Transforming New Zealand: Why is the Left failing?

Brian Easton

Writing contemporary history is challenging. New evidence appears; events move on; it is hard to provide thoughtful reflections about events close to the writing. The last chapters of my economic history of Aotearoa New Zealand, Not in Stormy Seas, are no exception. I tried to avoid providing a conclusion in Chapter 55 by offering three alternatives from three different ideological perspectives. Even then, I added a further five chapters in a section called ‘Ongoings’ which took events up to the time of sending the book to the printer in 2020.

But events progressed. I returned to contemporary history almost five years later, in In Open Seas. It was written in a different, more personal, style from a conventional history like Not in Stormy Seas. Writing about options for the future would inevitably be influenced by my own values. I wanted to express my values while encouraging the reader to use theirs. That is where the ‘open’ in the book’s title comes from – it was to open possibilities.

I centred the book on the statement by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern that her Labour Government would be ‘transformational’. An economic historian seizes on such a notion. Studying history continually reminds how much things change through time. They say the past is another country. Just as it is arrogant to judge another country solely in local terms, it is equally arrogant to judge other times by the present day.

Writing Not in Stormy Seas constantly made me aware that things were different in the past. Much economic activity in the past occurred outside the conventional market – including in the traditional Māori economy, in the home and in subsistence farming. Much of what we call ‘economic growth’ is about activity which shifts from outside the market to inside it. That is how exploitation of the environment and the changing market roles of women are a part of the story.

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Emeritus Professor Jane Kelsey - Transformative Change

Jane Kelsey likens our present circumstances to Gramsci’s interregnum. He said in 1930 “the crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born: in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear”. Kelsey outlines five morbid symptoms that we are experiencing:

• The collapse of the old;
• The fracturing of traditional party politics of centre left and centre right accompanied by the rise of autocrats determined to bypass structures;
• Orchestrated anarchy in the media which has been aided by post human technology such as AI and controlled by unaccountable elites;
• The calculated revictimization of indigenous people, migrants, refugees and workers and a new rationalisation for the same old appropriation of profit and resources that has been part of capitalism forever; and,
• The systematic destruction of redistributive and social policies that previously stabilised the inequalities of capitalism and secured some notions of social licence.
  She argues that there is currently a contest between the status quo and the disruption, driven by oligarchs and organic intellectuals. Political party institutions are failing because they adhere to the status quo. She argues that business as usual is not tenable and this provides challenge and opportunities for those seeking change from the sclerotic status quo. However, she questions whether the Labour Party is preparing for this new situation.

Her paper is in three parts: an overview of the collapse of Western hegemony, industrial and financial capital and liberal democracy leading to anarchy, autocracy and imperialism; our own homegrown version of neo-colonial disruption, destruction and corruption, and the remaking of the state in the 1980s and 90s; and, how to confront the long and short term challenges.

The full paper can be read here.