The Second Chinese Revolution 1925-27

May 13, 2013 By

Hong Workers Strike in 1925The Second Chinese Revolution of 1925-27 was a turning point in world history. Consider the world situation around 1924-1925. In Europe the revolutionary wave that accompanied the end of the First World War had exhausted itself to leave the Russian Revolution isolated. In Germany the revolutionary process from 1918 to 1923 had been halted and capitalism temporarily stabilised by the Social Democrats.

The short-lived Hungarian Soviet government had fallen in 1919. In Italy the ‘Biennio Rosso’, the two red years of 1919-1920, had given way to reaction and the accession to power by Mussolini. In Poland reaction set in and Marshall Pilsudski would install himself as dictator in 1926.

Hope for the spread of the world revolution, and relief to the beleaguered Soviet Union, now lay in the east, in the struggle against imperialism, especially in China.  These hopes were not realised. The defeat of the Second Chinese Revolution had devastating consequences that defined the dark days of the 1930s. [Read more...]

Filed Under: International, Liberation from oppression, Theory and History, World History

Wellington Green Party Mayor votes for Outsourcing

April 24, 2013 By
After the extraordinary meeting of Wellington City Council. Sold; Maori and Pacific workers with Paul Eagle (left), other councillors and the PSA’s Glen Kelly.

After the extraordinary meeting of Wellington City Council. Sold; Maori and Pacific workers with Paul Eagle (left), other councillors and the PSA’s Glen Kelly.

There has been goings on at Wellington City Council of late to do with privatisation or “outsourcing” of services with a wobbly performance by the centre-left majority on the Council.

In December last year the councillors voted to sack the chief executive of 15 years in a move seen as a bid to rein in the senior management’s pursuit of cutbacks and privatization. Then, typically of the wavering the centre-left group, they voted to replace the top manager with an import from Britain with a reputation as a privatizer.

In March an article by Gordon Campbell revealed the failure of the centre-left to have taken control of Council affairs since the election in 2010 of Green Party Mayor Celia Wade-Brown. Campbell interviewed Labour councillor Paul Eagle:

 From the outset, Eagle explains, management has held the initiative. “There’s been a culture ever since I’ve been here,” he begins, “that anything to do with Council operations has really sat with management.” Councillors were thwarted ‘constantly’ by the distinction between governance vs operational matters. “But in plain English, when things get contracted out, when services get cut, councillors get given very little time, or information about the impacts…I really think what has been missing is the fundamental discussion around what is a public service, and what is commercial.” [Read more...]

Filed Under: Revolution not Reformism, Workers Struggles

The Criminal Injustice System: from Aotearoa to the USA

April 23, 2013 By

the-new-jim-crowMichelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow (2011) has caused a huge storm of discussion, debate and controversy in the United States. It may well be a book that sparks a new social movement. Alexander documents the rise of mass incarceration in the USA, and link this to entrenched racism, poverty and injustice. The privatising and ‘outsourcing’ of prison as business, and the ‘law and order’ turn are part of neoliberal politics the world over.

This has obvious relevance in Aotearoa. The prison system disproportionately affects Maori and Pasifika people. The powers of the state – to harass, humiliate, detain and lock-up – are felt every day in brown people’s lives. The history of white settler colonial rule has relied on locking up and disenfranchising Maori people. A new phase in capitalism, and the symptoms of poverty in recession, looks to imprisonment again. [Read more...]

Filed Under: (In)justice System, Racism, Revolution not Reformism, Tino Rangatiratanga, Tino Rangatiratanga

Maori teacher brutalised by police

March 22, 2013 By

579842_623457754349105_464419270_nWe are sharing this story of police brutality from tangatawhenua.com . Without their pioneering work sharing this it would not have got the further media attention that has come in recent days. 

TangataWhenua.com was asked to share this story as few other mainstream media outlets felt it was “newsworthy” enough. What follows is provided verbatium, nothing has been edited or changed. Remember whanau if at all possible WHENEVER dealing with police, if you have the ability to video the encounter always do, this serves as powerful evidence in the case of a police complaint.

Corina Tairua’s Statement

  • Time and date of incident: Approx 3am 17/3/13
  • Arresting Officer: D Ward
  • QID Number: TWZ644

My name is Corina Tairua. I am a mother of 7 children. Ages, 17, 16, 15, 13, 12 and 18 months. I am four papers off graduating to receive my teaching degree as a primary school teacher. I have never been in trouble with the police or law in my life. As I write this I am deeply traumatised by what has happened to me at the hands of the people I had always believed in and had great respect for, our police, our New Zealand police. [Read more...]

Filed Under: (In)justice System, Liberation from oppression, Tino Rangatiratanga

The making of the Mystique

March 5, 2013 By
Marching during the Women's Strike for Equality in 1970

Marching during the Women’s Strike for Equality in 1970

FIFTY YEARS after its publication, The Feminine Mystique has been credited with everything from single-handedly sparking the women’s movement to perpetuating an outdated and long-gone stereotype of the American family.

Neither is true, but many of the issues that Betty Friedan’s book raised–such as the role of women and the nuclear family–make The Feminine Mystique worth looking back at today. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Liberation from oppression, Women's Liberation

Anti-Chinese rants won’t stop asset sales

February 14, 2013 By

There was an evening rally against asset sales in Wellington on February 13. As a gathering of the committed the attendance was quite good. Estimates vary, but 400 would be about right I think. The unions – which could potentially turnout thousands of members against privatization – are not able to do so in their present state of passivity. Indeed, the unions were barely visible. There was not one union speaker, and no Labour Party speaker either, for that matter. The character of the rally did not represent the organized labour movement – that means unionised workers and members of parties based on the working class. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Racism, Tino Rangatiratanga, Tino Rangatiratanga, Topic: Racism, Uncategorized

Treaty hides racist rip-off

February 12, 2013 By
Sovereignty... Protesters at Waitangi fly the flag of the Confederated Tribes of Aotearoa, which declared independence in 1835. (Photo: Derwin Smith)

Sovereignty… Protesters at Waitangi fly the flag of the Confederated Tribes of Aotearoa, which declared independence in 1835. (Photo: Derwin Smith)

For many New Zealanders, Waitangi Day is a time to celebrate the founding of New Zealand, a nation which we are taught to believe is born of a union of two peoples, Maori and Pakeha – “He iwi tahi tatou”. This national myth serves to obscure the true character of the treaty and the colonial state that it established. Far from being an idealistic union of two people, the founding of modern New Zealand was born of the bloody theft of land and resources; modern New Zealand and its wealth is built on the ruins of a pre-existing Maori society that had to be torn apart before space could be created for capitalism to supersede it. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Protests, Racism, Tino Rangatiratanga

Order Prevails in Berlin! Remembering Rosa Luxemburg

January 15, 2013 By

Luxemburg94 years ago today Rosa Luxemburg was murdered. She was one of the great leaders in the history of the socialist movement internationally – a fierce opponent of imperialist war, suffering in jail for her opposition to the carnage of World War One, an original and innovative economist, a theorist of workers’ democracy.

Her book Reform or Revolution remains the classic statement of the case for revolution. Her writings on the mass strike –as fresh today as when they were first written – study how workers’ economic activities lead into political struggles, and how the self-activity of workers in the form of mass strike action is key to democratic, socialist revolution. Her acute analysis of the Russian Revolution – written with warm, but critical, solidarity – contains many insights still of vital relevance. [Read more...]

Filed Under: International, Marxist Classics, Revolution not Reformism

Why You Should Join and Help to Build the ISO

October 20, 2012 By

Brian S. Roper

The world today has a wide range of obvious problems. These include a widening gap between rich and poor within the advanced capitalist countries, widespread malnutrition and starvation in the so-called ‘third world’, mass unemployment in many countries, the oppression of women, blacks, gays and lesbians, the US invasion and occupation of Iraq, the destruction of the natural environment, and a lack of real substantive democracy in countries that claim to be democratic.

By joining the ISO, you can be part of an organisation that provides a forum for ongoing discussing about what’s wrong with world and that helps in this and other ways to clarify, enhance and deepen your understanding of the world around you. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Uncategorized, Where we stand explained

Capitalism, the Environment, and Socialism

October 15, 2012 By

It’s apparent to everyone today that the world is going through an ecological crisis.  Wilderness is disappearing fast as whole ecosystems – from forests to grasslands to marshlands – are becoming endangered.   For the past two centuries, factories have spewed forth pollution into the atmosphere, poisoning the very air we breathe while lakes, rivers and even the ocean have been transformed into festering sludge-pits.  So much has the earth been altered that even its chemistry is changing, the build-up of carbon dioxide threatening the delicate climatic balance of the past 11,000 years is acidifying the ocean and wrecking havoc with the weather.  One could be forgiven for concluding that humankind is nothing but “a cancer on the earth”.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Enviroment, Environment, Theory and History, Where we stand explained
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