WE'RE ALL SOCIALISTS NOW

In shock news, several Labour MP's recently declared themselves to be 'socialists'. But all is not what it seems, as Branko Marcetic of Jacobin magazine observed....

THE NEW YORK based Jacobin continues to feature interesting and relevant articles about New Zealand. The magazine has become something of a home for several New Zealand writers. A new article of note is by Branko Marcetic, who resided in New Zealand for several years but now resides in Toronto, Canada.

He has reported and commented on a recent remarkable parliamentary incident in which several Labour Party MP's declared themselves to be socialists. They included Wairarapa MP Kieran McAnulty, New Lynn MP Deborah Russell and Tukituki MP Anna Lorck. Christchurch Central MP Duncan Webb proudly piped up that 'There's so many of us great socialists on this side of the House'.

This will come as a shock to all of us who have assumed that the Labour Party is a wasteland as far as socialist politics is concerned. Who knew that our very own Jeremy Corbyn's and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's were sitting in Parliament all along?

As Marcetic says, these sudden declarations of loyalty to the socialist cause came in the aftermath of a budget that was marketed as Labour repudiating its neoliberal past. That particular fiction was encouraged by several eager-to-please members of The Commentariat but as Marcetic writes, the reality of Labour's budget fell 'short of the most effusive praise'. While Labour marketed the budget as a rejection of Ruth Richardson's 1991 'Mother of all Budgets', Marcetic observes this was largely window dressing:

'Richardson's debt-and-surplus obsession lives on this current government, which has consistently justified its resistance to more public investment by pointing to debt fears and even took care to frame this budget as 'keeping a lid on debt and tracking a responsible return toward surplus' through 'targeted investment'. Labour's continued refusal to get rid of benefit sanctions reflects a fundamental acceptance of Bolger and Richardson's moralistic distaste for welfare, as does its plan for a separate unemployment insurance scheme. And there is little sign that, beyond emergency measures necessitated by the pandemic, the party is planning to permanently re-expand the size and scope of the government.

'In this respect, New Zealand's 2021 budget looks less like a repudiation of Ruth Richardson's ideology than the furthest left you can go while operating under it.'

But, nevertheless, this certainly did not stop several Labour MP's from telling Parliament that they've been socialists all along. But what kind of 'socialism' allows you to defend and promote the neoliberal policies of your Labour government? The reality is that the Labour Party long ago lost any semblance of a working class soul. Its role now is to defend the neoliberal order and the economic elite that prosper by it. The 'liberalism' of Labour has become a politics in which the government cravenly submits to corporate power and cultural issues and debates distract from material needs.

Bryce Edwards had something to say about this in a short speech he made recently. He observes that 'the modern version of the left - what some might call the 'woke left', the 'liberal left' or 'middle class left' - clearly has some very different ways of pursuing political change. Largely its an elite top-down model of politics, reflective of the left being made up of the highly-educated stratum of society. They confidently believe they know best.'

Edwards concludes that a return to class politics and mass participation and away from an obsession with 'culture wars' can't come too soon. 

While this might not be to the liking of media organisations like RNZ and Stuff, we might then return to developing a genuinely left wing politics rather than the 'we know best' liberalism that some Labour MP's think is 'socialist'. Theirs is, at best, a cautious agenda based on centrist 'electability' and market-friendly incrementalism. The task is build something more exciting and daring to replace it. Then we can really start talking about socialism.