workers should indeed be running the country. congrats on becoming registered. its all down hill from here though, soon you will have nice offices in wellington, a huge PR budget, and hordes of advisors telling you to moderate, tone it down, and not offend the elite for fear of actually changing stuff. before you know it you will end up like all the rest. either that or they will smash you. we can't have revolutionaries anywhere near the corridors of power. luckily for us workers and your integrity, you have no chance, which is why I will vote for you!

eh what !?

Soon, the workers party will NOT have a nice office in wellington. And even if they did, that does NOT mean that they will become a reformist party.
The reason political parties betray the workers is not "nice offices".
A workers party MP - although highly unlikely, would represent a victory for the working class, however small. NOT a defeat.

I will vote for them too. I really hope it isnt a wasted vote.

How many party votes do you need to get 5%?

Don's your only chance of winning an electorate seat but I can't see that happening. Sadly it's a Robertson vs S Franks race. Kedgley (Greens) or Roy (ACT) aren't even serious contenders.

"How many party votes do you need to get 5%?"
Approximately 4.8% more than the workers party will get. And of course Don's not going to win Wellington Central.
But that's not the point. If the fact that they are registered gives them a platform to talk about workers' issues then it's all good. That's all we can expect.

Thanks to those commenter's expressing support and offering votes.

To dispel some misconceptions, if the Workers Party ever did get an MP we would use the seat as a hub for organising on the ground amongst the working class. Our candidates have also pledged to take only the average workers wage from the massive MP salary and put the rest toward a 'fighting fund' for industrial action, and donations to organisations furthering workers interests.

5% of the vote translates to about 150,000 votes, depending on voter turn out.

Byron Clark (Workers Party candidate for Christchurch Central)

We are very pleased to have made it onto the list because it puts us on slightly higher ground to keep attacking the class enemy.
That said, there's far more hoopla about parliamentary elections than they deserve,which is why the Workers Party are see them as secondary to mass work and political education inbewteen elections.
Noone knows what the results will be, and the election of a socialist in this country at the movment is, shall we say, remote. But as far as being corrupted by nice offices and stuff like that all I can say is that the guys from Spartan Engineering have promised me that if I do get in they will make regular visits to my office to make sure I don't get too up myself.

Don Franks

Workers Party candidate, Wellington Central.

what is the workers party position on tino rangatiratanga and national's plans to abolish the maori seats?

talking with people in the workers party I would guess they oppose the maori seats and the treaty because they divide workers along racial lines. the party views maori nationalism as reactionary.

"what is the workers party position on tino rangatiratanga and national's plans to abolish the maori seats?"

Tino Rangatiratana means different things to different people, what exactly are you asking us if we support?

I don't support 'abolishing' the Maori seats and doubt others in the party would either, but class is a far bigger dividing line than ethnicity and I think as class consciousness grows working class Maori will switch from the Maori electorates to general electorates and the Maori seats would 'wither away' as it were. Interestingly I noticed from a press release this morning that the Maori Party are (as I would expect) claiming the opposite (ethnicity more important than class) there is also a strong anti-union sentiment expressed, I was actually a little surprised by that though.

'as class consciousness grows working class Maori will switch from the Maori electorates to general electorates'

yet most members of the CTU runanga are active in the Maori seats. how do you explain this? Maybe you can be Maori and a class-conscious worker at the same time?

'Tino Rangatiratana means different things to different people, what exactly are you asking us if we support?'

The right of iwi to autonomy to run their own affairs, eg to set up and run their own schools and clinics. The autonomy Tuhoe are seeking now under the TOW.

Why not ask Pakeha workers to come closer to Maori culture? Why is it Maori who must sacrifice their culture for the sake of class unity?

In response to the previous poster, the Workers Party does not make it its political mission to advocate mass assimilation to any "culture", since culture is in itself a continually evolving product of changes in the relations of material and social reproduction.

What we are in favour of is workers being able to express themselves in whatever way they chose whether that be linguistically, sexually or politically.

If Maori workers feel the need to maintain their own separate organisations and political representation then we would respect that, however we would hope that over time this would become less and less necessary and it is not something that we would want to actually encourage and advocate.

This is because Maori "culture" - like every other "culture" including "Pakeha culture", includes many aspects which are reactionary and antithetical to the realisation of true human liberation - in addition to the more positive ones.

At the end of the day there is no benefit to be had in elevating and romanticising certain "cultures" simply because they are oppressed.

To me it seems that the key focus instead for the left should be on championing the widest possible extension of democracy and freedom of expression, so that individuals no longer suffer from the burden of special oppression which currently makes them reluctant to relinquish their separate "cultural" or national identities, and become instead simply fellow workers or human beings.

Sounds like a typical statist position really: workers state first, cultural identity second. Ever heard of unity through diversity? Federation? Decentralisation? Nope, we all have to be workers in the state machine, rather than smashing the machine completely and throwing off our class shackles — equally, by Pakeha and Maori. Voting for you guys simply doesn't cut it. I'm sorry to say.

Oh, and here's their policy on animal cruelty:

"I like eating the cooked flesh of dead animals. I think animals should continue to be enslaved and oppressed, and we should continue to eat their eggs, drink their milk, use their skin to make clothing, and above all, eat their flesh. Meat is tasty.

Alastair Reith."

Anon, I challenge you to provide evidence of any instance where the Workers Party has argued that capitalism either can or should be reformed. As our most recent press release (see www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PO0810/S00072.htm) makes clear, the demands we raise during the election campaign - such as open borders and secure jobs for all - cannot be realised under the current economic system and we don't attempt to provide costings or any other such bourgeois nonsense.

As for our policy on animal welfare, suffice to say we don't have one - although believe it or not WP manages to maintain a remarkably happy co-existence within its ranks between carnivores and vegetarians/vegans!

Anon, Tim does not use the majic trendy word "diversity" - so currently beloved by every bourgeois politician - but raises instead a far more liberating concept. "The widest possible extension of democracy and freedom of expression". Try out for that in your workplace sometime.
Despite the accusation in your post, nowhere does Tim does argue for a continued shackeled existance in a "worker's state". The aim of socialists is to do away with the state after the capitaist class has been completely and finally politically dispossesed.

Alastair's remark looks to me like a facetious response to some of the more preachy elements in the animal rights movement. Although its not a political priority of ours, some comrades are vegetarian out of empathy with animals. While not vegetarian myself I have a record of active participation in actions against aninal cruelty.
Whether you choose to vote for me or not, that participation will be ongoing.

Don Franks

Of course centralisation is better than decentralisation. What a bizzare post!

In reply to the comment about animal cruelty, I think animal welfare would be much improved if workers had control over the means of production at meatworks, some of the shockingly bad slaughtering done there is the result of sped-up production lines as the bosses try to extract even more profit from the labour of workers, who suffer as do the animals.

I realise that advocating killing animals in a more humane way will be seen as an extremely moderate position to people involved in the animal rights movement, but as long as people are eating meat slaughtering animals is necessary,

and whether people eat meat or not isn't the concern of the Workers Party, no political party should attempt to legislate peoples dietary habits.

I make these comments as a vegetarian, albeit one who once took a temp-job as a meat packer to make ends meet.

'Tino Rangatiratana means different things to different people, what exactly are you asking us if we support?'

so does socialism btw

But does WP support the right of Maori groups to become independent/autonomous if they choose? ie Tuhoe. No one has answered that. If you don't support the right to autonomy/independence, if that is what a majority of a group eg Tuhoe want, then how can you claim to be for the extension of democracy?

'Workers should be running the country'

Tuhoe should be running Tuhoe country, not rwacist cops and a racist BOP local govt. Agreed, WP?

It is capitalist systems and structures that restrict both Maori and Pakeha freedom and Mana Motuhake.
Tino Rangatiratanga or Soverienty for Maori threatens the capitalist/elite class who strive to control access to resources and the means of production.

I support Maori rights to Tino Rangatiratanga, I also beleive that this struggle is a global one for the rights off all people to be free from the opression and tyranny of capitalism.

Under a capitalist structure Maori will never acheive any form of Tino Rangatiratanga or Mana Motuhake.
Many Maori Activists recognised this and come from a communist/socialist background.

I support Tino Rangatiratanga and will be voting for the Workers Party.

Within the Workers Party there are a range of views on Tino Rangatiratanga (as well as how to define it!).

Personally I think that if groups like Tuhoe are convinced that self-determination is the way to go then it would be both harmful and stupid for a future socialist government to stand in their way, although we in WP would not necessarily be wanting to argue positively in favour of it either.

However at the same time I don´t think territorial self-government would be viable for the majority of urban working class Maori as any attempt to implement TR across the whole country would only lead to a whole lot of economically unviable bantustans.

As to whether the majority of Maori workers might want some kind of non-territorial based separate government, I have not seen much evidence of this and don´t necessarily think it would work very well, but have sufficient faith in Maori workers to leave this question for them to decide.

Tim, ever heard of a place called Tangimoana? Seen the Tuhoe submission to the Waitangi Tribunal, drawn up after extensive cnsultation within the iwi, which calls for a change in NZ's constitution to make Tuhoe country autonomous?

Your comparison of autonomous/independent Polynesian states with 'Bantustans' is offensive. The Bantustans were controleld by South Africa, bot black Africans. They were imposed, not chosen.
Do you oppose the liberation struggles that freed Samoa, the Cooks and Niue from Pakeha rule, at the cost of the lives of some of the indigenous people of those places? The independent states that resulted are small - smaller in some cases than an independent Maori state would be.

Anyway, TR could mean autonomy, not full independence - letting the iwi (eg Tuhoe) decide how to spend tax dollars and how to run security etc within its rohe.

Does your party have a position on this question or not? If you really believe in the extension of democracy why do some of your members not believe that Maori should have the right to democratically decide to become autonomous or independent from NZ?

Workers Party supported the theft of the seabed and foreshore by Labour. Apparently it was 'progressive'.

In response to the anonymous commenters above, no of course as you well know I don't oppose national liberation struggles in the Pacific. Nor do I oppose Maori demands for autonomy *where this is actually a demand with mass support from Maori themselves*.

I merely pointed out that trying to construct a whole lot of independent tribal "nations" in NZ would be very difficult without the prerequisite of a racially/tribally homogenous territory which few iwi (*apart from Tuhoe*) possess.

As such although socialists certainly shouldn't seek to deny Maori their right to self-determination and to self-government *if that is what they actually want*, it does not follow at all that we should argue in favour of their exercising this right.

In the same way socialists, despite recognising the right of oppressed nationalities to self-determination, do not generally argue in favour of national independence for every oppressed minority group in the Balkans, on the grounds that it will (and in many cases already has) led to tremendous economic and social dislocation and the weakening of class solidarity across ethnic and racial lines.

Finally, as for WP allegedly calling Labour's nationalisation of the foreshore "progressive" this is nonsense. All we pointed out was that state ownership was *preferable* to private iwi ownership, even though state ownership under capitalism is hardly synonomous with workers' control.

cheers,

Tim

What does THE PARTY say Tim?
Why do some members according to you have the RACIST view that the extension of democracy should not include Maori having the right to democratically decide to be autonomous?
Why can't you agree on the most basic issue for Maori?
And why DID YOU support the seabed and foreshore legislation OR NOT? Or did the party not have anything to say about that as well?

Kereopa Te Rau
Simple questions but you can't seem to answer.

Anon, I really don't have time to endlessly repeat myself posting on this thread, but it should be clear from my previous posts that *no one* in WP is out to deny Maori their democratic rights (not that we are in a position to anyway).

Just because we do not argue in favour of separatism as a political strategy to bring about liberation does not mean we deny Maori workers to make the choice for themselves.

Tim

Tim

How can you repeat yourself when you haven't answered two simple questions?

What does your party say about the seabed and foreshore?

And do you support the right of Maori to tino rangatiratanga?

Have you ever written about these things in your press or they too unimportant to you pakeha

Tim:
'as for WP allegedly calling Labour's nationalisation of the foreshore "progressive" this is nonsense.'

Reality:

'Labour’s Foreshore and Seabed Act was progressive in terms of nationalising the beaches so that they could continue to be used by all.'

- Workers Party 1/03/08
workersparty.org.nz/category/maori-party/

Workers Party opposes biculturalism:

'the bicultural approach and Treaty industry have basically politically disenfranchised every Maori who doesn't fit into that approach - a majority of Maori since most Maori have little or no connection with iwi organisations, because they either don't know their iwi or they live outside of its boundaries. Like all forms of identity politics, which fundamentally accept the framework of the capitalist profit system, seeking to elevate one or other secondary characteristic such as race, sex, skin colour or ethnic origin above class interests, the politics of “biculturalism” and Maori “self determination” have proven to be a dead-end.'

More racism from the Workers Party:

there is no separate Maori nation nor was there ever one. Indeed the word Maori was not used to describe the population of the iwi existing in the pre-European period, and only came into general usage in the late 1800s. Instead, in New Zealand the development of capitalism has created a new nation out of diverse peoples who came here at different points in time. These people are now highly intermixed, intermarried and interbred. This has meant that the ethnic categories of Maori, pakeha etc are all essentially relative and increasingly meaningless.

Although radicals and liberals often like to draw comparisons between the Maori sovereignty cause and foreign struggles for national liberation, such a comparison immediately points up the problems with the very conceptions used by these groups in New Zealand.

National liberation movements represent specific oppressed nations, not the thoroughly intermixed population of a junior imperialist country like New Zealand. National liberation movements are forged explicitly against tribalism, while the “new Maori radicals” emphasise tribalism. National liberation movements also reject fighting for return of long-gone tribal lands, emphasising instead the rights of landless tenant farmers, agricultural workers etc to land through the division of big colonial landholdings. National liberation movements are modernising social forces. They challenge colonialism not because it uprooted past local cultural traditions but because it is an obstacle to modernity and progress. They understand that there can be no return to pre-capitalist modes of production.

Colonial powers attempting to prevent national liberation, on the other hand, maintain (and even create) tribal divisions, often even making out that these represent separate nations. The attempt of the apartheid regime to make out that there were a whole number of different nations in South Africa is a classic case of this. In contrast, those fighting apartheid stressed that there was a single South African nation, created historically by social, economic and political developments in the country. It was only on this basis that the apartheid system was shaken to its core.

It is particularly offensive - and cowardly- for anonoymous posters to fling the label "racist" at our party. The moderators of this list should ponder whether its reasonable to allow anonymous unsubstiated charges of racism to remain on the site.

In his first post on this thread, Tim set out the general outline position of the Workers Party with regard to Maori workers very well. Subsequent posters have not paid Tim the respect of addressing his arguments. Instead, they have, without revealing their own identities or political positions, demanded particular bumper sticker responses from him. They will cry out in vain, because our party does not operate on that basis. Neither do most of the many Maori people I've known in my lifetime.

Don Franks

In the anonymous post "Sort your line out, comrades", the WP and Tim Bowron are taken to task for contradictorily claiming that the Foreshore and Seabed legislation was progressive. In fact there is no contradiction. Just as Marx could claim that capitalism "was" progressive, but is "now" an obstacle to progress, so a particular piece of legislation can have progressive elements without being wholly progressive. The reality "today" is that handing the F&S to Iwi would be handing it to corporations. This is because iwi are virtually forced to act as corporate profit seeking capitalists as current NZ law works. Many Tino Rangitiratanga activists have made this point in their own critiques of iwi corporations. In the sense that the retention of the F&S in public hands retains public access, that is a good thing. In the sense that it gives the state the right to dish out chunks of the S&F to corporate fish farming enterprises and deny some Maori that access, it is not, it is racist. So it is perfectly reasonable for Tim to challenge the assertion that the WP have declared the F&S decision "progressive" (out of context), when the actual quote says "progressive in terms of nationalising the beaches so that they could continue to be used by all".

To argue though that the WP is racist because it doesn't hold a view of biculturalism and Tino-Rangitiratanga identical to the current generation of Maori activists and their Pakeha co-thinkers is simplistic. in the 1970s, many Maori radicals held that "The treaty is a fraud". Was that racist??? If the current trend to treaty settlements results in a Maori corporate elite running successful iwi corporations ( a trend already emerging) and the tide of opinion amongst working class and other exculded Maori shifts back to that view again, will it be racist then? No. It is not racist to believe that the current ideological "line" is not all it is cracked up to be. To throw the allegation of racism around simply because someone holds a different view to your own, but which is grounded in the principle of absolute equality and maximal democracy, is offensive. I have worked in anti-racist groups in the past. I have protested and been assaulted by the cops for my involvement in anti-racist demonstrations. I happen to believe that Tino-Rangitiratanga will not deliver to the majority of poor Maori in the long run. I don't think that makes me a racist. It makes me someone with a different approach to the mainstream of activist thinking in this country at the moment. That is a different thing. Throwing the "r" word around is an attempt to kill off debate, which can not be a good thing. Robust debate is important, insult trading is not.

Here's another example. When the Prostitution Bill was being debated, some people argued that since prostitution degraded women and commodified sex, the Bill should be opposed. Others argued that since prostitution is a reality, the sex workers should have the protection of the law, so the Bill should be supported. The views are diametrically opposed on an issue of vital importance to the women's movement, but neither is sexist. Either side labeling the other sexist
would have stifled debate rather than encouraged it. The same goes for the F&S issue.

The WP is not an anarchist organisation so there will be some things anarchists disagree with it over. There is no need to fabricate charges.
Cheers,
John

To say that the Maori nation does not eist as the WP have in this thread is celarly racist. It reminds me of the Zionists who say a Palestinian nation does not exist. The theft of the seabed and foreshore was obviously racist and people who supported this legislation have to ask themselves if they have racist tendencies.

Workers Party members in Chch have a history of speaking out against the Maori seats, which they regard as racist.

To draw a parallel between debate over the nature of Maori as a nation (or in fact as a collection of nations) with the Zionist assault on Palestine implies a gross misunderstanding of the situation both here and in Palestine. Are Maori children shot and killed with impunity by the army and armed citizens in the streets on a routine basis? No, actually the army is Maori right up through the ranks. Are they under a military siege in (say) the Ureweras? No - they (along with others) were subjected to the anti-terror raids but it's hardly the same. Are the denied hospital care on account of race, or are they having their ambulances shot at? Are they denied citizenship rights that are granted to Pakeha? Ironically, the most progressive Palestinians and Israelis still argue for a single secular state in historic Palestine with equal rights for all, while support for two states there represents a defeat and a dead end of continued racist oppression, not a triumph for anti-racism. Here too, I believe that the best option lies in a single state with *genuine* equality for all, including the genuine right to language etc. However, as Tim pointed out, while I wouldn't campaign for secession, if it was decided upon by a majority of the people in a given place, like the Ureweras for example, I wouldn't oppose it. I would keep open the option to reverse that too if those people decided it had been a mistake.

However, as Don pointed out, continuous anonymous allegations of racism against the WP are pretty cowardly and not a healthy way to conduct a debate, if debate rather than smear is what is intended. Accusing people of racism because they disagree is a destructive ploy intended to prove how radical and superior the poster is, rather than engaging with the issues. I would suggest that people who want to know if the WP is in fact the evil racist enemy they are accused of being should go to the website and see what's written there. Step back; think - Is this *actually* racist or just a different approach to the issue? If it's racist to say that one state with equal rights for all is a worthy goal, then I guess we're guilty as charged. Personally, I think that the paradigm for defining racism, which used to mean equality, has shifted to being bound up with separatism. Separatism is a means to an end, not an end in itself.

If separatism was the only means of addressing racism, then in South Africa, the ANC should have argued for fragmenting the country into a series of microstates rather than arguing for an end to the racist nature of the state. I doubt if many people here would agree with that and they wouldn't define the ANC's position of an end to discrimination and the preservation of the state as racist. Even the PAC, who were/are Black nationalists never accused the ANC of racism AFAIK, despite having a very different approach.

The Maori seats were a way of avoiding incorporating Maori fully into the parliamentary system. In that sense they are racist - designed to ghettoise Maori and Maori issues with a token 3? seats at a time when Maori were still a majority of the population, IIRC. They have since become an important symbol for many Maori to the extent that they bring a Maori voice into the NZ political environment. So again, recognising the racist origins of the seats, and claiming that they do not deal with the ongoing racism here, is not the same as being racist. I think some people really need to think again about what racism actually is.
Cheers,
John

"To say that the Maori nation does not eist as the WP have in this thread is celarly racist. It reminds me of the Zionists who say a Palestinian nation does not exist."

Well, prior to colonisation, the hapu was the primary mode of organisation, and iwi were closer to nation-states. So no, it's not really equivalent. The point is that many Maori are alienated from, and not represented by, iwi.

We're not pretending there are no grievances. Imperial capitalism has had a disproportionate impact on Maori, in part because the taking of land meant the majority of Maori became wage-earners rather than capitalists.

We're arguing iwi-oriented capitalism cannot solve the problem for the majority of Maori.

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