Class Struggle 105
Apritjune 2013
BRIEFS
John Key: US Super Spy
NACTS are comprador capitalists for US imperialism
That means they are the agents of US business taking a
small share for their ‘governance’. Selling assets,
cutting social spending, facilitating FOI in land, services
and industry etc all facilitate the growing foreign
ownership of NZ. As happens in other colonies or semi-
colonies (‘banana” or ‘milkpowder’ republics) there is a
rapid rise in inequality and mass discontent among the
poor.
One of the functions of the comprador agents is to
impose a state order that represses any resistance to
these colonial policies. The NACTS under John Key are
unapologetic about this. They actually brag about it.
Hence the new GCSB law that empowers these spies
already tied to the FBI and CIA to spy on NZ citizens, is
part of that repressive function. This law
retrospectively makes legal the illegal spying on 85 NZ.
citizens over many years.
The NACTS are caught with their pants down breaking
national and international laws to rip off more profits
Hence the new Anadarko law that is designed to stop
any protests against oil and gas exploration on the high
sea. We say abolish all the spies along with the bosses?
state. We are for overthrowing the capitalist state and
replacing it with a ‘Workers’ State’ that gets rid of
capitalist exploitation and oppression
Socialise Our Assets!
“Mum & Dad investors”: yeah right!? Socialise our
assets. The statistics about who bought into “Might
River Power” give us more information about who is, or
wants to be the capitalist class of
NZ than anything else. The
National party lies / propaganda
that this sale would be to “mum
& dad investors” was exposed as
a lie, Only 3% of NZ population
bought shares. The very rich were
the main investors; half of
available shares were bought by
0.3% of the population; a
capitalist elite of just 400
‘entities? (companies, trusts,
investment institutions) bought 10% of the available
shares. The National -Act-Maori party sell off to their
“mates”, the capitalist class, has been exposed.
The (49%) ownership has been transferred from all NZ
(in the state) to a capitalist elite. While the
government claims that they retain control with 51%
ownership - the control is through a mixed board,
where the state appointments have been capitalist
representatives for years anyway.
Last our issue, Class Struggle called for the occupation
and expropriation of “Mighty River Power” (and any
other of our assets that have been sold), with no
compensation to the “buyers”. \Ne took this to the
marchers against the asset sales on 28th April and
itwas overwhelmingly warmly received. And given the
above statistics about the buyers, it is proven to be the
correct approach - the sale has been a transfer of
wealth / property ownership from all NZ to a capitalist
elite - and a few who hope to join that elite
Read “Socialise our assets!” Class Struggle Pamphlet
Paying Bosses our Wages
The Misery of social underdevelopment (Ministry of
social development / WINZ) is requesting job placement
providers (NGOs - companies, trusts, etc) that play the
role of getting mentally unwell people into jobs line up
for new contracts. These contracts reveal what the
state will pay these private job placers (capitalists, or
NGOs) - for placing a mental health consumer and
keaping them in a job for 6 months or a year.
Bosses can get up to $10,000 a year for employing
former sickness or invalid beneficiaries for 30hrs or
more a week. Sure work is a good thing - we need jobs
that are not degrading to our mental health, jobs that
are real work, and that pay a living wage, not a slave
system of enforced labour for those who are not fit for
work,
Feeding the Kids
Is this “better than nothing”? The pathetic social
democrats hang around John Keys bandwagon of
boosting corporate feeding Kick Start. The point is that
there was and is not “nothing” as lots of schools
already feed their needy kids, The Principle of Mangere
Primary refused to go along with
Key's patronising stunt. So exactly
what quantity and quality is Key’s
little stunt going to deliver?
The political parties that are
promising to feed the kids should
be doing it via the existing setups
in school and promoting it where it
is lacking, Not waiting for the
election. What better way to
activate the 800,000 non-voters
turned off by Labour's patronising
of the poor last time
Key has cut Kick Start from out of feeding to give
Santarium and Fonterra a duopoly.So the kids are
getting hooked on servility to corporate charity rather,
than community self-reliance. When interviewed on
TV3, lots of the kids parroted the NACT line, no food in
the house. The big example on TV3 was a Mt Roskill
School which has already been feeding kids breakfast
for 6 years, Nothing to do with Key's patronising stunt.Class Struggle 105
Apritjune 2013
In fact the neo-liberal hard right are pissed off with Key
for intervening in what is the job of the free market,
Haynt seen the NBR come out against subsidies to
private schools. Campbell Live gave Key an easy ride
and let him evade the question about funding exclusive
private schools for 10 times what he is paying to drip
feed breakfast to the poor kids. Hone had the right
reply to Key’s stunt, he spat on the floor.
Same Sex Marriage
Hooray! Same-sex marriage will become legal on 19
October this year. So far so good. Now that sexual
orientation is no longer a barrier to marriage, we can
look forward to abolishing marriage and the bourgeois
family without discriminating against any worker.
Marriage is no more than state regulation of the
bourgeois family to reproduce capitalism from
generation to generation. The bourgeois family
represses sexuality and breeds patriarchy and gender
roles. Parents have legal responsibility to turn their
children into willing workers and discipline them when
they transgress. Marriage is the official sanctioning of
sex partners to police their children so therefore same-
sex marriage is a Marcusian desublimation of outlaw sex
as official,
We are for outlaw sex, socialist revolution and the
abolition of the bourgeois family. We can see what this,
will look like if we think about what happened after the
Russian Revolution of 1917. Sexual relations, women
and youth oppression undarwent a revolution, before
being outlawed and banned under Stalin’s dictatorship,
Zizek on Thatcher
This is a contrary sideswipe at
the Thatcher death euphoria
that reads like a spoilsport but in
fact his target is the danger of
the masses rising up. For Zizek
and his master, Lacan, the
masses need a ‘master’ to pull
them out of their ignorance.
Self-activity is futile and illusory.
Workers need a leader with
political authority to organise a
revolution, The problem is that for Zizek, the ‘master”
is a great leader, the left-wing equivalent of Thatcher,
and not the vanguard party. What motivates individuals,
for Zizek is their psychology, not the class struggle. In a
throwback to Adorno, the bourgeois subject has an
authoritarian personality. S/He needs to be told what
to do. S/He needs a leader to inspire and motivate
her/him,
Marx on the other hand recognised that human needs
and desire motivate subjects to given social relations.
The worker is not born empty waiting to be filled in.
The existence of the working class requires that it
reproduce itself materially through its labor. What
workers lack is stolen from them by the exploitation of
their surpluslabor. The working class generates its
own authority in struggling to make up this ‘lack’,
Workers will rise up when oppressed, but as Trotsky
said this head of steam needs a piston and a box to turn
it into power. The steam cannot create the piston or
box, but neither can the piston or box function without
steam:
That is Zizek’s problem; he thinks that the existence of
workers is a timeless psychic void that can only be
filled by an outside authority. He reveals himself as a
petty bourgeois who has no role in capitalist society
except as the servant of the bourgeoisie. It is the petty
bourgeois who needs a master class to serve. For Zizek
the workers need a ‘master’ but for Marx the
proletariat is the coming ‘master class”
Vienna 1913
Cafe Central in ‘Red Vienna’ really is a great setting for
a political play that thrashes out the arguments about
genetic and social determination of politics. With Freud
as the interlocutor we have a distinguished lineup on
both sides. We put Freud in the middle since his theory,
lends itself to both genetic (libido) and social
(repression) interpretations. We count Stalin as on the
side of Hitler, since for him ‘blood’ and ‘nationality’
was a powerful influence in shaping one’s “fatherland”
in stark opposition to Lenin and Trotsky. In fact around
the time (1913) Lenin took Stalin to task for his position
on the national question.
Stalin was sent to Vienna to write an article on the
National Question, “Comrade Stalin, what is a nation?”
Lenin didn’t like the results
Stalin thought nationalism was
based on ‘national character’ -
a psychological concept he
borrowed from Otto Bauer (a
native Viennese). He thought
there was little room for
nationalities to merge and that
revolutionaries had to bury
these differences into common
class struggle.
These differences would have
lead to public rows but probably not across the cafe in
the hearing of Hitler
On his death bed in 1922 Lenin again took Stalin to task
for this Georgian chauvinism. Trotsky called Stalin’s
regime in 1935 ‘fascist’ living off the backs of the
workers. The climax of any Cafe Central exchange
would be between Hitler, Stalin and Trotsky over the
Stalin-Hitler pact, since the former certainly raised the
threat posed by Trotsky in his conversations with Stalin