The Left Went That Way

Written By: - Date published: 8:38 am, January 14th, 2025 - 15 comments
Categories: Deep stuff, Left, Politics - Tags:

In the past two decades, election results in western Europe, Australasia, and North America have been framed as a crisis of the left. It’s more a case of misidentified success that’s holding the left back, than a primrose path to a tragedian graveyard.

The performance of social democratic parties has, on average, been marked by a tremendous decline across many democracies, from a vote share of nearly 40% to below 20%. Europe’s left decline has been fast, but it’s common elsewhere. 

Those with redistributionist tendencies who did get in to run a country are either pretty mild like Trudeau or Albanese or Starmer, or needed major coalition partners to squeak in like Ardern or any recent government in Spain or Germany.

But fixating on the fate of social democratic parties alone is misleading: it overlooks the broader fate of progressive politics that prioritises the core principles of egalitarianism, inclusion and sustainability. While mainstream parties on the left are declining, progressive politics is transforming, renewing and in some instances even thriving.

Many of the diagnoses of the left’s challenges rely on assumptions that are at odds with reality.

One of these flawed claims is the supposed decline of working-class support for the left, which obscures the massive voter gains that progressive parties have made beyond their traditional constituencies. The working class is mostly female, and it ain’t white. It is simply an outdated notion about the composition of progressive party electorates. It may appear that the working class resides in the UFC audience, until you register that industrial workers requiring blokey muscle and blood are in a collapse-fast decline in advanced democracies. That has been particularly the case in New Zealand in the last 3 years.

The decline of the industrial workforce does not signal the demise of progressive politics. Working class people tend to be younger, female and often have a migration background. 

Second, voters from the educated middle classes, often employed in services or the public sector, have become the largest and most loyal electorate of progressive parties, whether social democratic, socialist, green or left-libertarian.   In New Zealand the great majority of those who are in the public service are women, and the great majority of the remaining union members are women.

That gives a correlative hint to why the Greens pretty took out the vote across most of the Wellington region last time.

Progressive parties today engage with a diverse range of voters, from people in precarious or insecure work, women and migrants, to old people secured by state superannuation, to the expanding middle classes. Any analysis that keeps insisting on the declining blue-collar working class as the sole viable electoral constituency of the left underestimates the electoral base of progressive parties overall.

And our left parties will actually thrive if they reflect that the newer segments of the left electorate strongly favour progressive  redistributive economic and social policies – beyond their support for social inclusion and sustainability.

Beyond confusing where the left constituency now lies, the power of the lefts’ policies now has astonishing if poorly recognised momentum and power.

Register the scale of the policy programme success the left have had, as well as its consequences. The left-led climate policies from the Paris and Kyoto accords forward have led to some of the most fundamental policy-driven shifts since the Marshall Plan. The auto industry including parts and servicing accounts for about 40% of Japan’s economy and 30% of Germany’s economy, and they are in rapid and likely terminal decline (albeit with the long tail of servicing and polishing all those shiny old combustion machines). 

Check out where public transport use is in Auckland compared to the late 1990s when National tried very hard to kill it all dead. Now no one dare touch those Gold Card subsidies.

That is the permanent economic and environmental avalanche of renewal for the modern world, and for the most part the right still fights it.

It is the left that has altered capitalism in myriad, massive and permanent ways in the last three decades, and it would help if we shouted our successful policy revolutions that are still underway.

Green voters do not differ from social-democratic voters much. Both groups are consistently leftwing in their economic considerations. These voters’ commitment to egalitarian redistributive policy is also manifest in their clear opposition to welfare chauvinism. More than two-thirds of social democratic, green or radical left voters reject restrictions on migrants’ access to social assistance. 

Now let’s get to immigration. It’s not left-Kryptonite.The support for immigration in New Zealand for example is still resolutely high with employers regularly crying out for more restrictions to be lifted. The socialists of old from the 1940s are now lifted onto their care home beds with gratitude, by Filipinos and Thai and Samoan working class women.

Nor need they go to ground when there are electoral losses. Instead of finding them at a party meeting, in the absence of a charismatic party leader you may instead find them leading community gardens, organising Pasifika or other cultural events, stopping Peter Thiel from investing here, joining in with school fundraisers, or putting the volunteer hours into pest-free neighbourhoods.  

The left may not be winning electorally, but their policies most certainly are, the working class are most certainly strong and identifiable, and we can draw sustained strength from the powerful success of them both. 

15 comments on “The Left Went That Way ”

  1. Karolyn_IS 1
    14 January 2025 at 10:08 am

    Could these progressive people referred to in Ad's post be called left wing, or are could they be more accurately called liberal?

    To be left wing, I thought there needed to be a structural analysis of socio-economic class. In either a Marxist analysis, or the more Weberian (occupational-status) type of the likes of the old UK Registrar General's analysis, women didn't fit easily into it. This is because the structure was basically developed around assumptions of male dread winners.

    The proletarian working or manual classes tended to be male-dominated ones. Women working in service occupations, from cleaners to sales people or 'secretaries', they never had the same status or payment of any equivalent male occupations in terms of skills and training level.

    New Zealand also never had a very big industrial working class, which generally is what is regarded as working class. And in the old left internationally, that was the focus of union activity.

    To me, having lived for a time in the UK, it has long seemed to me that NZ has always been more of a liberal than left wing country. And both countries are still pretty patriarchal, in that the male sex class tends to be dominant politically and economically, no matter how many women are in higher socio-economic and political positions in than in the past.

    Reply
    • SPC 1.1
      14 January 2025 at 12:30 pm

      In the begining, there were those who worked for those who have the capital invested (and or owned the land). Mechanisation reduced labour required on the farm and then the number of skilled artisans.

      1.The 40 hour week began here via Samuel Parnell (though google will lie that it was invented by Henry Ford). First for carpenters.

      2.We did have a working class culture for a time. But it was more in the assembly of cars/TV's, wharfies and freezing works. Then came the open market policies of Douglas (and since further diminished by the move to dairying and then the more recent decline in forestry processing).

      3.The ECA was of a design to destroy unions, unions were manifest proof of the existence of an organised working class.

      4.The decline in size of a working class in manufacturing (assembly) or in manual labour has become associated with a move from well paid jobs (on which one could support a family) to lower paid work.

      All while people are supposed to see themselves as middle class (yet it required two incomes and fewer children to be able to own a home) or otherwise classless poor (often working multiple jobs/shift work) who rented for life and then faced a desperate old age.

      5.If one put it that those who work for life in jobs that would not pay a mortgage are working class, then we are moving towards a time we have the most of this class than we have had in the past. That this includes couples is the tragedy.

      Reply
      • Karolyn_IS 1.1.1
        14 January 2025 at 2:30 pm

        "We did have a working class culture for a time." Yes. But even that was very small in comparison with more highly industrialised countries.

        Reply
  2. Darien Fenton 2
    14 January 2025 at 10:50 am

    Thanks for this. I have been thinking a lot about this as you can imagine. For me, the working class are those who depend on wages paid by a boss to earn a living – whether it be in service sector jobs, what's left of manufacturing or public service jobs. I think that’s what we need to capture somehow in our discussions.

    Reply
    • Karolyn_IS 2.1
      14 January 2025 at 12:30 pm

      The problem is that currently the Labour Party focus on "working people" tends to cater more to the middle classes. Low income people, especially low-paid women in precarious work, tend to be given secondary consideration. They are often in part time, or casual work. they tend to be non-unionised, as in low paid hospitality workers.

      Beneficiaries tend to be given a low consideration – better than National and ACT, but still they, especially single mothers, tend to be left a lot to struggle on.

      The Greens have better policies for low income people, but still they tend to favour middle class young people.

      The middle classes are, so far, doing reasonably well, though not always as well as they should be.

      Reply
      • SPC 2.1.1
        14 January 2025 at 12:41 pm

        Those in "middle class" jobs (teachers, nurses) are doing comparably well – but would do better over the Tasman. Where they get paid middle class incomes and have better working conditions.

        Reply
        • Karolyn_IS 2.1.1.1
          14 January 2025 at 12:58 pm

          Agreed. Having lived in Aussie (and worked in education there) it seemed to me there was a stronger, or bigger working class movement than in NZ. And stronger unions.

          Reply
          • gsays 2.1.1.1.1
            14 January 2025 at 5:00 pm

            Most of what we are talking about is in yr last sentence.

            Union as in the formal organized sense eg E Tu, NZNO, the union of a sports/community/church group and union in the form of a marriage/long term commitment.

            All of those unions have weakened with the rise of the self and neo-liberalism.

            We've forgotten what we can achieve when we co-operate, forgive relatively small grievances and work towards a common goal.

            Reply
    • thinker 2.2
      14 January 2025 at 4:55 pm

      A very unscientific suggestion, but I think what the right wing call apathy is mix of hopelessness and fear.

      We must be into the third or fourth generation of those who work playing musical chairs for an ever diminishing share of the pie. There's been no help over those times as what purported to be a voice for the left was a watered down neoliberalism. Hence, why vote?

      And, in a world/country where unions get the bash every time a right wing government gets in, what job holder wants to find themselves with a reputation as a union member = socialist = communist, when the person who owns your job gets the power to replace you and you find yourself with few rights to challenge the decision.

      Since 1984, even when the left has been in power, unions were never given back what they lost. Probably that's a good thing, imho the pendulum had swung too far. But two wrongs don't make a right.

      Reply
  3. Psycho Milt 3
    14 January 2025 at 12:36 pm

    Immigration isn't left-Kryptonite here because, unlike European countries, we haven't imported masses of people from cultures that hate the West. However, it's an issue the left should pay more attention to, ie there's a reason why employers are "regularly crying out for more restrictions to be lifted" and that reason isn't that they have the best interests of NZ's working class at heart. The old socialists who are being lifted into their care beds by Filipina, Thai or Samoan women should ask themselves why there aren't NZers willing to do those jobs.

    Reply
    • adam 3.1
      14 January 2025 at 5:09 pm

      The old socialists who are being lifted into their care beds by Filipina, Thai or Samoan women should ask themselves why there aren't NZers willing to do those jobs.

      Because we have 40 odd years of putting the slave back into wage slave.

      Reply
  4. SPC 4
    14 January 2025 at 12:52 pm

    The positives – 4 weeks annual leave and 2 weeks sick leave. And payment to carers.

    The negatives. No Fair Pay Agreement/industry awards. No regulation of work hour requirements (requiring people to be willing to work shifts to get jobs – is not good for community. There are those able to do second jobs at weekends/in the evenings). Limited oversight of the working conditions of migrants – as per exploitation by employers.

    Reply
  5. adam 5
    14 January 2025 at 5:14 pm

    That gives a correlative hint to why the Greens pretty took out the vote across most of the Wellington region last time.

    Advantage? Can we call the current government gerrymandering with the public service job cuts then?

    Reply
    • Ad 5.1
      14 January 2025 at 5:37 pm

      You're probably wondering why the Minister of Local Government put a Crown Observer into Wellington Council with no reason – other than NZs only Green Party mayor?

      Or why same Minister delights in slagging Wellington Water despite WW fronting the biggest renewals programme ever?

      Sheer coincidence of course.

      Reply
  6. Tom Hunter 6
    14 January 2025 at 11:05 pm

    The left-led climate policies from the Paris and Kyoto accords forward have led to some of the most fundamental policy-driven shifts since the Marshall Plan. The auto industry including parts and servicing accounts for about 40% of Japan’s economy and 30% of Germany’s economy, and they are in rapid and likely terminal decline (albeit with the long tail of servicing and polishing all those shiny old combustion machines).

    That's awfully utopian. Britain and Germany de-industrialising because of energy costs is not being compensated for by the development of new industries. Hence their stagnant economies.

    In Britain it's less about shiny old combustion machines than chemicals:

    Sir Jim Ratcliffe has warned that Britain’s multibillion-pound chemicals industry is facing “extinction” because of soaring energy costs and the shift to net zero.
    …
    “The UK, and particularly the North, needs high quality manufacturing and the associated manufacturing jobs. We are witnessing the extinction of one of our major industries as chemical manufacture has the life squeezed out of it.”
    …
    Sir Jim, the co-owner of Manchester United and one of Britain’s richest men, said: “De-industrialising Britain achieves nothing for the environment. It merely shifts production and emissions elsewhere.

    Meaning India and China. IIRC China has pumped out more CO2 in the last forty years than Europe has since the start of the Industrial revolution, which is extraordinary. It's not slowing down and India is coming up fast.

    Reply

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