Written By: - Date published: 4:08 pm, December 12th, 2008 - 117 comments
Categories: activism, john key, workers' rights -
Tags: 90 day bill, fire at will, workers party
Taken a matter of minutes ago, the Workers Party protest outside John Key’s multimillion dollar Parnell mansion. Just to remind you that we’ve just seen a man worth tens of millions of dollars take work rights off a whole bunch of people who earn minimum wage.
In case you’re wondering what they’re holding up, it’s this poster.
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coge: The ‘left’ are not exactly a monolithic group.
However, I consider that this a lot less of an issue than what the Right has done with the continual smears against Peter Davis. You as a member of the Right are obviously responsible for those as part of a group responsibility. If I am to be smeared as part of the Left, then the vice versa also has to be true.
For a starter at least the people in this protest do it overtly, publicly, and with a clear objective in mind. They did not do it covertly, maliciously, and in the cowardly manner that has characterized the efforts of parts of the Right over the last years.
Or perhaps I should suggest that you share the same viewpoints, value, and share in the responsibility of the actions of the National Front (or whatever their splintered names are these days)? Or that you share the attributes of that well known member of the Right Ian Wishart?
ie don’t be a fool. Engage your brain before making stupid comments
Iprent, these people are outside the mans home! Where his kids live! I dont give a damn about the politics of whatever they want to protest about Their behaviour is disgusting.
And you ask me to lift my standard?
jbt: Tell me which to think is more damaging to a kid.
Having a controlled group of protesters outside a house.
Or having a Right author publish a book in which he states that the parents of a kid I know, are not a ‘real’ couple (with zero evidence) and that getting back to her at school. Not to mention all of the crap blasted around the net by the sleaze of the right.
I’m afraid that after finding out about that, I realized that the right had hit a new low for NZ politics – the name is Wishart. This protest by comparison, is almost benign.
I don’t give a damn about Wisharts politics, but I do care about that kind of crap. How do you feel about it?
He hasn’t taken rights of people who are actually working so your statement is misleading at best.
John Edmundson – Sorry mate, I still reckon you’re having a larf. There is a huge difference between a limited set of examples of successful co-ops working within capitalist economies and believing that Marxism works as a policial system.
Of course I’m genuinely interested in this – I’m a political junkie like a lot of us on here – but before I check any of your examples on the internet, can you tell me which ones produce, say, more than US$1 billion of goods or services per year (thought we’d keep the number reasonably small to make it easy for you), or which ones have over 100,000 people depending on them for their livelihood?
It’s not IN SPITE OF being in capitalist economies that marxist co-ops occasionally survive and have success, it’s BECAUSE they’re in capitalist economies (where they get left alone by government, their personal property rights are respected and protected, government has taken enough in tax from cpitalist businesses to provide infrastructure , people like you are desperate to make them work and other companies exist to produce related goods and services).
Do you REALLY believe, for example, the “workers” of AIR NZ could boot out all levels of management and start running the airline themselves (and AIR NZ is a tiny, tiny company in global terms)? I BEG you to say “yes” to that question – it’ll make my day
Let’s get this straight. I have no issue with a bunch of workers owning their factory and running it however they like, including on co-operative lines. Good luck to them – if they have the skills, the willingness to take on board the risk, etc, then all power to them. Some people are good at running businesses. Others aren’t. Some businesses suit that model, most don’t.
However, I think you have absolutely NO evidence to support the Marxist idealistic claptrap about workers ALWAYS being able to produce greater output that “capitalists”.
If you are so blind to the world around you – economic and political history, human response to incentives, etc – that you truly believe what you write here, then good luck to you I say. But please allow me to be astonished to find someone waiving the flag so vigorously for Marxism. In this day and age, it’s like seeing an Amish person drive down Queen St in a horse-and-buggy.
John,
Now that I’ve stopped giggling, this is the bit where what you believe really falls down. You said:
“Some of us Mike have noticed that in the economic system that we live in right now, it is completely impossible for everyone to get to be the rich person. Now some people think that’s fine, that living in a society that institutionalises and requires great inequality is fine, and that anyone who challenges that is guilty of the sin of envy, and or is lazy and has a fat arse. Personally, I’d rather work towards a society that not only doesn’t celebrate inequality, but doesn’t even need it.”
What do you mean by “ineqaulity” and why is that the goal.
1000, 750, 500, 200, 100, and 50 years ago, what the poorest person in England has now would have been regarded as unimaginably well-off. TV’s, computers, paid parental leave, certain minimum health protections, cheap cures for various previously fatal diseases, instantaneous communications, etc, etc, etc. The list is endless.
The days of sweatshops, death from “old age” at 40, nothing to eat, etc. ARE GONE in capitalist economies. Because the real goal is being met with ease, people like you change it to a stupid and meaningless one – “we should all be “equal”"
Your paragraph above is not so much about whether poor people are better off. Your concern is more that there are richer people than you or me out there. So what? I don’t give a toss.
I would rather work towards a society where the poorest people have food on their plates, dignity, opportunity and education.
Modern marxism (‘woe the inequality! – even though it does seem we’re ALL better off now’) is nothing more than a convenient cloak for tall-poppy syndrome. Even learned academics like a little jealousy, now and then…
red rave is the loud mouth of members of the Communist Workers’ Group of Aotearoa/New Zealand, member of the Leninist/Trotskyist Fraction, committed to building a new communist international to lead workers to the revolutionary overthrow of global capitalism
Hahahahahahahahahahaha
You’re as mad as a hatter living in the past with your bosses and down trodden workers go back to Eve’s blog where you belong, only the terminally deluded are wanting to encourage and commit to creating different classes of people in NZ and a class war.
In fact if I can borrow from Helen Clark ……. you are a wrecker and hater.
Jimbo, most of the ‘capitalist’ countries that have done so well over the last hundred years have had their governments spending at least 30% of GDP, with top marginal income tax rates ranging up to 75% and higher (they have been reduced greatly over the last 20 years, and the system is showing signs of fragility, make of that what you will). The greatest stabile period of global growth was prior to the 70′s oil shocks, the effects of which lead to the neo-liberal reforms. Since those reforms there have been a number of crises; again make of that what you will. Your use of the word ‘capitalism’ is as anachronistic as any marxist. Capitalism failed in the late twenties, some decades earlier than totalitarian communism, (which is not really Marxist as I’m sure your aware). Since then we have had a market based mixed economy that draws as much from Marx as it does from Smith.
Just sayin.
I’d also be interested in hearing why you think trade in labour should be restricted where trade in capital, goods and services is not. You weren’t very clear about that.
since when did 9 people qualify as a protest? Looks more like a queue for a bus lmfao
That’s because capitalist economies no longer exist. Capitalism as a system died in the early twentieth century. What we’ve had since then is varying strengths of socialist democracy.
I am giggling at your strident labeling of systems where the state spends upwards of 35% of GDP on universal education, healthcare, and social insurance as ‘Capitalism’. Sheesh, it sure aint great grand daddy’s capitalism that’s fer shure. What better evidence that capitalism has failed, than that the post WWII mixed economic model is defended as ‘capitalism’.
Iprent, I have not read the writings of Mr Wishart and it does not sound good if he attacks the family in any way whatsoever. However, you seem to be saying that two wrongs make a right. So, sorry, that is not good enough to justify such bad behaviour regardless of the political leanings.
LP:
“However the same thing applies to the way that the nutters on the right have attacked Peter over the years or Micheal Cullens spouse – perhaps I should look back to your reaction to those? Not to mention that arsehole Wishart’s attacks on my friends. I suspect I won’t find you doing any major objections to those.
Frankly the way that the right has operated over the last 5 years with a knowing grin and no serious objections has simply given a license to the extremists (on both sides). You are part of the problem.”
Is that anything like Len Richards hitting someone with a megaphone?
Besides which, I agree that Whale and co are morons. It doesn’t mean I have to think it’s ok for people to stoop to their level.
Jimbo – What you call capitalism couldn’t possibly survive without immense state intervention. One only has to look at the military industrial complex of the U.S. to see this. Like you said in the Occupy resist.. thread you don’t know much about economic history. To go along with John’s examples there is the Israeli Kibbutzim and then collectivisation in Spain during the civil war, especially so in Catalonia. These two were by no means marxist they were just collectivisation. There have also been large numbers of various agricultural collectives all over the world in the past. You have a view of the left which is misguided. The left have many different currents and many more so than the right.
1000, 750, 500, 200, 100, and 50 years ago, what the poorest person in England has now would have been regarded as unimaginably well-off. TV’s, computers, paid parental leave, certain minimum health protections, cheap cures for various previously fatal diseases, instantaneous communications, etc, etc, etc. The list is endless.
You think that is wholly due to the economic system or do you think that has something to do with technological advance? People couldn’t very well have had TVs and computers 1000, 750, 500, 200, 100, years ago could they. Cheap cures for various previously fatal diseases, instantaneous communications etc, capitalism or scientific advance? Paid parental leave and “certain minimal health protections” are provided by the state – so what is your point?
I’m not a marxists but a marxist would say to you that a capitalist economy is rife with inefficiencies and holds back the marterial, economic and intellectual growth of a people. They would say this “because economic crises constantly cheek production; because production is for the market, and as the market is restricted under capitalism, the growth of the productive forces is restricted; because monopoly buys up technical inventions, and prevents them from being widely used; because production cannot be planned, and so there is no systematic growth; because capitalism has kept agriculture separate and backward; because capitalism has to devote enormous resources for wars between rival groups, wars against the colonial peoples; because capitalism separates manual from mental work, and therefore does not open the floodgates of invention; because the class struggle absorbs an enormous amount of human energy; because capitalism leaves millions unemployed.” [That's from What is Marxism?]
Socialists and communists believe production should be for use and not profit and that the principle of life should not be “every man for himself,” “gain wealth, forget all but self”. You may believe that human nature is not fit for such a society, but a marxist would say that human nature reflects the society it belongs to. They would hold to the maxim “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”
I’m not trying to advocate anything here I’m just trying to inform you Jimbo of the argument before you go spouting off about that which you do not know.
By the way dear protesters, take a good look at some property you’ll never be able to afford if you continue your mischievious ways, instead of working bloody hard,
Envy won’t take you anywhere. Heads up comrades.
Dear Righties.
Capitalism is just swell innit?
Dispensing with any analysis ’cause you just don’t seem to be too hot on the analytical front, thought you might like to enjoy leaving the following in isolation rather than draw any obvious conclusions.
Having left the quotes below in isolatin you might nevertheless ponder the growing numbers of people in the west ‘rediscovering’ the fact of class war thanks to the clear demarcation set by governments between financiers and ‘the rest’. Nice one.
Jean Ziegler”When the rich lose weight, the poor die,” says a proverb. World hunger is increasing at a breathtaking rate. Every five seconds a child under ten dies of hunger in the world and 100 000 people die every day from hunger or its immediate after-effects. 923 million people, more than one in six, are permanently severely malnourished. The daily massacre of hunger is increasing. (…)The United Nations has identified eight priority tragedies to be eliminated. (…)by 2015: eradicating extreme poverty and hunger, ensuring all school-age children a basic education, promoting gender equality and the empowerment of women; reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, combating AIDS, malaria and other epidemics; ensuring the protection of the environment, establishing a global pact for development. The cost of these objectives has been set at 82 billion dollars annually over five years. Since 2000, the West said there was no money. However, on October 12, at the Élysée Palace [2], in three and a half hours, the 27 EU countries released €1 700 billion for credit to be used between banks and to raise the floor of pure capital for the banks from 3 % to 5%. 1% of these €1 700 billion would suffice to eliminate the eight tragedies afflicting the Third World countries. This world order is not only mortal, it is absurd.
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/19777
We’ve moved the whole argument to now pointing out examples of market failure in capitalist economies, or arguing that certain amounts of state welfare are necessary in capitalist economies (neither of which I disagree with).
When the argument gets to this stage, it goes around and around in circles. QTR and PB – how much technological advancement is due to the fact that the people who invented the new technology knew they would get rich off it…?
Sorry PB – don’t accept what you’re saying at all. The political economy of the modern era is a hell of lot closer to Adam Smith than it is to Karl Marx.
I believe the goal the far left (and let’s face it, that’s what where you sit) -”equality” – is irrelevant and a smokescreen for envy. I believe the premise is fundamentally flawed. Finally, I believe the weight of evidence is stacked against you blokes who argue nonsense such as overthrow of the “capitalists”, etc.
The point is simply that, when you’re so far out on the extreme of the political compass that you actually believe employers are evil per se, then of course you don’t agree with a 90 day trial period in employment. It’s a waste of breath going into the arguments on that policy when what you really want to do is throw out all employers and install a political system that has been a total and abject failure whenever someone’s had the will (i.e. the FORCE) to try it.
I certainly do not, and never have, believed in a pure market economy where there is no welfare of any type. I’d be an idiot if I did. You, on the other hand, believe in a collectivist ideal that simply has not worked – and in fact has led to misery – whenever its proponents have forced their subject to adopt it.
The only time collectivism works in when the actors chose it voluntarily. That’s your problem, right there…!
QTR
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.’
That is the most disgusting statement anyone can ever utter.
Jimbo – your are talking shit!
For the moment NZ is still a democracy…people can stand and hold a sign wherever they want….dont like it pack ya bags and get to Russia!
If you want privacy dont enter a profession in the public arena, particulary when you start stripping rights away from people…there will be a price to pay.
Jimbo – Allow me to quote Marx: “Our task will first of all consist in transforming their individual production and individual ownership into cooperative production and co-operative ownership, not forcibly, but by way of example, and by offering social aid for this purpose.’ You’re the only one to bring up force. Do you think that capitalism was never forced upon people. How do you think we got to this modern state of affairs? We got there thorugh revolutions, wars and so on. Did the people of India willfully submit to British imperialism and hence capitalism? There was no force involved in past agarian colectives they were just natural states of affairs before more pwerful peoples imposed their ways upon people. The collectivisations in Spain were nearly on the whole not forced ( A reading of Orwell’s homage to Catalonia would be good for you), but voluntarily entered into as with the Israeli Kibbutzim. Learn a little about history before you continue spouting inane bullshit. As I’ve already told in the other thread which you don’t seem to understand Lenninsm, Stalinism, Trotskyism weren’t marxism in practise they were disociable states and like I pointed out then they have much in common with modern corporatism.
Adam Smith give me a break. If you really think Adam Smith writing in a time before modern captialism or states acutally envisioned what we have now you are sorely mistaken. Here’s a quote from Smith decrying the division of Labour as Marx did: the man whose life is spent performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding… and generally as stupid and ignorant as it si possible for a human creature to be… But in every improved and civilised society this si the state into which the labouring poor, that is the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless governments take pain to prevent it,
On the subject of force and capitalism again: To the natives however, both of the East and West Indies, all the commercial benefits which can have resulted from those events have been sunk and lost in the dreadful misfortunes which they have occasioned. These misfortunes, however, seem to have arisen rather from accident than from any thing in the nature of those events themselves. At the particular time when these discoveries were made, the superiority of force happened to be so great on the side of the Europeans, that they were enabled to commit with impunity every sort of injustice in those remote countries.
sweetd – I guessing you hold to “gain wealth, forget all but self’ then.
Well isnt this Rogernomics Mark 2?
Just how fucking old are you? This is nothing like Rogernomics Mk 2 and more’s the pity.
There aren’t any real tax breaks; KiwiStealer stays; the change to employment law is inconsequential.
Real Rogernomics Mk 2 would have wiped out KiwiSaver, sold off KiwiBank, AirNZ, KiwiFuckingTrain, the Power companies (while the fucking NZ$ is still worth something!) chopped the benefits you scum live on, wiped out WFF, made every job “fire at will” (and removed the stupid fucking good faith & antidiscriminiation provisions Key left in); removed the minimum wage & child wage laws; sold the state houses; bulk funded the schools; privitised the hospitals; deregistered the unions…
and the police would have charged your pathetic “protest” with PR 24s and then the hosptials wouldn’t have taken you in.
Rogernomics Mk 2 is what NZ needs; this is what Key damn well should have done!
But don’t compare what he did do to anything like this!
Hardworking, taxpaying New Zealanders can only hope that he will soon grow a real backbone and the the silent assassin will start to assassinate “haters and wreckers” like you lot,
“chopped the benefits you scum live on”
Ah, what a laugh.
Top marks for an entertaining rant AngryTory. May your extreme neo-liberal poison have a very short half-life and rest in peace the day it dies out.
“Hardworking, taxpaying New Zealanders” You speaking for yourself or are you including those who work very hard on the minimum wage? Ah yes.
OMFG, you’re psychotic!
Why would you assume that everyone who objects to these or any other right-wing, anti-worker policy is unemployed and not contributing? Personally, I am very well educated, have a decent job, pay heaps of taxes (in fact, I will even benifit from the “cuts” pushed through the other day), and yet I still think these moves by the new government are deplorable. Moreover, the fact that they have been pushed through in “urgency” without the usual due course is even worse. As such, I think protesting is the least that John deserves!
However, I would never call for his, nor anyone else’s, assassination–democracy is always king!
But hey, feel free to rant like a nutcase, it really helps us “over here” in the long run anyway.
Hector: OMFG, you’re psychotic!
Welcome to the blogosphere. For what it’s worth that lot were no better before the Nats won.
L
Kerry – take a deep breath now… Where have I even mentioned the protest outside Key’s house?
Angry Tory:
Good. Give them a bit more than a week. They did say 100 days. And they did sneak in under cover of Labour lite. Don’t be so hard on them. Roger’s there in the flesh (did I say that). I’m sure he has a list like yours. Give it a go, don’t give up to impotent rage already. That’s supposed to be the fate of the left only it aint.
rjs:
Go visit some other country where there is a million or more on the streets against the crisis (Italy), where the country is in a state of youthful rebellion (Greece), where the country is being run by some guy who says he’s a Marxist as well as a Christian etc (Venezuela); where the auto industry is collapsing (US); and talk to the masses (there are the masses you know) and feel what it is like to be a greedy little bastard squeezed between these masses and your rich mates (Bolivia).
Get out of the playground and into the world. Karl Marx is stalking Wall St and your funk is showing.
rave. just thought I’d say I particularly like reading your comments. Good sort.
Jimbo, what makes you say I sit at the far left? For fuck sake, I know you are a rightie commenting on a left wing blog but there’s no need to just put everyone on the left into your little stereotype boxes.
There is actually a hell of a lot of technology that has been developed by the state, and certainly had it’s development subsidised by the state. The internet for starters, and the computers it runs on, the space program, satellites ( who did that first by the way?), our transport, energy and communication networks and so on.
My point is that ‘capitalism’ is largely a myth. Particularly now. I just got a laugh out of you mocking people for using Marxist language as being anachronistic, when your own language comes from the same era.
Apparently that makes me a far leftist. If you think the New Deal, Mickey Savage, the welfare state, universal health care and education are best described as ‘capitalism’ then you are pretty far out on the left fringe yourself mate.
Hector: “I must say I’m actually quite surprised at the sheer volume of moral outrage over this!”
It looks like your problem could be timing. Your group might be a handful of harmless pro-worker activists, but (if a report in this morning’s paper is to be believed) John Key’s house has in recent weeks been the focus of loud protests by a group calling itself “the Fathers’ Union”. Judged by its name, in the absence of any other information about the group, it sounds like one of the deeply unpleasant so-called “men’s rights” groups that have proliferated recently. (One such person – “dad4justice” – used to post here and elsewhere to claim some vast conspiracy of women was behind his (by his own admission, long) criminal record. He has not, to my knowledge, actually owned up to what crimes he was convicted of, but in the context of his ravings it appears that “dad4violence” would be a better name for him.)
True, no criticism of Key from any group so far has been anywhere near as disgusting as the bile emanating from certain National-linked commentators (one such has been manufacturing material so objectionable that I suspect even Wishart would recoil from its use), but any targeting of politicians’ families would be best avoided.
QTR
“sweetd – I guessing you hold to “gain wealth, forget all but self’ then.”
If we are going for 6 second sound bites, then my own is, ‘Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
sweetd – You made a mistake. You were supposed to say the capitalist version: Sell a man a fish you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you lose a good business opportunity. What you’ve said is thoroughly leftist. Shame on you.
I am not envious of the wealthy. I feel a bit sorry for them as they seem to have less freedom to be themselves. Fell very sorry for that sorry old man Owen Glenn as seen on TV doco, who seemed to exists on the bought attention of nubile wenches and bought admiration of the local chief who honoured him with a patch of land to build his house onthe island . Sad pathetic old man. Envy? No way.
Meanwhile…back on topic. Where were the DPS while all this was going on.
I can just see the scene . A flash protest somewhere in Auckland. Half a dozen SWP and Green members huddled in the back of a white 1970′s transit, placards in hand. “Right comrads , we’ll have 30 seconds before we get tazered by the DPS , get out there and lets make it count”. In a cloud of oil smoke the van pulls up and the brave freedom fighters hold up their placards for half a dozen photo’s. A rustle in bushes panics the younger members and they all bolt for the van trampling the big guy in the white T shirt.
Legs and posters hanging out the back the van coughs and splutters off leaving its own smoke screen to deter the snipers. “Bloody hell. We got away with it..” whoops all round. 50 meters down the road the comrads spy two DPS officers standing outside a similar coloured expansive house. “Oh Bugger.”
Chris G:
Yeah the righties are whimps really, they hunt in packs, like spoiled brat banksters.
Pascal;
Don’t be too sure that Marx is dead. If Roger Douglas can re-appear there’s hope for Marx. And Pascal lives on surely.
Keynes was under no illusion that he had replaced capitalism, just given the duffers who were fixated on the short run some long run iron up the backside.
Its long run capitalism weve got, almost at the end of its run.
When the argument gets to this stage, it goes around and around in circles. QTR and PB – how much technological advancement is due to the fact that the people who invented the new technology knew they would get rich off it ?
God you’re dull Jimbo. Have you ever thought of other motivations people may have in life apart from accumulating huge masses of wealth? No. Didn’t think so. Scientists seek knowledge, they seek intellectual fulfilment, even (gasp) the betterment of mankind. I don’t deny that in this day and age where captialism has progressed to such a degree some may have self serving agendas. In the past, 18th, 17th centuries, &c, men of science were nearly on the whole already wealthy. They didn’t pursue science for financial gain they did it for for the sake of knowledge. Darwin, for instance. And what of Einstein, did he do it all for money? – he was a socialist. Gregor Mendel? he was a monk. Come back to this thread when you have the slightest inkling of the transgressions of human history.
gosh, this is quite a thread.. read down etc..
seems I’m alone however in observing that the ‘protesters’ have the brains to face the front.. ie backs to the atrocious language of that property.. yeah, I wonder whether its owner and the residents are aware also. Or are they to be included among the mundane, tasteless trojans or titans..of our world..