WE FACE NOT ONLY A ECONOMIC CRISIS BUT A POLITICAL CRISIS

Mike Treen, national director of the Unite Union, is calling for a new economic paradigm that puts people first. He's proposing a Green New Deal for New Zealand but it remains a proposal looking for a political party to adopt it. Treen's 'solution' is less than convincing.

MIKE TREEN HAS looked at the plunge in the sharemarkets and concluded that its time for a Green New Deal (GND). He has made this call before but the national secretary of the Unite Union has observed that not even those at the helm of the good ship Capitalism think it can avoid the rocks of recession, or worse. Treen comments: 'The Financial Times points out that the system has become less stable in recent decades not more stable as wealth has become more centralised into fewer and fewer hands.We need an emergency response to the coming economic catastrophe that is not just business as usual.'

A few days after he wrote this column the  Dow Jones has plunged by a coronoavirus induced 2013 points. Whether you describe this as a crash or a 'correction', it has exposed the underlining fragility of global capitalism. It has also underlined that Treen is largely right in his observation that '... we need to prioritise the needs of ordinary people to access healthcare, educational opportunities, housing and jobs above those of the banks, insurance companies and commodity producers who were bailed out at the expense of working people the last time capitalism had a generalised crisis of overproduction just over a decade ago.'

To put in a nutshell, Mike Treen concludes, we need a GND.

He doesn't get any argument from me. Nor would he get any argument from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party which has been central to popularising the GND not only in the United States but around the world. Similarly, Treen would not get any argument from the UK Labour Party which adopted its own GND last year.

Economist Grace Blakely.

One of the advisors to UK Labour's GND was economist Grace Blakely. She argues too that 'business as usual' will not be sufficient to deal with the crisis that is unfolding. She writes:

"Governments are out of monetary fire power – if they respond at all, it must be with fiscal policy. Co-ordinated stimulus programmes from the world’s major economies might be enough to prevent a significant downturn – and borrowing is now cheaper than ever. Given that the virus will have a greater impact on poorer countries and more vulnerable individuals, the response must be targeted at protecting the least well-off. And given that the climate crisis represents a far greater long-term threat to humanity than coronavirus, it should also promote decarbonisation.

In other words, now is the perfect time for the Green New Deal. It remains to be seen whether governments led by Donald Trump, Boris Johnson and Angela Merkel will seize the opportunity.'

But while countries like the United States and Great Britain have organised political parties and movements campaigning for a GND we lack anything similar in New Zealand. New Zealand's parliamentary parties remained wedded to neoliberalism. Even the Green Party has pledged its loyalty to a market-led environmentalism.

Despite this political reality, Mike Treen argues that 'As soon a new crisis breaks out we should demand that a government that claims to be representative of working people as the current Labour Party-led government does, should put our interests first not the capitalist mismanagers of the system.'

Given the antipathy and outright  hostility that this Labour-led government has shown to anything that isn't market-friendly, one wonder why Treen thinks Labour would now suddenly abandon neoliberalism for a GND. It really is a forlorn hope.  

As I write this, the Labour-led government is making noises about  implementing rescue packages for business.

Our present predicament is that we might well have a coherent economic and political alternative to neoliberalism, we lack the political vehicle which can intervene in mainstream politics to campaign for its implementation. I think 'demanding' that the Labour Party changes its market-led ways is not a realistic strategy. The GND offers at once the promise of a new economic paradigm, but it is a new economic paradigm that this Labour-led government is opposed to. There is little point in fostering illusions about the political character of the Labour Party unless, of course, its also about trying to convince folk that Labour is the 'lesser evil'.