Alienation: The philosophical basis of Capitalism
Loss of control is the fundamental expression of alienation. Popularly, and particularly among psychologists, alienation is understood almost exclusively as a psychological state. It refers to a variety of disorders, including anxiety, despair, loneliness, apathy, meaninglessness and powerlessness. Some if not all of these problems will be intimately familiar to us, but are these just […]
Okinawa and the US Empire
Following a brutal and horrific battle between Japanese and US forces which claimed the lives of approximately one third of Okinawa’s population, Okinawa has been forced to house American militarism up until this day. Approximately 20 percent of the Okinawan mainland is used to house US military bases. Military crimes are commonplace and many of […]
Auckland Action Against Poverty Welfare Impact
Today I am going to give a brief overview of the recent Auckland Action Against Poverty Welfare Impact that I attended, what drives me to work in this area, and my plans to build a sustainable welfare advocacy service in Otepoti. Firstly, my interest in welfare stems from my upbringing, living in a household sustained […]
Washington’s warring brothers
This month’s battles over the budget and the Tea Party Republicans’ fanaticism about the health care law obscure the two parties’ common commitment to austerity. The federal government officially went into shutdown mode at midnight on October 1–in another spectacular display of dysfunction in the highest offices of the “world’s greatest democracy.” Some 800,000 “non-essential” […]
Rediscovering the 1949 Carpenters’ Strike
The following was delivered as a talk at the International Socialism Day School 2013 by Kevin Hodder. The 151 day waterfront lockout, and its eventual defeat, of militant workers is legendary, and widely recognised as the beginning of the end for one period of union militancy in New Zealand. Its story is widely known in […]
Labour’s Leadership Battle
We wished good riddance to David Shearer. It’s a good thing he has resigned – he was useless and bumbling against Key when issue after issue offered opportunities to attack the government for its anti-worker record. The common wisdom seems to be that Shearer was a ‘nice guy,’ but in truth he was happy to […]
Film Review: Spirit of ’45
The Spirit of ’45 was a movie centred around the political atmosphere in Britain after World War Two. With the victory over Hitler, British workers felt empowered, and felt they deserved more than the poverty of old Britain. They chose to kick out Churchill and elect Labour for the first time and implemented its radical […]
Neoliberalism, resistance and the rise of the Far Right
Andrew Tait gave this talk to a forum on ‘Neoliberalism, Resistance and the Rise of the Far Right’ on behalf of the International Socialists in Christchurch on 3rd August. Ki te whare e tu nei, tena koeKi te marae e takoto nei, tena koeKi te takata whenua, Ngati Wheke, Koukourarata, Onuku, Wairewa, Taumutu, tena koutou, […]
Women, Politics and Class: a Socialist Analysis for Aotearoa
Women face a contradiction. While equal pay for women and men working for the government became the law in 1960, it wasn’t until the Equal Pay Act passed in 1972 that equal pay between the sexes across the board became legal. The Domestic Purposes Benefit, providing state support to single parents, was introduced in 1973. […]
Georg Lukács: the Actuality of the Revolution
“Historical materialism is the theory of the proletarian revolution.” This is how Georg Lukács opens his short book Lenin: a Study in the Unity of his Thought. Lukács was writing just as the peak of European revolutionary ferment had passed – his book was published in 1924 – and his message is clear. He restores […]
