"Jared, I think you misunderstand me. I don't really care about whether you call yourself an anarchist or a Leninist or a whateveritist. I'm just against people who say thou must organise in X or manner, or be excommunicated from the One True Church."

I think this is a bit harsh. I don't think Jared is recommending people be excommunicated from the One True Church of anarchism. He is just arguing for an anarchist standpoint. However, in saying this, i think there is a judgmental christian idealist streak in anarchism, and some of your criticisms are spot on.

"Who are you to tell us that we're on the wrong track because we don't follow you party line of not voting? I think people are sick of being lectured to by peope who subscribe to -isms they have gotten out of books."

I think one of the biggest problems on the left in NZ is that it is anti-intellectual, anti-theory and anti-reflection. Your comments here smack of this. I do take your point that people don't like being lectured to. But we need free, open, honest and critical debate also -- to combine thought with action, reflection with doing. you can't have one without the other.

I don't think NZers do this very well -- if you criticise someone's ideas, the reaction you generally get is to ignore you, walk away or shut you up by saying something like "who are ya to dare to criticise me?"

"But all I've seen over three decades on the left in NZ is handfuls of people in funny clothes giving out leaflets which go straight in the bin. Has there ever been an anarchist (or for that matter Leninist) group with more than 50 members in this country?"

Yes, the Communist Party of New Zealand had 2000 members after WW11. The CPNZ retained had a membership of 300-400 in the 1960s. Other parties that had more than 50 members were the Stalinist SUP and the Trot SAL. The Maoist WCL prob did too.
Socialist Worker in its heyday prob had more than 50 members too.

Not to mention the syndicalist movement which had thousands of members in its unions preWW1 and after WWI too. The major union federation in NZ -- the Red feds -- went syndicalist for a while. Not to mention the alliance of labour in the late 1910s and early 1920s.

I think you're freezing the current low period of class struggle, and then looking at history from this idealist lense. Meaning, in times of intense class struggle and radical social protest, many working class people in NZ will look towards radical parties, unions, anarchist groups, and so on. eg. pre WW1; immediately after WW11; late 60s early 70s etc.

The mistake I think you make is to assume that the current state of affairs (low level of struggle, working class defeat, and hence workers rejecting revolutionary politics and seeing them as useless) is permanent.

cheers Toby