Trot Guide: New Zealand

Damn.

Despite having a population only a fifth the size of Australia's, Kiwis have an abundance of parties, both Trotskyist and Maoist. Well, when I write 'abundance', I mean um, at least seven:

1) Communist Party of Aotearoa : Maoist. Est. 1993. Possibly dead? No news is bad news, and there's been no news since December 2006.

2) Communist Workers' Group of New Zealand/Aotearoa (Member of the Leninist/Trotskyist Fraction) : CWG originated as the New Zealand Spartacist League; it split in 1972... well, actually, the Communist Workers' do it best:

CWG originated as the New Zealand Spartacist League (NZSL) in 1970 under the influence of the Spartacist League-US (SL-US) "Declaration of Principles". The NZSL split in 1972 in a dispute between Owen Gager and Bill Logan and Adaire Hannah essentially over joining the SL-US. Gager argued that the SL-US had not broken completely with the SWP-US, nor did he think that the SL-US represented any programmatic continuity with Trotsky. The theoretical basis for this position is argued in "James P Cannonism" which can be found at this site in the CWG Archive. Gager went on to form the Communist Left of Australia (CLA) in 1974 while Logan and Hannah set up a Spartacist group also in Australia. In 1981 Dave Bedggood then a member of the British RCP formed the Communist Left in NZ in solidarity with CLA. The CLA split over a tactical difference with Gager in the mid-1980s. Gager left and moved towards anarcho-communism. CLNZ had fusion talks with the Bolshevik Tendency (now IBT) in the late 1980s and with Workers' Power (LRCI) in the early 1990s. CLNZ fused with the LRCI in 1992 as its NZ section, Workers Power (NZ) and ceased fraternal relations with CLA. Some members of WPNZ had differences within the LRCI’s over its movement away from Trotskyism in forming a united front with Yeltsin in August 1991, and its characterisation of the first period of the overthrow of the bureaucracy as a ‘political revolution’. The catalyst for the split was the LRCI’s refusal to defend Serbia from the NATO bombs of 1995. Half of WPNZ left to form the CWGNZ, along with the Bolivian and Peruvian sections of the LRCI who were either suspended or expelled. These comrades formed the Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International (LCMRCI) in late 1995. The main documents of this split can be located under LCMRCI Archive. See 'Declaration of the Proletarian Faction'. Essentially, these fusions and splits were attempts to apply the original position of the NZSL and CLNZ on the defense of dialectics against post-war degenerate Trotskyism. Today the CWG fights inside the LCMRCI and in discussions with other tendencies for a 5th International understood to mean the return to the pre-war method and programme of the 4th International.

Got that? My nomination for the fugliest communist website to ever boil out of New Zealand/Aotearoa.

Long Live the Leninist Trotskyist Fraction and the fight for a new World Party of Socialist Revolution!



3) International Bolshevik Tendency : The remnants of the once powerful and mighty Spartacist League of New Zealand, the IBT (est. 1987) is engaged in constant polemics with its older brother, the still mighty (in my opinion) International Communist League (Fourth Internationalist), aka the Spartacists (est. 1966). The Bolshevik Tendency is 'International' in the sense that, in addition to New Zealand, it has a presence in Canada, Germany, the UK and the USA.

4) International Socialist Organization of Aotearoa/New Zealand : Trotskyist, and a derivation from the iSt.

5) Socialist Worker (Aotearoa) : Trotskyist. The comrades have no website, but instead publish a blog, UNITY. A member of the UK-based SWP's iSt... and apparently (like the Australian DSP) on a one-way ticket to Splitsville.

6) World Socialist Party (New Zealand) : Neither Maoist nor Trotskyist, the WSP (NZ) have a totally kick-arse HQ. In other news, the World Party holds an Annual Conference at which most members meet up. At the 2004 Conference "momentous decisions on the future struggle for socialism were made, and a pleasant time was had by all".

7) Workers Party of New Zealand : The Workers Partys' monthly magazine The Spark has been in publication since 1991; Revolution is a quarterly journal published from 1994 to 2008.

Missing, presumed dead:

Communist League of New Zealand | Permanent Revolution Group (1986--1990; fused with International Bolshevik Tendency) | Socialist Party of Aotearoa | Workers' Charter ("Movement") | Workers' Power (New Zealand)

NB. The Socialist Party of Aotearoa emerged as a split from the 'pro-Soviet' Socialist Unity Party (SUP) in 1990. It was led by Bill Anderson, who died in 2005. The SPA's only sign of life is a website, described as being that of the Gordon Watson Branch. It contains contact details for the branch, located in Wellington, and a link to a defunct news service.

Goodbye to all that

With friends like these...

When David Mamet declared last month that he was no longer a 'brain-dead liberal', he joined the ranks of leftwing writers, from Arthur Koestler to Kingsley Amis to Christopher Hitchens, who have moved to the right and attacked former allies. Playwright David Edgar challenges the new generation of renegades

The Guardian
April 19, 2008

A few thoughts.

Edgar's article is an attempt to explain why a number of prominent members of the left-wing intelligentsia -- principally scribblers of one kind or another -- defect, especially to the neo-conservative right; the presumed polar opposite of their previous 'progressive' political perspective. (David Mamet's article is titled Why I Am No Longer a 'Brain-Dead Liberal': An election-season essay, Village Voice, March 11, 2008.) He argues:

Like previous generations, these defectors have been there, done that, and can now bear witness to their former misbeliefs. In so doing, they are joining a club with an extensive membership. Most of the radical and progressive achievements of the 20th century - including the Russian revolution - were brought about by an alliance between the oppressed and the intelligentsia, and a good proportion of them - particularly the Russian revolution - were followed by disappointment and desertion. For some, disillusion set in as early as 1921, when the Bolsheviks suppressed a sailors' uprising at Kronstadt, the port of St Petersburg and cradle of the October revolution. Subsequent "Kronstadt moments" included the Stalinist purges of the 1930s, the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact, the neo-Stalinist show trials in eastern Europe in the early 50s, Khrushchev's exposure of Stalin's crimes in February 1956 and the Soviet invasion of Hungary in November of that year.

Insofar as Edgar addresses defectors from various strains of Marxism -- Bolshevism and its descendants, including Orthodox Marxism, Trotskyism and even Maoism -- he has a point, although another principal weakness of his thesis, I think, is the class position of the intelligentsia, and even -- or perhaps especially -- its crude material (and political) interests. In this context, I think Chomsky's observations are germane ('Anarchism, Marxism and Hope for the Future', Red & Black Revolution, No.2, 1996):

RBR: The importance of grassroots democracy to any meaningful change in society would seem to be self evident. Yet the left has been ambiguous about this in the past. I'm speaking generally, of social democracy, but also of Bolshevism - traditions on the left that would seem to have more in common with elitist thinking than with strict democratic practice. Lenin, to use a well-known example, was sceptical that workers could develop anything more than trade union consciousness -- by which, I assume, he meant that workers could not see far beyond their immediate predicament. Similarly, the Fabian socialist, Beatrice Webb, who was very influential in the Labour Party in England, had the view that workers were only interested in horse racing odds! Where does this elitism originate and what is it doing on the left?

CHOMSKY: I'm afraid it's hard for me to answer this. If the left is understood to include 'Bolshevism,' then I would flatly dissociate myself from the left. Lenin was one of the greatest enemies of socialism, in my opinion, for reasons I've discussed. The idea that workers are only interested in horse-racing is an absurdity that cannot withstand even a superficial look at labour history or the lively and independent working class press that flourished in many places, including the manufacturing towns of New England not many miles from where I'm writing -- not to speak of the inspiring record of the courageous struggles of persecuted and oppressed people throughout history, until this very moment. Take the most miserable corner of this hemisphere, Haiti, regarded by the European conquerors as a paradise and the source of no small part of Europe's wealth, now devastated, perhaps beyond recovery. In the past few years, under conditions so miserable that few people in the rich countries can imagine them, peasants and slum-dwellers constructed a popular democratic movement based on grassroots organisations that surpasses just about anything I know of elsewhere; only deeply committed commissars could fail to collapse with ridicule when they hear the solemn pronouncements of American intellectuals and political leaders about how the US has to teach Haitians the lessons of democracy. Their achievements were so substantial and frightening to the powerful that they had to be subjected to yet another dose of vicious terror, with considerably more US support than is publicly acknowledged, and they still have not surrendered. Are they interested only in horse-racing?

I'd suggest some lines I've occasionally quoted from Rousseau [Confessions]: when I see multitudes of entirely naked savages scorn European voluptuousness and endure hunger, fire, the sword, and death to preserve only their independence, I feel that it does not behoove slaves to reason about freedom.

RBR: Speaking generally again, your own work -- Deterring Democracy [1992], Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies [1989], etc. -- has dealt consistently with the role and prevalence of elitist ideas in societies such as our own. You have argued that within 'Western' (or parliamentary) democracy there is a deep antagonism to any real role or input from the mass of people, lest it threaten the uneven distribution in wealth which favours the rich. Your work is quite convincing here, but, this aside, some have been shocked by your assertions. For instance, you compare the politics of President John F. Kennedy with Lenin, more or less equating the two. This, I might add, has shocked supporters of both camps! Can you elaborate a little on the validity of the comparison?

CHOMSKY: I haven't actually equated the doctrines of the liberal intellectuals of the Kennedy administration with Leninists, but I have noted striking points of similarity -- rather as predicted by Bakunin a century earlier in his perceptive commentary on the new class. For example, I quoted passages from McNamara on the need to enhance managerial control if we are to be truly free, and about how the undermanagement that is the real threat to democracy is an assault against reason itself. Change a few words in these passages, and we have standard Leninist doctrine. I've argued that the roots are rather deep, in both cases. Without further clarification about what people find shocking, I can't comment further. The comparisons are specific, and I think both proper and properly qualified. If not, that's an error, and I'd be interested to be enlightened about it.

Chomsky elaborated upon this thesis in 'The Soviet Union Versus Socialism', Our Generation, Spring/Summer, 1986. The counter-revolutionary nature of the Bolshevik regime is expanded upon in Maurice Brinton's The Bolsheviks and Workers' Control, 1917-21: The State and Counter-Revolution, Solidarity, 1970 (among other places).

In the context of Edgar's article, it might be possible to speak of at least three generations of brainworkers who have defected from 'the Left': the generation of the 1930s, '40s and '50s; that of the post-1960s; and finally the most recent generation, whose renunciation of 'leftist idealism' is a result of the impact of contemporary affairs, especially the so-called 'clash of civilisations' (Islam versus the West). Assuming this to be the case, I think it's possible to locate the disillusionment of successive generations of leftist intellectuals in the failure of Communism and the New Left to generate the kinds of social changes they imagined might be either real (Communism) or possible (the New Left), and in trepidation of the kinds of changes the victory of barbarous Islam might bring in its wake.

Of course, when Edgar writes of defection, he's referring, almost invariably, to disappointed Marxists. This is reasonably self-evident in the case of the pre- and post-WWII generation. In relation to the post-'60s generation, Edgar notes that "Commentators Nick Cohen, David Aaronovitch and Andrew Anthony all had left-wing parents, and were involved in political campaigning around race, gender and class in the 1970s (Aaronovitch was one of Manchester University's notorious University Challenge team, who answered "Marx", "Lenin" or "Trotsky" to every question)." The point being, of course, that despite the reference to Kronstadt -- which might suggest the possibility of going off on another tangent -- there is another historical tradition, of anti-authoritarian or libertarian socialism, which never endorsed the Bolshevik tradition, and for which the 1960s witnessed a brief re-flowering, the influence of which was (and is, to some extent still) evident in the various 'new' social movements which the period gave birth to...

More later.

In the meantime, and just because I can...



Where was I?

Oh yeah.

W a s t e d.

I mean:

The last few years has also seen the emergence of an attempt to link the development of neoconservative thought in the US with Trotsky's ideological legacy. The thesis finds its most pronounced exegesis in Jacob Heilbrunn's They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons (Random House, 2008), but is also explored in Jeet Heer's essay 'Trotsky's ghost wandering the White House' (National Post, Saturday, June 7, 2003). On his blog, Heer also comments on the recent publication of a chart in The Washington Post (February 3, 2008) which traces this history. The linkage is somewhat specious, but expresses, perhaps, an underlying attitude which Chomsky also hints at in the passages above. In his commentary, Heer writes:

What has to be understood is that neo-conservatism is not a coherent set of ideas or a doctrine, but rather a gestalt or an attitude. And part of this attitude, to be found especially in the writers who are most interested in foreign policy who spent time following either Trotsky in the late 1930s or Shachtman in the 1950s and 1960s, is a certain romantic militarism, a fascination with bravado “forward-thinking” strategy (shading over into a support for pre-emptive war and unconventional tactics of guerrilla warfare and counterinsurgency), and a focus on the revolutionary potential of countries outside of North America and Western Europe. This set of attitudes doesn’t derive so much from the historical Trotsky and his political philosophy as much as the myth of Trotsky, the revolutionary intellectual who was also a military genius. I think this mythical Trotsky holds a deep fascination for conservative and neo-conservative intellectuals who might have only spent a few short years anywhere near the real Trotskyist parties (as an example I would cite James Burnham, who constantly kept quoting Trotsky’s words as if they had talismanic power in his National Review columns from 1955 until well into the mid 1970s.) I think it’s this mythical Trotsky that has to be seen as forerunner to neo-conservatism.

The myth of Trotsky -- one revolving around romantic militarism, bravado, guerilla warfare and military genius -- is just that: a myth. In reality, in his capacity as the leader of the Red Army, Trotsky oversaw the destruction of popular forces, the re-institution of Tsarist officers as military leaders, the re-introduction of the death penalty for disobedience and the crushing of all dissent, both within the Army but also in 'Soviet' society as a whole. One of the more dramatic examples of this is Trotsky's role in the betrayal and eventual annihilation of the Makhnovshchina in the Ukraine.

Andrew Flood (Workers' Solidarity, No.59, July 2000):

...in April of 1917 "big rural landowners began everywhere to evacuate the countryside, fleeing from the insurgent peasantry and seeking protection for their possessions". Through direct action "the agrarian question was virtually solved by the poor peasants as early as June - September 1917". As the landlords fled the peasants took over the land and "all of revolutionary Russia was covered with a vast network of workers' and peasant soviets, which began to function as organs of self-management".

The decrees passed by the Bolshevik government in the months after October 'legalised' these takeovers. This was part of the process by which the Bolsheviks got rid of the power of independent organs of workers' self-management like the Soviets (elected workers' councils) and the Factory Committees. 'Legalising' what the workers had already achieved was one way of promoting the right of the central state to have the final say over the working class.

The Bolshevik attitude towards the working class is perhaps best demonstrated by Trotsky's speech to the 1920 9th Party Congress when he declared "The working class cannot be left wandering all over Russia. They must be thrown here and there, appointed, commanded, just like soldiers". "Compulsion of labour will reach the highest degree of intensity during the transition from capitalism to socialism". "Deserters from labour ought to be formed into punitive battalions or put into concentration camps".

These quotes demonstrate the thinking when the Bolsheviks dissolved Soviets, broke up factory committees or jailed and even executed strikers. But if this is how they saw the worker in the factory, how about the 'worker in uniform' in the Red Army?

In 1917 the Czarist Army had fallen apart. Far from the army opposing the revolution, military units were often at the heart of its defence. Not of course the officers, they were for the most part opposed to the revolution. But in 1917 traditional military discipline had disintegrated as soldiers deserted the front, refused to obey orders and elected soldiers' committees. If the soldiers had obeyed their officers in October or February then the revolution would probably have been defeated. So the ending of top down (or 'bourgeois') military discipline was essential to the revolution.

This break down of the old discipline may have been essential to the revolution but once the Bolsheviks were in power it worked against them. They didn't want an army where units might refuse to carry out an order like the crushing of a peasant rebellion or the breaking up of a strike. So, in July 1918 Trotsky (the Bolshevik commander of the Red Army) re-introduced all the old methods of the bourgeois army. He even re-appointed old Czarist officers.

Alongside this the death penalty for disobedience under fire was reintroduced; as were saluting, special forms of address, separate living quarters and privileges for officers. Officers were appointed rather than elected. Trotsky argued that "the elective basis is politically pointless and technically inexpedient and has already been set aside by decree".

These changes were deeply unpopular to the rank and file of the army. This, along with the Bolshevik suppression of the revolution, meant the Red Army had one of the highest rates of desertion of any army in history.

Large scale executions and 'Punishment Battalions' were used to compel soldiers to obey orders. In addition the Red Army's relationship with the local peasants and workers was that of an army of occupation. It seized the supplies it needed and was often used to put down local strikes and insurrections.

Genius.

As for bravado, "...Trotsky was commanding during the Civil War from his armored train. He traveled 100,000 kilometers in it over three years. It had mounted machine-guns, light artillery, a printing press, a radio for broadcast and a flatbed for his Rolls Royce command car. He carried a large amount of tobacco and a brass band on the train to heighten morale of the troops." On a lighter note, Trotsky also expressed his distaste for the use of 'foul language' by the railwaymen who transported him hither and thither: "I consider that a Red warrior, as a fighter for lofty aims, should behave on an armoured train as befits a place of lofty service, and not as though he is in a low tavern" (Order to the Red Army, August 7, 1919, No.140, Konotop).

Fucking wanker.

(Ooops: Pardon my French!)

But to return to Edgar's article, he writes that "All of the great progressive movements of the 20th century in the west - solidarity with republican Spain, the building of welfare states, the civil rights movement in the southern United States, the war against apartheid in South Africa - were led by an alliance between progressive intellectuals and the victims of oppression".

This is correct, in a sense. But it's also noteworthy for the manner in which it describes the relationship between 'progressive intellectuals' and 'victims of oppression'. The case of "solidarity with Republican Spain" is revealing, I think, of the underlying political assumptions regarding the nature of this relationship, one in which (non-victimised) intellectuals use their brains to help (hapless) 'victims'. When Orwell, for example, came to write about the Spanish Civil War, he actually excoriated precisely this class of individual, beginning with his essay 'Spilling the Spanish Beans' (New English Weekly, July 29 and September 2, 1937) but more famously (and more fully) in his Homage to Catalonia (1938). Some 'Beans':

The Spanish war has probably produced a richer crop of lies than any event since the Great War of 1914-18, but I honestly doubt, in spite of all those hecatombs of nuns who have been raped and crucified before the eyes of Daily Mail reporters, whether it is the pro-Fascist newspapers that have done the most harm. It is the left-wing papers, the News Chronicle and the Daily Worker, with their far subtler methods of distortion, that have prevented the British public from grasping the real nature of the struggle.

The fact which these papers have so carefully obscured is that the Spanish Government (including the semi-autonomous Catalan Government) is far more afraid of the revolution than of the Fascists. It is now almost certain that the war will end with some kind of compromise, and there is even reason to doubt whether the Government, which let Bilbao fail without raising a finger, wishes to be too victorious; but there is no doubt whatever about the thoroughness with which it is crushing its own revolutionaries. For some time past a reign of terror – forcible suppression of political parties, a stifling censorship of the press, ceaseless espionage and mass imprisonment without trial – has been in progress. When I left Barcelona in late June the jails were bulging; indeed, the regular jails had long since overflowed and the prisoners were being huddled into empty shops and any other temporary dump that could be found for them. But the point to notice is that the people who are in prison now are not Fascists but revolutionaries; they are there not because their opinions are too much to the Right, but because they are too much to the Left. And the people responsible for putting them there are those dreadful revolutionaries at whose very name Garvin quakes in his galoshes – the Communists.

In other words, far from being the passive victims of leftist imagination, workers and peasants in Spain -- organised principally via the CNT-FAI -- were actually engaged in one of the most thorough-going revolutions in history. In this struggle, they were forced to fight not only the Spanish military and fascists, but also their alleged allies in the Communist-dominated Republic. It was the special duty of left-wing intellectuals to obscure these facts, just as many (but certainly not all) did in relation to Kronstadt, the Stalinist purges of the 1930s, and all the other moments in history that Edgar identifies as supposedly triggering their anguished reflections, and 'defection' to some form of political conservatism.

See also : 'Goodbye to All That', Robin Morgan (1970), in which a radical feminist says goodbye to the male-dominated Left. (And its recent sequel, February 2, 2008, on the US election: "Me, I’m voting for Hillary not because she’s a woman—but because I am.")