LOOKING BACKWARD, LOOKING FORWARD
The first Rona Bailey memorial lectures took place at on the evening of 31 November 2007 at the New Zealand Drama School (Toi Whakaari).
We were lucky to have secured the services of Robert Reid to give the inaugural lecture. Robert has recently been appointed president of the National Distribution Union and is a long-term comrade and friend of Rona.
He first met Rona when he arrived in Wellington in 1972 as a 19-year-old International vice-president on the New Zealand University Students Association and worked with her on the Committee on Vietnam and on various anti-apartheid groups. He became part of the Paper Group with Rona and later both were key members of Wellington Marxist Leninist Organisation which eventually became the Workers’ Communist League.
Robert has had an illustrious trade union career. Between 1974 and 1984 he was a member of the Engineers’ Union; a delegate from 1975, executive member from 1976 and its representative on the Wellington Trades Council. Between 1984 and 1992 he was a member of the Clerical Workers’ Union during which time he worked for the Wellington District Council of the CTU as its Industry and Employment Officer from 1987 and then Central Districts Organiser between 1988 and 1992.
When the Clerical Workers’ Union disbanded in 1993 Robert founded the Administrative and General Workers’ Union which together with the Unemployed Rights Centre became UNITE in 1998. He was the founding president of UNITE until 2007. Through much of the 1990s he was also national secretary of the Footwear Workers Union until it merged with the Clothing Workers’ Union.
On a broader scale he was council member and the international officer of the Trade Union Federation (TUF) for its period of existence. He became a council member of the NZ Council of Trade Unions following its merger with the TUF in 2000. Internationally he has been co-ordinator of Asia Pacific Workers’ Solidarity Links and chairperson of Transnational Information Exchange (Asia)
Click here to download a copy of the lecture (MS word doc)
LOOKING BACKWARD, LOOKING FORWARD
Robert Reid
Inaugural Rona Bailey Lecture
Wellington, 30 November 2007
Kia ora koutou
The Mataura is my river.
The Hokonui is my mountain
My ancestors are from Glencoe, Scotland
(my Grandmother told us to never trust a Campbell)
and Helston in Cornwall
I am a socialist and trade unionist.
My name is Robert Reid
Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa
I feel a bit ambivalent tonight giving the inaugural Rona Bailey lecture.
On the one hand, I am very honoured to have been asked.
On the other hand, Rona would not have approved of tonight or a lecture series bearing her name. Can’t you just hear her? "I don’t think that’s a good idea at all. Have a lecture series if you must, but leave my name out. It’s the movement that is the most important thing to acknowledge not individuals…"
If she was alive Rona’s persistence would have ensured that any hair-brained scheme to have a lecture series named after her would have been well and truly knocked on the head. However, although still in our hearts and minds, this time Rona has not been successful in stopping what she may well have called the "silliness" of tonight’s event.
This is the inaugural Rona Bailey lecture. As such it is appropriate that someone who worked with Rona for many years was asked to give it.
It is impossible to give this lecture without reference to the life of Rona and how our paths crossed. And in the end the lecture does this much more than I intended when I began to write it.
So I hope this inaugural lecture is seen as a bridge between the life of Rona herself, and future lectures that will be given by people who may not have known Rona nor had any connection to her at all.
It is for this reason that I have chosen "Looking Backward, Looking Forward" as the title of tonight’s presentation. But there are some other reasons for choosing this title.
First, for those in the know, which will now be all of you; it is a coded identifier of the ideology that brought Rona and me together some 35 years ago. I often take some perverse pleasure in speeches that I give, or even speeches that I write for others, to include the odd Marxist-Leninist phrase. "The road may be long and torturous"… or, "let a hundred flowers blossom"…or "one step forward, two steps back" and then play "spot the old comm. in the audience" by looking for the smile of recognition on a few faces. "Looking Backward, Looking Forward," was the title of the seminal work of the founding leader of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist – Leninist), E.F. Hill.
The title however has perhaps backfired on me as when I went looking for the booklet a couple of days ago to check if the title was "looking backward" or "looking backwards", I found it was the former, but there was also a subtitle boldly proclaiming "Revolutionary Socialist Politics against Trade Union and Parliamentary Politics".
I don’t think that will be the subtitle or theme of my speech tonight. And despite this bold title, the CPA (ML) itself was the party of some of the most respected Australian Trade Unionists, including Waterfront Workers Federation Secretary, Ted Bull, and Melbourne Tramways Secretary, Clarie O’Shea as well as the more controversial Builders Labourers Secretary, Norm Gallagher.
But more seriously, as I have said, the title I have chosen tonight encapsulated the goal of my lecture; the goal of the Inaugural Rona Bailey Memorial Lecture. Tonight I want to look back and touch on the politics that were so much part of Rona’s life and also to look forward to deal with the issues that the socialist and union movements are confronting today.
I will also beg your indulgence to insert a bit of myself into this lecture. As a trade unionist it is a rare opportunity to be able to talk in ones own right, and express ones personal point of view rather than very consciously represent the views of the organisation one is speaking on behalf of.
One of the panui to this lecture has set out my communist and trade union history. As it states at the end, I have recently been elected to the position of President of the National Distribution Union. There is some irony in this which Rona would have enjoyed. As NDU President I follow in the footsteps of Bill Andersen. Bill was at one time a comrade in arms with Rona and Chip both in the Communist Party and union movement, but he was on the other side of the great Sino-Soviet communist divide of the sixties, seventies and eighties. Bill passed away the same year as Rona and I know there was some burying of the hatchet near the end of their lives. Perhaps my election to this position completes this process of socialist reconciliation.
So, how did the paths of a Young National and son of an austere Presbyterian minister’s widow cross that of an atheist, communist, artistic and worldly woman who drove a blue sports car and lived in a house with such an amazing view in the suburb of Roseneath?
My left wing political awakening occurred in my last couple of years of school and first two years of university. I came from a Southland farming, Presbyterian, Orange Lodge and National Party voting extended family. Yet I had also been inculcated with a pro-people view on life. My father had preached and practised a social gospel. And as he moved pulpits from Wyndham, to Wellington, to Morrinsville, he said his theology and politics had become more liberal the further he moved north. Some of my earliest memories were collecting clothing and money for CORSO. As a nine year old I used to run one person sales tables outside my house, raising money for the starving millions. So I joined the Young Nats in the fourth form because I was interested in politics, and simply joined our family’s Party.
However a number of things conspired against this political direction. First, I went to Kaikorai Valley High School which under its headmaster, George Ridley, and a group of very progressive staff members, instilled a critical thinking approach in its students. Its student newspaper "Mercury" was often quoted in parliamentary debates. In my seventh form I attended a United Nations Association Secondary School Students Conference in Masterton. Fired up from that and meeting a certain Catherine Delahunty from Onslow College on my way back home, a few of us established the Otago Secondary School Students Association.
By the end of the seventh form I had only just been convinced that Apartheid was immoral and anti-Christian but still thought that NZ was doing the right thing by having troops in Vietnam to fight for the freedom of the South Vietnamese people against communist aggressors.
However in the final term at KVHS I was asked to attend a weekend Student Christian Movement camp. I was introduced to the General Secretary of the Student Christian Movement, the Rev Don Borrie (who has remained a life-long friend) and asked to debate my views on the Vietnam war with an old communist, organiser for the Engineers Union, and Secretary of the Otago Trades Council, Bill Richards. Bill could have slaughtered me but chose instead to debate this contradictory, self opinionated young 17 year old in a respectful and un-patronising way. At the end of the debate he congratulated me for my debating skills and said that if I just read a couple of books on the subject (he had scribbled the titles out for me) he was sure that I would change my views on Vietnam and may even become a communist myself.
The following year I went to Lincoln College, where I did read those books and more, and not only changed my view on the Vietnam war but decided to do something about my changed view.
I decided to keep my National Party membership until the 1971 Annual Conference in Dunedin so I could make my views on the war known to the Party faithful and go out with a bang. I certainly achieved that. There was an anti-war rally in the Octagon on the Friday of the conference. I spoke and took a letter from the rally addressed to the National Party delegates into the conference. A section of the rally moved up to the doors of the Dunedin Town Hall and according to the Otago Daily Times "jostled" party members arriving for the evening session (they also had pictures to prove it). Undeterred by this a young Robert stands up during a lull in proceedings near the end of the night and proceeds to read from the letter from the mobilisation. I then had my first lesson in meeting procedure as National Party President George Chapman suggested it was not the right time on the agenda for the letter and that he would find a space in the following morning’s agenda for the it to be read, only for the next day to come and be told that the executive had met over night and decided there was no place on the agenda for the letter after all.
Later that year, as I turned 19 years of age, I decided to make my opposition to the Vietnam war more dramatic than simply being a Conscientious Objector by refusing to register for military service. We formed the Organisation to Halt Military Service (OHMS) and began the short, but very successful campaign of political action and civil disobedience to end conscription in New Zealand.
I arrived in Wellington at Easter 1972 as International Vice-President of NZUSA, and as leader of the OHMS campaign.
It did not take long to make the acquaintance of Rona. She was everywhere. Anti-apartheid meetings, anti-Vietnam war meetings, endless mail-outs and on every picket or demonstration that was going.
Who was this woman?
The details came slowly and piece by piece. She was a widow; her husband had been a leading trade unionist in Wellington. They were active in the 1951 Waterfront Lockout. She came from quite a rich family from Gisborne. She taught dance (at her age!) and was involved in plays and theatre. She had a daughter who was soon coming back from her OE. She was a communist.
Soon we pieced together that she and almost the entire Wellington Branch had recently been expelled from the Communist Party of New Zealand. We would go down to Cuba Mall and buy a copy of the Peoples Voice from Dev, the last remaining member of the CPNZ and read about the crimes of the Manson – Bailey Gang, or sometimes, for severe crimes they were referred to as the Manson, Bailey, Goddard, Kelly, Stanton, Smith Clique. We found out that Jack Manson was a truck driver for Victoria University and although a bit secretive, would sometimes hold impromptu Marxist study groups beside his idle truck.
Victoria University and the New Zealand University Students Association became a hot bed for left wing and Marxist politics. Almost the entire national office of NZUSA was converted to Marxism, as were the ex-Hutt Valley High School crowd who doubled as the Labour Club. Marxist politics held sway at Salient for many years and the Victoria Students Association executives and wonderful Student Representation Council meetings were dominated by left wing politics. Even the religious clubs were not immune.
However, in another ironic twist, many members of the Student Christian Movement of the time gravitated with me to the "reformationists" of the Manson Bailey gang, but left wing members of the Catholic Society and their friends gravitated to the "established" CPNZ and for a short time reactivated the Wellington Branch of that Party.
From 1973 a series of events and formations took place which built up to what was finally the Workers Communist League. These included the launch of "The Paper" (no agreement could be reached on any other name), the formation of the Wellington Marxist Leninist Organisation (fondly called MILO) and then the Workers Communist League (less fondly called the Weasels).
Rona was not the ideologue, a young Polytech lecturer recently up from Christchurch filled that role. Rona never sought the top leadership positions. Rona was the organiser and the glue; the glue that eventually brought together some of the members of the expelled Wellington Branch, together with student activists from the National office of NZUSA, the Victoria Labour Club, the Victoria Student Christian Movement and other anti-war and anti-apartheid activists.
I don’t want to traverse further the history of the Workers Communist League tonight. That can be left to another time. What I wish to do is reflect on the key political, philosophical and economic paradigms that brought Rona, I and more than 70 others together during the 15 years from 1972 to 1987 and to test the usefulness of this world view in dealing with a very different New Zealand and a very different world 30 years on.
Lenin (and many others) have summed up the three component parts of Marxism being philosophy (that of dialectical materialism), economics (especially the labour theory of value) and politics (the struggle of classes and the central role of the working class).
The Maoism that we embraced at the time was not the ultra-left variant that infected many similar parties and formations in some other parts of the globe but was more the attraction of the "communist morality" of "serving the people", of "criticism and self criticism" and developing the "correct style of work".
You will be pleased that the rest of my lecture will not be an enunciation of these three component parts of Marxism nor Mao’s moral guidance, but what I do want to do is to pick out three key areas that are particularly relevant to today, reflect on them and discuss their relevance to the political situation of 2007.
These areas are the mass line, the national question and the state and the labour theory of value.
The mass line
If there is one enduring message that was drummed into us by Rona and her comrades that is timeless and remains relevant today, it is the "mass line" and the need to build united fronts in political action.
I am exceedingly grateful that it was. It was important for us as young petit-bourgeois student political activists to understand that we were not the centre of political change and, as exciting as it might be to engage in petit-bourgeois antics and protests, action that did not reach and involve large numbers of people would remain isolated and rarely contribute to fundamental change of society.
And the mass line was not just about being "at one" with the masses, it also included the leadership component of "from the masses, to the masses" which enabled strategies and slogans to be developed that the masses would identify with. After-all we also learnt that "good ideas did not drop from the sky".
This issue was one of the causes of the rift between the CPNZ led by VG Wilcox and its Wellington Branch. This was the time of the cultural revolution in China and the youth "revolutions" in France, Germany and the US. In NZ the Progressive Youth Movement had formed and the CPNZ had proclaimed that youth were now the new revolutionary force.
The Wellington Branch of the CPNZ upheld the centrality of the "working class" and rather than the phrase "bombard the headquarters" preferred the earlier dictums of Mao that communists should relate to the masses "like a fish in the sea".
My own OHMS (Organisation to Halt Military Service) campaign that brought me to Wellington was regarded with some suspicion by older comrades. I think they were very pleased that the campaign was such a success, but also pleased that it was over and we could concentrate on more mass based politics as opposed to the antics that the OHMS campaign got up to.
It was the strong influence of Rona’s political current that ensured that the anti-apartheid movement became and then remained a mass based movement. This took many forms.
First was to ensure that although HART played a vanguard role in the movement, its actions were not so extreme as to isolate it from the population in general.
Second was to ensure that other, more moderate organisations were established to move the great mass of New Zealand’s population. First it was working in the South African Defence and Aid committee that raised thousands of dollars for black humanitarian projects in southern Africa. Then it was the establishment of the National Anti-Apartheid Committee to undertake much of the mass educational anti-apartheid work in schools, churches etc and then in the lead up to the Springbok Tour of 1981 forming the mass based participatory organisation COST (Citizens Opposed to the Springbok Tour).
Wellington was accused by other parts of the anti-apartheid movement as being too authoritarian and conservative (even Stalinist) for avoiding confrontation and concentrating on building the numbers on the protests. The united front approach was, however spectacularly successful with large demonstrations held in Wellington twice a week for the duration of the tour.
And it did not mean there were no arrests or civil disobedience in Wellington. Numerous protesters, including comrades were arrested. However the over-riding concern was to build the numbers, make people feel safe, and to be as broad a church as possible. These protests saw workers, especially watersiders, seafarers and factory workers from Porirua and the Hutt Valley regularly walking off the job with union protection to participate in the protests. It was a strategy that also saw the Industrial Relations bosses of three motor assembly plants marching in the protest on the day of the Wellington match against the IR boss of the fourth company, who was a member of the Rugby Union Board at the time.
What greater example of the united front slogan, "unite the many to defeat the few."
In a perverse irony it was Rona and some others who were subject to the brutal baton attack in Molesworth Street, an attack that further changed public opinion against the tour and against the actions of the police.
For the anti-Vietnam war movement the mass-line approach was of a similar nature. The key focus was on building support of ordinary people to oppose the war and NZ’s involvement in it. The Committee of Vietnam was the organising group. Other groups such as the Medical Aid committee were established for those wanting to be more active in the humanitarian rather than the political side. And COST type mobilisation organisations were established to build each major demonstration.
Rona played a tireless and pivotal role in the Wellington COV. And the young ones, such as me, were also gradually recruited into leadership positions in the organisation. My elder son spent many Wednesday nights in his pram at the back of the meeting room in the old public library while his parents participated in the political debate.
The emphasis was again on building numbers, but this did not mean reducing the politics to the lowest common denominator. A huge rift developed in the anti-war movement between the pro-Vietnam liberation struggle line advocated by Rona and comrades and a simple "troops- out" slogan advocated by other political forces. On at least one occasion this even lead to there being two marches with two different slogans on an anti-war mobilisation in Wellington.
Mass Line and Trade Union work
The other aspect of the mass line was the key role of the working class as an historical actor. This view saw some of Victoria University’s best and brightest students either not completing degrees or not going past a first degree and taking up factory, bus driving or retail jobs in Wellington, the Hutt Valley and Porirua.
We knew this was a part of a similar pattern by like minded groups and parties in other parts of the western world. But in my later work in the Asian labour movement, I found similar experiences in almost every Asian country. In some countries, such as South Korea there were even laws passed to make what they called "disguised workers" illegal. Many in South Korea and Taiwan were thrown in jail for a number of years for such activities. I had the very emotional privilege about 15 years ago of meeting with a Taiwanese activist who had just been released from prison after 25 years for this type of action.
Within the WCL we were guided in our trade union work by George Goddard, and within the broader union movement by Pat Kelly, also a member of the expelled Wellington Branch of the CPNZ and a brash younger red haired Aussie, Dave Morgan, who was on his way to becoming President of the Seafarers Union.
On many occasions we, young ones, were frustrated by what we thought was the conservatism in the advice from our mentors. But it ensured that we took a long term view and built our trade union work on solid ground. It helped build an amazingly active rank and file union movement in greater Wellington during the late seventies and early eighties; one that has not been replicated since.
As factories closed down and unemployment rose a number of activists took the mass line approach into the work of the unemployment movement which saw, in the 1980s some of the largest marches and protests around unemployment since the depression of the thirties.
The mass line today
This experience was also invaluable for the individuals concerned. I have not talked to one former comrade who has considered this period of their life wasted. Although they may now be lawyers, public servants, school principals, political advisors, councillors, counsellors, mediators, social workers or remained trade unionists this period of being the fish in the sea of Wellington’s working class had a profound and positive effect on the young comrades who undertook this work at that time.
Today, I do have a concern that the mass line approach to politics is missing, especially from the activist left. Our mobilisations against the war in Afghanistan and Iraq in Wellington have been pitifully small. There has been a very strong sectarian current that has turned people away from the protests rather than towards them. There seems to be no concept of building the mass movement or building the united front.
Of course we cannot just blame today’s activists for this. In the spirit of self criticism, those of us who are now the oldies have not been inculcating the mass line into the following generations as Rona and her comrades inculcated it into us. But it is a serious problem and one that must be rectified if we are to build an active and conscious mass movement in the non parliamentary arena; a mass movement that is so desperately needed today.
Before I get too much into an old white man’s lament (that a certain political commentator and columnist is accused – often by me – of being trapped in) I want to acknowledge that there are strong and vibrant mass movements of the tangata whenua around us at the moment. The foreshore and seabed hikoi of three years ago was inspirational. The more recent mass protests of Tuhoe, Maori and their supporters are also noteworthy.
Perhaps I have been concentrating too much of my time in the trade union movement where there is now much more unity around what some in this room would call the "mainstream" left than there has been for many years. It is good that we can celebrate victories rather than defeats from the two lockouts of NDU members by Progressive Enterprises last year and SFWU and Spotless this year. It is good that we can celebrate the mass youth campaigns of Unite to organise young workers in fast food and picture theatres and together with another old comrade, now Green M.P. Sue Bradford, all but eliminate youth rates from the New Zealand minimum wage fixing system.
However I am concerned that while we are attracting very good young activists into the movement, the concept of serving a union apprenticeship in an ordinary workplace seems to have disappeared.
Although there are not the same number of factory jobs today as there were in the late 70s and early 80s, we are not encouraging young activists into the new factories of the shopping malls, hotels and call centres to begin their organising vocations. The discussion today is how can we organise the new "factories" such as the supermarkets or the malls from the outside. Not, who will go and work inside a supermarket or a mall for a few years and build union organisation from the inside.
The State and National Question
The end of the Workers Communist League or Left Currents as it changed its name to was a strange affair. There was not a bitter row, there was no acrimony, no one got shot (figuratively speaking). It simply ran out of steam. I guess it did prove Marxist dialectics right; what comes into being goes out of being. Rona stopped coming to meetings a few months before someone forgot to call the next Left Currents meeting and we ended. She had found another area of work that she could both draw inspiration from and put her tremendous energy into. This was the struggle of Maori for self determination for tino rangatiratanga.
For Rona, this also helped bring her two passions of politics and drama together again. She was intimately involved with Taki Rua. This moving on of Rona to sovereignty politics or what Marxism described as the "National Question" was, in my view, not a rejection of WCL politics but of taking them to a new level.
Of all the communist groups at the time, especially in the second half of its existence, the WCL struggled with and partially succeeded in conceptualising the linkages between class, race and gender. This did not always make us popular. In fact the pure class-ists, sovereignty-ists and feminists often poured scorn on our endeavours.
We were accused of being tripodists, or being captured by whichever-ist the accuser was not from. However many of the things that we fought for in the 70s and 80s are finally being acknowledged and given that status they deserve in the trade union movement, including the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions.
The question of sovereignty and self determination is very much bound up with the state. When the concept of "countries want independence, nations want liberation and the people want revolution" is put into effect, it does strike fear into the state and sees the state dust off its oppressive apparatus for its own perceived protection.
The events over of the last few weeks remind us of the old adage that, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
For some of us, the so called "anti-terrorism" raids by the police on individuals in Ruatoki and other parts of the country may seem a world away. But for others, the actions have been very close to home. Friends, whanau and a whole iwi, Tuhoe, have been caught up in the police actions.
And as we have watched we have indeed seen terror. But not from those arrested. We have seen terror on the faces of those whose homes were invaded, cars stopped and searched by the police. And also on the faces of some of those arrested who had been brutally assaulted in prison where they are on remand.
Unfortunately for socialists and trade unionists such raids and actions by agents of the state are all too common an occurrence.
All over the world trade unionists are terrorised and killed. Guy Ryder, Secretary of the International Trade Union Congress told us at this year’s NZCTU Conference that an appalling total of 144 trade unionists were murdered for defending workers’ rights in 2006, while more than 800 suffered beatings or torture. There were also nearly 5,000 arrests and more than 8,000 dismissals of workers due to their trade union activities.
In New Zealand Trade Unionist and stationary engine driver, Fredrick George Evans, was killed by police in Waihi on 12 November 1912.
On 27 March 1984 Ernie Abbott was killed by a bomb in the Wellington Trades Hall. A number of others, including myself, had a lucky escape. The police never found the bomber.
And on 31 December 1999, Christine Clark died after being deliberately run over by the driver of a four wheel drive vehicle while she was on a Waterside Workers union picket in Lyttleton.
Workers in New Zealand are still suffering from the terrorism of workplace accidents and deaths. There are around 100 workplace deaths every year and the government estimates that between 700 and 1,000 workers die prematurely in New Zealand as a result of work-related disease each year.
Tuhoe activist Tame Iti was a long term member of the NDU (through the Engine Drivers Union) when he worked at Kawerau during the 1970s and 1980s. He has been a friend of our union and many in our union ever since.
Rona and family also had their share of attention by the secret agents of the state. Up to, during and after the Waterfront Lockout of 1951 their house was the most "radio-active" in New Zealand. Not from nuclear material but the number of bugs and interception devices that were implanted in their home.
We have heard the stories from Rona and other comrades of how the union and party managed to continue to print their leaflets and posters during the period when free speech was abolished to defend the interests of capital and its state.
One of the most successful Workers Communist League led campaigns was the early 1980s campaign in opposition to the Muldoon Bill to increase the powers of the SIS. At the peak of its influence in both student and labour movements in Wellington, the WCL organised a huge rally of opposition to the Bill.
I still remember Don Franks and Lisa Sacksen on top of the sound truck outside the SIS headquarters in Taranaki Street surrounded by thousands and thousands of workers and students.
Oh yes we will, oh yes we will
We will unite to smash this Bill
The recent activities of the police and SIS show us that we must be vigilant in protecting our rights to free speech and protest. We cannot rely on the fact that (Police Commissioner) Howard Broad is a nice man (who went to the same school and church as I did). Or that the Prime Minister was at the CTU Biennieal Conference engaging in official and small talk while at that exact time, and unbeknown to us, the raids were being carried out against Tuhoe.
Political Economy and Surplus value
Our study groups of the 1970s taught us that the labour theory of value was at the core of Marxist economics. It was also part of the discipline of Political Economy.
Today the global bourgeoisie counter revolution of the 1980s has managed to weed Political Economy out of the curriculum of most universities in the world and any notions of surplus value or that labour power creates wealth which is in turn expropriated by capital have been eliminated from most discussions of labour economics.
Today, my concern is that without an appreciation of Marxist economics or Political Economy we have no understanding of how wealth is created and expropriated in the 21st century. This leaves, in many cases, the modern trade union movement fighting blind folded.
Even though the economy has moved considerably from when Marx and Engles wrote on these topics and considerably from even the 1970s when we discussed these issues in study groups with Rona, I am still enough of an unreconstructed Marxist to believe that it is crucial that we know where the power lies in the modern economy and who is taking the surplus value created by its workers.
These two aspects are inseparable but there has been very little work done to concretely analyse the power relationships in the modern global economy and little analysis done to work out who are the modern day expropriators and what are the modern day methods of expropriation.
Let me give you three examples from my own trade union experience. I want to look at three sectors that I have been intimately involved with over the last few years; clothing, hotel and retail.
When I studied political economy in Marxist study groups in the early 1970s, 90% of our clothing was made in New Zealand. There were import controls to prevent a higher penetration of imports coming into the country. Scores of clothing manufacturing companies dotted the landscape, often in smaller towns taking advantage of the female reserve army of labour that lived there.
The manufacturing companies were usually family owned. The boss was the capitalist who had invested in such a company. He supplied large and small retailers in the region and nationwide and made a very good living from the surplus value that he extracted from his workers, even gaining a premium because of being able to pay a lower wage for "women’s work" than what his mate who owned the small Engineering plant down the road had to pay his workers. Although in competition with other clothing manufacturers there was a national award which set a standard for wage rates and prices were set on a "cost-plus" basis with wholesalers or direct to retailers. Using the theory of surplus value one could easily work out how much of the wealth created by each clothing worker was retained and how much was appropriated by the employer, the capitalist.
What a completely different story today, only 30 years later.
Import controls have gone. A tariff regime that started at 60% for clothing is now down to about 14 % and falling. Imports rather than local manufacture make up 90% of the sales. There are no more awards, although the minimum wage has now almost overtaken all old rates and skill payments to provide the wage floor. But the competition on wages is global and not within the country anymore.
The power relationships have also been turned on their heads. Now, unless it has developed its own brand, the factory owner, the Cut Made and Trim (CMT) operator is a price taker. There is no such thing as cost – plus pricing for him - (yes it is still mostly him) anymore. Those with the power in the so called value chain are the brand owners and the large retailers.
If, as does happen, the CMT factory owner is only getting 30 cents a minute from designers, retailers or brand owners, that means he receives $18.00 per hour to manufacture the clothing. Even at a low $12 an hour to the worker the cost of the wage he pays is around $14 if you include smoko and toilet down-time, holiday and sick pay. And we haven’t even started to include supervisory or management time, factory overheads such as rent, power and cost of machinery etc. Is the factory owner, the capitalist, appropriating much surplus value. The answer has to be no.
Any attempt by the factory owner to renegotiate price will see him lose the contract.
Yet a jacket made by the workers in one of these factories will retail for around $400. But it includes only 60 minutes or $14 worth of direct labour in its construction.
Of course the expropriation figures are much worse if we calculate them for the jacket being made in China or for that matter India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka where garment wages are now below those of China.
In this case the same jacket could have less than $1 of direct labour cost in its construction but will be retailed in New Zealand at around $350 just enough to undercut the New Zealand made jacket and providing for massive expropriation of the surplus value created by the third world garment workers.
The surplus value extracted by Nike allows that brand to pay Tiger Woods $20 million a year in sponsorship, more money than it pays its entire Indonesian workforce through its contracting supply companies.
So, no longer does the owner of the dark satanic mills or the lighter slightly less satanic clothing factories expropriate the surplus. If he is a CMT operator in New Zealand today such an owner may even be subsidising his factory through making no return on his ownership of the land, buildings and machinery and even funding the odd loss from the surplus that was expropriated two or three decades ago.
So how does a trade union bargain over this surplus in today’s economy? The employment and bargaining relationships are established between the employer and the union. But, as we have seen the value created by the workers in the factory has been expropriated from the factory owner as well.
Well, let’s follow this jacket to a retail shop in one of New Zealand’s newest Malls.
At the beginning of this month we saw the opening of yet another mega shopping mall. This time by Westfield in Albany. In opening the 140 shop mall with thousands of car parks, the Westfield spokesperson said that there was still room in New Zealand for more such malls.
The owner operated clothing shop in high street employing 3-4 full time employees that was the main customer for the clothing factory owner three decades ago still may exist in some towns, but is no longer the norm of the modern retail world.
We are now in the era of Malls, big boxes and supermarkets. The old power and economic relationships in retail as well as manufacturing are being rent asunder and the expropriation of surplus value has been changed beyond recognition.
At the top of the pile in the retail sector is not an individual retailer but the Mall owners and developers. These are global and local property companies. Typical in New Zealand are Westfield, Kiwi Income Property Trust and St Lukes.
The Mall ownership companies have only to share power and wealth with one other group of players; the majors. In NZ, the majors are the two supermarket chains (Progressive and Foodstuffs), the Warehouse and one or two non food department stores such as Farmers and to a lesser degree, Kmart. For a Mall to be successful and to have the foot traffic to encourage smaller retailers in, it needs to have at least one food and one non food major.
The Mall owners exert enormous power over all retailers – including the majors – although even they are dictated to over some issues such as opening hours. Every retailer becomes a tenant. Rent fixing becomes an absolute sham. The cost-plus approach that has been driven out of manufacturers by the modern business environment resurfaces here in the form of a valuation plus scenario that all mall tenants fall victim to. It goes like this. Every year the Mall owner undertakes a rent review. Rents are reset after the Mall owner has the Mall property re-valued. The Mall owner seeks to cover a return of say 20% on the valuation of the Mall. A year later a further valuation is done. The valuation takes into account that income through rents has risen in the last year and sets a new higher valuation based on that. The Mall owner then recalculates rents upwards based on the higher valuation which in turn ensures that the following year’s valuation goes up again.
Only the majors have a comparable power to the Mall owner to enter into genuine negotiations.
Because of this, our clothing company that may have wished to stock New Zealand made products such as that $400 jacket is under severe pressure to source from a cheap labour country. A mark up of only 60% may be able to be made on New Zealand sourced product yet 200, 300 or even 400% mark ups can be made on the equivalent imported product that only has to be sold a few dollars below the New Zealand made price.
A further complexity is added. If you go to a number of Malls you will see many of the same tenants. Some of these look like and are multi-national brands in their own right. However many of these brands franchise each shop out to a different owner. This owner has store layout, prices, service levels dictated to by the franchise owner as well as opening hours and many other rules dictated to by the Mall owner.
So how is the surplus value created by a young worker in a multi-national clothing or fast food franchise expropriated and who gets the lion’s share. From the sales that she makes her employer has to pay first the cost of the products sold (these are often supplied by the franchise at a fixed cost – the retailer cannot shop around for cheaper product). Second the employer must pay the franchise weekly or monthly fee. These are sometime increased to include extra marketing or promotions that happen in a particular month. Third the rental to the Mall owner has to be paid and again this can attract a further charge for extra Mall wide promotions that may take place. Only a small part of the surplus created by the retail worker is actually appropriated by her employer. Most is expropriated by the retail brands and the Mall development companies.
So once again, how does a trade union bargain over this surplus in today’s economy? The employment and bargaining relationships are established between the employer and the union. But, as we have seen the value created by the retail worker has been expropriated from the retail owner as well.
But the trade union does not bargain with the brand owner or the mall development company who have taken most of the surplus value produced by its worker members. These companies and their CEO and Directors continue to expropriate the wealth created by labour. But this is hidden and they are never called to account through the collective bargaining processes.
In the hotel accommodation sector similar forces are at work.
The traditional accommodation hotel was either privately owned, or three decades ago owned by the breweries or chains such as the Government owned Tourist Hotel Corporation.
Today’s picture is completely different.
At the top level we have the major hotel brands. These could be Accor, IHG or Millenium Copthorne. These international hotel brand owners are usually European or US owned.
So, the Mecure, Novotel or Ibis Hotels are part of the Accor group. The Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza or Intercontinental are part of the IHG group. The Kingsgate or Millenium or Copthorne are part of the…
Well you tell me. If you go to the website for Kingsgate Hotels in New Zealand, click on corporate and under "background" you will find the following two paragraphs:
In 1995 CDL Hotels International acquired the Copthorne group of hotels with properties in the UK, France and Germany, (a brand that had been growing since the mid-1980s), in a deal valued at £219 million. Millennium & Copthorne Hotels plc was then floated in 1996 on the London Stock Exchange. In Spring 1999 Millennium & Copthorne Hotels plc purchased the majority hotel interests of its main shareholder, CDL Hotels International Ltd in South East Asia and Australasia, for a sum of £556million. In November 1999 the company acquired the Seoul Hilton in Korea for £140million and then in December 1999, the company acquired Regal Hotels in the USA for a sum of £395million.
In June 2000 as part of a capital restructuring CDL Hotels International sold its shareholdings in Millennium & Copthorne to City Developments Ltd (CDL). CDL Hotels International changed its name and focus in the Autumn of 2000, to City e-Solutions Ltd, CES, a hospitality industry solutions provider. Spearheading the strategy for CES, is SWAN Holdings LTD, (SWAN), which is jointly owned by CES and Millennium & Copthorne, 85% and 15% respectively.
If that’s not confusing enough, under the chain and the individual hotel brands the story becomes even more complicated.
The bricks and mortar of each individual hotel are often not owned by the international hotel brand itself. They could be owned by a local or international property investment company. And this company may even sell off "rooms" to mum and pop shareholders.
The hotels may be managed by a hotel management company; often Malaysian or Singaporean. Often staff are employed by the hotel management company, not the company owning the hotel brand.
But then the hotel management company often contracts out different hotel functions to other companies. Sometimes the restaurants are contracted out to a local or international restaurant chain. Sometimes cleaning and housekeeping services are contracted out to Spotless or another local or global cleaning company. Even front of house services may also be contracted out.
And on top of this some of the contracted companies might hire labour from an employment agency rather than hiring workers direct.
So, who expropriates the surplus value created by workers inside a hotel? It is very complicated to work out.
I use these three examples to show how much the political economy of major sectors of the economy has changed over the last three decades.
I have also tried to point out how difficult this then becomes for trade unions bargaining over the surpluses created by workers in each industry.
Marx wrote about the increasing tendency of capitalism to monopolisation. This has happened and under the banner of globalisation in a spectacular way.
For Marx, workers of the world unite was therefore not an idealistic slogan but rather a dialectical materialist one. Workers of the world were being materially united by the monopolisation of capital. But Marx said they also needed to be conscious of being thrown together in that way so they could move from being a class of themselves to a class for themselves.
This monopolisation within countries and across the globe has occurred. But capitalists have become clever in trying to break up the rules and regulations of the nation state so they are able to expropriate at will right across the globe.
More and more of the global conglomerates are divesting themselves of employment relationships with hundreds of thousands of workers. Under the capitalist slogan of sticking to core business, and having won the battles for extraordinary tight global intellectual property regulations (ironically inside deregulating and neo-liberal free trade agreements) the global corporations extract and expropriate the wealth created by the world’s workers.
Business Studies theory no longer talks about production chains but value chains. The higher you are in the value chain the more profit and more surplus value you can appropriate. The new global reorganisation of business has achieved the impossible of being able to expropriate more surplus value than ever imaginable without having to engage in employment relationships with those whose surplus labour is being expropriated.
Conclusion
Marx said that philosophers may interpret the world. The point is to change it.
I, and many others, have chosen to remain or join the trade union movement as the best place to seek changes to the world.
Why?
First, being active in a private sector, (mostly) low paid union keeps our feet on the ground. It helps us understand and be part of people’s lives who are the hardest workers in the country but still missing out on things that most people in this room would take for granted.
It enables us to build power in a mass way. To put the mass line into action.
It enables us to achieve "palpable results" for real people. (Even Lenin may have disapproved).
I also have the luxury of being able to share this vocation with my best friend, comrade and love, Maxine.
It is also an intellectual challenge. As I have hopefully shown with my three case studies, the changes in the global concentrations of capital, the continually evolving methods of capital for expropriating wealth from the global working class means we have to come up with new strategies in the class struggle over the wealth generated by workers.
Although much of the earlier work that Rona, other comrades and I engaged in was what was called "party building" and the next attempt at united front party building ended in tears, I must say I feel liberated rather than bereft of being "party-less" at the moment.
In reviewing this speech, I could be accused of providing a defence of the work and the world view that Rona introduced us to some 35 years ago. A defence, yes. But hopefully a defence that is not defensive.
Today, even those of us who rail against post-modernism have been probably been infected by some of it. So, while not accepting the proposition that it is impossible to construct a "grand narrative" any more, I do accept that this is my story and my reflection on what a small aspect of the life of a remarkable woman has contributed to my life and the issues and challenges that continue to confront us.
Rona, may you continue to rest in peace. Your multi-dimensional life and the lives of your comrades has touched and inspired the lives of many political and trade union activists.
If, in turn we can continue to touch and inspire half as many people as you then your work and ours continues.
And when times are tough we will all remember that even although the road is long and torturous, the future is bright.
No reira
Tena kouto, tena kouto, tena kouto katoa.
(sung:)
People of Aotearoa
Make a stand and fight on forever
Unite all our children
Make it seem hopeful for them
Teach them to love one another
Tell them that we will recover
Tell them that we are the ones
That will fight on to the end.
Tihei mauriora
E nga iwi o Aotearoa
Kia kaha, kia mana, kia moe (2)
Please contact Robert Reid at rreid@actrix.co.nz if you wish to quote or publish this speech.