The sacking of Rob Campbell from Te Whatu Ora – Health New Zealand is a blow to working class political rights.
What the state demands of its senior civil servants is loyalty to the capitalist class.
Category Archives: capitalist state
How a decayed workers state transformed into monopoly capitalism in China
Capitalist economic and social relations had been slowly developing and strengthening within the Chinese workers’ state as far back as the aftermath of the Great Leap Forward fiasco, when the […]
China’s extraordinary industrial hegemony
China in the age of American decrepitude – Part 1 The breath-taking rapidity of China’s economic development over the last three or four decades races ahead of our ability to […]
Reflections on the George Floyd march in Auckland
Echoes of the June 1 march in Auckland in solidarity with the protests against the police murder of George Floyd continue to reverberate across New Zealand. The march was an […]
The profound political implications of Ihumātao
The most important shift in New Zealand politics in almost three decades was registered last month, when a long-simmering Māori land occupation at Ihumātao erupted into a mass struggle. In […]
Child welfare in the age of capitalist decay – a glimpse of New Zealand’s stolen generation
[Note: this post was updated on 24 June with comments on the obfuscatory character of the term ‘domestic violence,’ and on the source of Oranga Tamariki’s tendency to act on […]
The Christchurch atrocity and the need for a class political response
Today we mourn with our Muslim brothers and sisters all those killed and injured in the Christchurch terror attack, and send our solidarity and condolences to their families and friends. […]
“Farmers’ sons with whom we have no quarrel” – workers reflect on the 1913 defeat
Last of three articles on workers and farmers in 1913 in New Zealand The day after the call for a general strike went out, five leaders of the fighting unions […]
When the countryside marched on the town: Massey’s Cossacks in 1913
[Second of three articles on workers and farmers in 1913] Both the Red Fed leadership and the IWW in Auckland proved unable to recognise the significance of the coming to […]
The mixed blessing of IWW influence in the New Zealand labour movement
The stirring Preamble adopted by the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in Chicago in 1905, proclaiming the class struggle and the goal of overthrowing the capitalists, became the rallying […]
A worker at large 