are cheaper, and use less skilled labour. Many of us in the health sector have observed newer residential programmes which have no qualified staff on site.

As "public servants" we health sector workers will piss our management off, when we speak out on concerns regarding the quality of healthcare available, and the consequences of District Health Board decisions. Too bad. The closure of Hamner is the closure of a residential treatment programme with an experienced and trained workforce. The consequence was immediately longer waiting lists at the surviving residential programmes. That will mean more harm occurs while people out of control with their alcohol or other drug use wait for a programme.

Health reforms

The Labour government’s token reform of the Health Sector was to bring back elected District Health Boards. These elections are a social democratic farce. The elections only reproduce capitalist class relations, with jobs for the ruling class and a few social democrats who cannot stop capitalism and cuts in the committee room. Worse still, the District Health Boards are dominated by bureaucrats from previous Health Funding Authorities, some of whom now working as consultants or as mangers within District Health Boards.

Those who receive public health services should have no confidence in the District Health Boards getting accurate information, or the administrative and funding arms of District Health Boards having the ability to do anything beyond trying to cut costs. We can pretty sure that at District Health Board level there is NO knowledge about the quality of services provided and little knowledge about the quantity, except in terms of the impact of services on bank balances.

District Health Board ignorance about services means that service providers could be rewarded with extra contracts for lying and overstating the quality of service which they provide. In fact the Ministry of Health has identified that sort of lying as a problem and is trying to find out if private providers of health services have been providing the services they are supposed to be. What a damning indictment of the ignorance of District Health Boards the Ministry of Health spends so much time praising!

Sold out

Hamner workers experienced the blunt force of capitalism with its substitution of market forces for human need. Canterbury District Health Board's ability to sell a piece of prime real estate means that this piece of real estate will no longer be available to the public health consumer – to you and me. That fact should be a shame to a Labour Government, but this government doesn't deserve the name Labour.

This government has organisationally and financially destroyed a “non-governmental” (so-called) health service provider. The end of Hamner leaves a section of the workforce without their entitlement of redundancy – that’s an open attack on some of the workers Labour claims to represent. The laid off workers are having to wait for receivers to decide if there is any money available to them.

Working class fight back

The capitalist class has no need to fight against cuts to the health sector. They can always afford to go private. They could fly overseas for treatment if they needed. Those who work in public health can stand up as the providers, and speak about the cuts to quality healthcare. Workers need to organise in their unions and obtain Multi-Employer Collective Agreements (MECA's) which provide them with greater protection as well as guarantees that any job losses will bring redundancy or the redeployment of laid off workers.

Weak unions have made the health sector workforce vulnerable, and wages and conditions have been lost. Adequate wages and conditions will do more to attract and retain a high quality workforce than professional bodies or the increased qualifications that big student loans bring.

A strong and organised union was needed at Hamner. It would have been able to invite all former clients, their families and staff to participate in direct action to occupy the site at Hamner, and/or disrupt the sale of the property. It might have been possible to force/shame all the bidders into silence, and/or to force/shame the government into purchasing it off the District Health Board.

Open the books. No cuts to healthcare
Redundancy or redeploy the workforce
Quality Healthcare –fully funded
Organise in the health sector unions
Occupy sites against closure or sell off

Hamner is a sign of things to come in the health sector. Since it’s not election year the Clark government has decided Kaitaia hospital will no longer provide emergency surgery after hours. But now, after a round of “community consultation” surgery is cut. More cuts are coming to a town near you. Fight back by rebuilding fighting unions!

 From Class Struggle 53 November 03/January 04