The leftward and other blatherings of Span (now with Snaps!)

Monday, March 21, 2005

a surfeit of bitterness

Ordinarily I keep my bitter feelings towards Labour under my hat. But tonight for some reason they are all welling up and overcoming me a little bit. Everything I read or write is tinged with an underlying anger at Labour and the distance between what it is and what it ought to be.

It's nothing personal that has happened, or anything to do with the Labour list particularly, perhaps it's just the realisation that Labour is probably going to get back in and the Greens are probably not going to be big enough to have a strong influence. I don't want National but I don't really want Labour either.

Few Labour members even seem aware of their roots - many of those who are see those socialist tendencies as radical madness that could never be implemented in the modern world.

I just find the whole concept that the Labour Party is somehow the Left so depressing. Sure there are (IMHO misguided but well-meaning) individuals in Labour who are genuinely left of centre. But the Party itself? Even those who argue their policy is leftish must be feeling secretly uncomfortable about the massive gap between party policy and what the caucus implement.

It's that old slogan all over again - I'd rather have a revolution than a Labour Government.

Humph.

16 comments:

Joe Hendren said...

Hear Hear!

Unfortunately I don't believe many people will see the key failure of third way politics until Labour is thrown out of office. Only then will it be realised the country is even more in the clutches of the multinationals, and the policy gradualism had far more to do with Labour not being keen to raise the tax base needed to achieve any real socialistic aims.

Amanda said...

Things could be worse...imagine living in the UK or US and possibly feeling like you had to vote for Blair, or the US Democrats

Rich said...

It's surprising that in an MMP environment parties to the left of Labour do so badly - even including the Maori Party they struggle to break 10%.

The UK Lib Dems generally poll over 20%, in the last French presidential election parties to the left of the socialists polled 15%+, in Germany the Greens+PDS got over 12% (and the SPD is a lot more left wing then NZ Labour).

Are people more right-wing/contented or do the left wing parties not organise very well?

(The UK Lib Dems organise *very* well at grass roots level - they use local government as a springboard to win FPP parliamentary elections).

T said...

*Sigh*

Labour is everthing from Right wing bastards to left wing communists depending on who's blog you read. Now both sides can't be correct can they?

So who is correct here DPF or you?

You are both well educated, thoughtfull politcal types? Can you honestly say that you have the monopoly on truth here?

I think you will both have to conceed that you are both wrong. Labour is not communist nor is it classically liberal.

It's in between... Like it always has been. Labour come in to existance not to destory the machinary of capitalism but to getter a better deal for workers.

IT IS NOT THE PARTY OF SOCIAL REVLOUTION and it has never claimed to be.

Those who say I would rather have a revloution than a labour government really mean one of two things...

1. They want an ACT government as that will bring about the revoloution quiker and hurt ALOT of people in the process

2. They want a revaloution instead of ACT and I wonder if anyone who says that has actually lived through say the russian or chinese or any other revaloution for that matter... it's not as rosy as people make out... it's bloody, people die and it takes generations to recover.

Both options are not to my taste, a little insulting and will hurt more people than it will save.

If I was a spitefull person I would suggest that the only reason you want a revaloution instead of a Labour government is beacuse no body buys your soloutions at election time and democracy is not your ideal way of getting what you want. But I'm not spitefull so I won't say that.

Labour is pragmatic in what it does, it makes no bones about that sometimes it will lean left sometimes right. It's about making the best decisions at the right time. The last time we threw pragmatisim out the window we got the 4th Labour Government and no wants that...

Labour rules with it's head rather than heart alot less people get hurt that way

T said...

Scott we could get into a petty argument on how labour has "wrecked" everything (you think you would have done better under national??)

but lets look at what your slightly frantic rant point by point..

Jobs Jolt - with the lowest unemployment rate in the world it's going to be hard to get the last 3 percent to work

Invasion of Afganistan - The SAS spent it's time in afganistan hunting opium dealers and protecting people from warlords... yeah nast stuff from the SAS

Banning secondary stikes with the ERA - ahhh they were already banned the ERA didnt reintroduce them. You make think it "fair" to bring a nation to a halt over a diffrence over 3 percent in pay but others want more constructive measuers over industrial black mail.


The summer dole for students - even when education was free students worked over the summer to save money for the year... you have three months off over summer, do some work!

Foreshore and sea bed - the law was passed BEFORE the UN ruled on it. No one was going to be happy with any soloution it was the best bet in a bad situation

Occupation of Iraq - Yeah building hospitals and reparing sewage systmes is really awfull, are you on crack??

Public/ private patnerships - no one has privatised education what they have done is said "hey the state system dosent suit everyone lets fund places for EVERYONE

Scott i'm inclined to that if labour DID smash the machinary of captilism you would say to little to late...

Rich said...

At last! The secret behind ACT is revealed. It's a cunning conspiracy to bring on an extreme right-wing government that will wake up the workers to the need for revolution?

Why do you think many ACT members used to be left-wingers (or even Labour party members)?

T said...

as dumb as it seems i have heard people oh the very hard left voting for ACT just for the purpose...

Span said...

when i wrote this:
"many of those who are see those socialist tendencies as radical madness that could never be implemented in the modern world" I have to say I thought of you Tristan (About Town).

As DPF and I are coming at this from different ideologies and experiences of course we would have different ideas. I find the constant harping by some on the right (not so much DPF actually) that the current Govt is somehow "socialist" really grating. I wonder what they would do in the face of real socialism? Or even a highly Alliance influenced Govt?

And Tristan I have to say that I suspect that Scott knows more hard left people than you do and I also suspect that he doesn't know a single person on the (real) left who has voted for Act. I certainly don't.

T said...

I am an unabashed centerist... I belive that people who advoacte a 20 cent in the dollar tax rate inhabit the same madness as the 80 percent tax rate advocates.

I means that BOTH sides think you have "sold out"

but i console my self that both sides are just as mad :)

T said...

scott do you have idea what it's like in Venezuela???

With a large proportion of the population destitute.... a HUGE homless community most of the population have nothing left to use...

In order to achive that here we would need to make a WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE very very poor and basically starve them...

I guess thats the diffrence between you an me... you dont care who gets hurt to reach your socialist dream.

As for me I don't put my idealogy ahead of other peoples well being

stephen said...

Scott: behold the very first result for Googling "Cuba infant mortality":

http://www.overpopulation.com/articles/2002/000019.html

Bang goes that one.

You ask "Why is [Venezuela] opening hundreds of schools and health clinics, while our government can't reduce waiting lists, and has closed scores of rural schools?"

Two reasons immediately come to mind. 1, Venezuela is starting from virtually nothing. We already spend a great deal on public health. School closures, you will recall, stem from declining rural rolls - in other words, the need which those schools operated to meet has declined. 2, clearly Venezuala has made a decision to fund these initiatives through redistribution (or maybe printing money with the accompanying inflationary dangers). We don't want to do that. End of story.

I'm also a bit puzzled by what you or for that matter Span mean by "revolution". Are we talking armed revolt by the working classes to impose a new political order, or something short of that?

Getting back to the leftiness or otherwise of Labour, I personally am in a "plague on all your houses" situtation. I reject the Greens' irrational anti-science views. I do not believe in the economics of the Alliance. Labour is increasingly passing policies creating new crimes and reducing my civil rights to a point where I can't support them. (Not to mention stealing Maori private property rights, which I would have thought that consistent right-wingers would be all over, but no...) National would be even worse on the punitive innocent-have-nothing-to-fear front, and ACT are a bunch of doctrinaire monetarists shot through with illiberal conservatives.

Where is the natural home for a pragmatic person who believes some intervention and collective organisation is necessary and sensible in a small island economy, believes in a welfare state safety net, has socially "liberal" views and otherwise wants to be left alone by the State?

Anonymous said...

Politicians require moral strength, but also flexibility. They must bend enough to get things done, but not so much that they fail to achieve what they intended. That's very, very hard.

But this govt isn't just flexible: they are so relaxed as to be supine. There is no easy solution to the student loans mess (what do you do about current loans? etc?): so they refuse to attempt any real solution and just let it slide. There is no easy solution to the decline of public health care: so they refuse to attempt any real solution and just let it slide. There's pressure from abroad to impose strong 'anti-terrorist' measures, so they cave in.

This isn't the govt of the third way. This is the govt of the soft option.


Icehawk

sagenz said...

The only thing I am really really curious about is? - given the Cubans have had 50 years of Castro why is the poverty level income in America about the same as the average wage in New Zealand and why is the poverty level wage in New Zealand vastly higher than the average wage in Venezuela and Cuba.

sagenz said...

Freudian Slippers: March 2005.
We do not hear the term ‘compassionate’ applied to business executives or entrepreneurs, certainly not when they are engaged in their normal work. Yet in terms of results in the measurable form of jobs created, lives enriched, communities built, living standards raised, and poverty healed, a handful of capitalists has done infinitely more for mankind than all the self-serving politicians, academics, social workers, and religionists who march under the banner of ‘compassion.’ ~ Nathaniel Brande

Anonymous said...

But if we could be serious for a moment ... New Zealanders would never (knowingly) elect an openly “left wing” or a “right wing” government without a radical cultural change. That’s why Labour and National brand themselves “centre-left” and “centre-right” respectively. If Labour released an Alliance-style manifesto, National would capture the centre and defeat Labour in a landslide. Anyone within or sympathetic to Labour wishing for it to move to the left (I’m thinking you, Jordan) doom it to opposition and won’t be taken seriously by party strategists.

Anonymous said...

Lets face it, Labour is a pale imitaion of National. It is certainly a right wing capitalist government (which doesn't necessarily concern me)look at its big business support, and is happy to be authoritarian, dictatorial and arrogant (which does concern me).

Tristan is right to say he fits in with such a party, I always wondered how he reconciled his obvious right wing conservate attitudes with his idealistic left travelling companions. But lets be real, there is none of that idealism in the Labour Parliamentary Party, only on campuses and even then only amongst the less ambitious party members.

Note how all the ambitious ones are happy to tow right wing policy lines where pragmatic for their future elevation.

Labour a party of the left? 'trying hard' maybe, what a wishy washy joke, would a left party over tax the working class and then not spend it?

The Alliance and now the Greens, as much as I may disagree with many of their positions, are clearly the heirs to the true left tradition in new Zealand, and deserve respect for their ability not to buckle and effectively 'sell out' their principles for naked political gain.