The Month in Class Struggle (Oct-Nov '24)

Kia Ora!
“The Month in Class Struggle” is back! And this time with a new approach. 
Rather than a simple summary of a few upcoming events, we’re trying to redesign these articles going forward as a space to summarise and discuss the past month in socialist politics and provide some short-form coverage of recent goings-on (in addition to our long form articles, which we promise will be resuming soon!). 
We’ll of course still be providing links to upcoming events as well, so if you have anything you’d like to be added to the upcoming section then please write in to [email protected]

If any of this news interests you and you’d like to get involved in Te Nuku Mauī’s work to build a modern, effective Socialist and Marxist movement in Aotearoa, write to us at [email protected]

TRADE UNIONS FIGHT BACK 

On the 23rd of October, Trade Union members across the country marched in opposition to the Coalition Government’s anti-worker and deeply racist agenda.
Many unions planned “stop-work” meetings as part of this, utilising what small provisions are made for unions within NZ’s deeply limiting Neoliberal labour laws (which ban solidarity strikes and general strikes and restrict what political actions can legally be taken by the organised working class) to carry out some political industrial action that’s been sorely missed in our labour movement for a very long time. 

Members of Te Nuku Mauī in Wellington marched on parliament alongside thousands of our fellow union members. We commend the CTU for taking a step towards real, on-the-ground political agitation for worker power.
We hope it’s the start of a return to the explicitly political “progressive unionism” that has a proud history in this country and has to be rebuilt. It’s a really exciting development and Te Nuku Mauī members in our unions are looking at ways to build rank-and-file support to take things further. 


SOCIALISTS WIN SOMETHING. NEOLIBERALS SAY THAT’S NOT ALLOWED.

On the 10th of October, the campaign to prevent the privatisation of Wellington Airport–spearheaded by local Trade Unionists working with socialists on the Wellington city council–won a great victory. A motion to strike the asset sale from the city’s long term plan passed. 

In spite of a right wing attempt at a deeply cynical twisting of co-governance commitments to divide the council’s left–and in spite of every dirty trick the Neoliberal bureaucracy has pulled to get their way–the workers won. While Wellington’s arch-Neoliberal Tory Whanau initially tried to save face by promising austerity cuts elsewhere immediately after she lost the vote, the ultimate response to losing the game from right wingers higher up the chain has been to flip the board. Local Government Minister Simeon Brown, staying true to his commitments to democracy and localism, is planning to install an unelected budget observer on the council in an attempt to break left wing, working class power wherever it may appear. The fight carries on. 


COMMUNITY UNION RESTARTED

On the 2nd of November (earlier today, at time of writing) Te Nuku Mauī hosted a meeting for various socialists and trade unionists at Trades Hall to organise a resurrection of the dead-since-covid “Community Union” project our group had started back in 2019.
After a lot of discussion, planning and analysis of what worked and what didn’t the first time around, things are looking really optimistic.
‘CU work will include running community meetings and events providing food and discussing the direct material issues local working class people are facing. It’ll also include work to organise tenants in shockingly under-maintained social housing and a free mould removal service offered to local people living in terrible, unhealthy conditions directly created by capitalism. The aim is to build a group for anyone who wishes to build solidarity and working-class power in our community, to combat alienation and to provide for eachother when the market won’t. 
Get involved by chucking an email to [email protected]

WATER METRES-A DEMONSTRATION AGAINST MUNICIPAL NEOLIBERALISM

Greater Wellington council is planning to implement water metres to charge residential water use volumetrically. This will mean that what is currently a free-at-the-point-of-use public good available to every Wellingtonian may instead become something we are charged for consuming. This approach will punish the poorest people in this city disproportionately. Landlords will also take out the further costs on their tenants and it’ll pave the way for the financialisation and eventual privatisation of one of our last straightforwardly public assets. All of this will be done with the additional unnecessary cost of the instalment of water metres which do not need to be there and it’ll end up the same way that the privatisation of Wellington’s power company did in the 1990s.
On the 31st of October, a small group of demonstrators including members of Te Nuku Mauī took part in an action outside of the Greater Wellington council office during a meeting which an organiser in the campaign against water metres was refused the right to speak at. 


And finally…
“CAMPISM,” VIJAY PRASHAD AND AOTEAROA’S RADICAL LIBERALS: MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING?

The past few weeks saw a series of lectures on anti-colonialism and imperialism given in Aotearoa and Australia by globally-respected Marxist intellectual Vijay Prashad. Where one would not be surprised and may even expect for an exciting and high profile series of talks on those subjects with a world-class left wing writer to gain some pushback from the modern McCarthyist right, instead we’ve seen a mess of squabbling stupidity from some people on the left. 

A collection of some (crucially, only some) Anarchists, UltraLeftists and Left-Communist contrarians have put together an “open letter” condemning Prashad and anyone associated with his lectures, and calling upon the talks to be cancelled.
That this move was taken without any real attempt at dialogue with the event organisers, Prashad or in fact anyone meaningfully involved with any of this speaks to the true purpose of such an action: This isn’t something being undertaken out of serious political concern, it’s interpersonal axe-grinding through a symbolic target.
As has been seen in the conduct of a number of the letter’s most prominent proponents at the height of “the discourse,” a great deal of what was being said was far more focused on the vilification of local Marxists involved in organising the lectures than had anything to do with Prashad or his views.

Those views–the ones the letter claims to take issue with, and which it grossly misrepresents–are worthy of genuine critique and discussion. Now that the lectures have actually taken place, we (including TNM members who attended those lectures) are happy to say that that discussion and critique took place at those lectures.
This letter and the deeply, deeply silly argument that followed it were not at all an attempt at that kind of critique or discussion. Rather, they were an attempt at shutting down any discussion at all which might not wind up totally in agreement with the author's existing beliefs and at silencing any figure in the Aotearoa left who they have identified as the “wrong” kind of socialist (read: Marxists).
As a final note on this, we think it is a great pity to see that critique of “campism,” which is very much a genuine issue when it comes to the western left’s anti-imperialism, has already gone the way of talk around “tankies.”
Yet another serious discussion within Marxist-Leninist politics has been adopted by Liberals and used to the point of meaninglessness in attacks against all Marxist-Leninists (and then all Marxists, and then all State-Socialists, and then…).
This entire thing was (impressively!) both deeply stupid and deeply cynical and it has achieved nothing of worth.


WHAT’S ON FOR NEXT MONTH?

HĪKOI MŌ TE TIRITI REACHES PARLIAMENT - 19th November
Thousands of people across the country are marching against ACT's colonialist and deeply racist "Treaty Principles" bill. We urge everyone reading this to take part.
If you're reading this from elsewhere in the country, you can find a full itinerary for the Hīkoi here.
In Wellington, the march to parliament will begin at Waitangi park at 9am and will arrive at 12pm.


DON’T BANK ON APARTHEID! NATIONAL WEEK OF ACTION - 3rd-10th November.
Justice For Palestine’s BDS campaign to get ASB to divest from companies involved in Israeli settlements has a lot on this week, check out their resource pack for more info, available here.


COMMUNITY UNION WORK
Get involved in the Community Union restart! Send an email to [email protected] and get signed up

MUSICIAN’S UNION MEMBERS MEETING - Trades Hall, 6th November, 6pm
A member-led organising meeting open to all Wellington members of the E Tū Musicians’ Union

THE 5TH ANNIVERSARY OF TE NUKU MAUī
Our group’s founding party conference was held in late November five years ago. Our commemoration of that is still in the works and we’ll have an update on it soon.