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The news that China had exploded a nuclear device in recent days reached New Zealand just as the frigate Otago left for its Pacific cruise in connection with the French Bomb Tests at Mururoa. Not suprisingly, many people were shocked by China's action, as much work has been done in this country building opposition to such tests. The leading reactions came from Norm Kirk and Peace Media's Barry Mitcalfe.
Mitcalfe has a long history of anticommunism which goes well back before the bomb test became trendy. When he was running the local Committee on Vietnam he used to send telegrams to Ho Chi Minh telling him to give up fighting. And it was under his "leadership" that members of the Communist Party were proscribed from joining the Committee on Vietnam. Barry's not too bad at spotting symptoms of an evil but he's never been strong on discerning the political reality behind it.
Kirk's strongly worded protest is an open violation of the principle of non-interference in one another's affairs enunciated when New Zealand recognised China. Since
The Chinese position on nuclear testing has been clear for many years, though there have been systematic attempts to distort it. As an issue of foreign policy, the issue of nuclear arms falls within the ambit of the Five Principles and also within the clear statement that "At no time, neither today nor ever in the future, will China be a superpower subjecting others to aggression, subversion, control, interference or bullying". (Peking Review.
A mere opposition to arms in themselves is pointless, as it overlooks the different uses to which arms may be put, at the simplest level it equates attack with defence. Such a position is one which plays directly into the hands of those already holding the dominant power in the world. China has always been in favour of disarmament, but has opposed the use of this just aspiration on the part of people striving for peace, by those who wish to cover their own world hegemony.
At the present time, this specifically means the nuclear super-powers the USSR and the USA. The continual "partial nuclear test-ban treaty" and the "treaty of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons have never been anything more than a hoax". "In our opinion", said Chen Chu at the United Nations last year, "if there is to be disarmament it should be genuine disarmament, and it must not be used as a slogan to deceive the people. If a world disarmament conference is called, it must contribute to the promotion of the struggle of the peace-loving people of the world for the complete prohibition and thorough destruction of nuclear weapons and must not serve to lull and hoodwink them."
Quite clearly the present world situation, where the dual superpower imperialisms attempt to divide the world into "peaceful" spheres of influence, any talk of nuclear disarmament or indeed any disarmament is quite pointless. It does however suit the two super powers, for two reasons. First, they both already have enough nuclear bombs to destroy life on our planet. Second, nuclear warfare is to a certain extent by-passed for them by either conventional warfare or the vastly increased biological warfare they have developed. As Chen Chu put it, "the actual situation is that the overwhelming majority of countries in the world are being subjected to the threat by nuclear superpowers in varying degrees. To convene the world disarmament conference under such conditions is in effect demanding that these countries accept 'terms of surrender' under the nuclear threat."
In these circumstances the Chinese see themselves as developing nuclear weapons "solely for the purpose of defence and for breaking the nuclear monopoly and ultimately eliminating nuclear weapons and nuclear war". (Peking Review,
On the question of the environmental effects of nuclear testing, which appear to worry the present anti-Chinese lobby far more than the quite concrete destruction being daily carried by conventional means, China has already run across New Zealand's timorous aspirations as a watchdog. At the United Nations Conference on the Environment China voted against a New Zealand resolution condemning nuclear tests. How heartless, how irresponsible! But where was New Zealand when China immediately before submitted a resolution calling for destruction of all nuclear and biochemical weapons, to be first implemented by an agreement by all powers never to use the weapons they had. Of course, the Chinese motion was never passed.
China has continually reiterated that it desires neither testing grounds nor any nuclear or military bases outside her own borders — a position most recently outlined by Foreign Minister Chi Peng-fei in
All of these positive initiatives and positions are ignored by those who, in opposing the French Tests, see themselves in a new world-reformist role.
The Chinese attitude to nuclear weapons is verified by historical facts. Eisenhower threatened the Chinese and North Koreans during the Korean war with nuclear attack. These threats compelled the Chinese and Koreans to negotiate an end to the war on American terms. As Burchett shows in his book Passport it was the US who adopted an unreasonable attitude and prolonged the talks and they used nuclear threats to bolster their position.
This was not an isolated instance of attempted nuclear blackmail by the US. During the Vietnam war Nixon constantly refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons against North Vietnam. It was probably only the limited Chinese nuclear capacity, and their willingness to retaliate, that stopped Nixon from making history repeat itself.
US contingency plans for a nuclear attack on China are a well known fact. They were devised by the Rand Corporation in the event that US escalation of the Vietnam war provoked direct Chinese military assistance in Vietnam.
The Chinese analysis of the nuclear arms race has proved to be the correct one. US imperialists will never blow up the world, which they have the capacity to do, as that would defeat the reason for their existence. They want world hegemony, along with the USSR, to ensure their profits. No world equals no profits. US imperialists and Soviet social imperialists want nuclear weapons for limited use in wars to increase their diplomatic potency.
The Chinese have publically stated on numerous occasions that they will never be the first to use nuclear weapons. The US and USSR have never given any such undertaking, for that would undermine the credibility of any attempts at nuclear blackmail which they might make. Progressive nations should not allow themselves to be blackmailed into submission because they lack a nuclear arsenal. In this context the event of another Chinese nuclear test can hardly be considered an aggressive or hostile act.
When it comes down to the nitty-gritty, perhaps students are not as pissed off with Salient as some people would have us believe. Perhaps the mounting discontent with all those nasty things that those commie editors have been saying was more apparent than real. When students were finally given a chance to get the Reds at last Friday's Forum, the total turnout was a mere three hundred, plus Roger Cruickshank. Considering that a hundred people normally eat their lunch in the Union Hall anyway, and that another five thousand, eight hundred students never made it, the Trotskyite's anti-Salient raves seem a little inappropriate.
But the complaints that were made from this small remaining group of Jesus-Freaks, commie—haters and others who had come to laugh were hardly plentiful either. One bunch of idiots thought that there weren't enough right-wing articles for their taste, but refused to do anything about it. Someone else had been upset by a cartoon from the pernicious pen of Don Franks, at the bottom of one of their articles. And then there was Vince the Wrecker who wanted to see his name in print more often on the sports page. (We hope the subtle reference here will satisfy his ego for this week) And then of course, there was George Fyson.
Considering all the complaints that the Trots have been making — at meetings, in their bastard "Censored Salient", and in their "Socialist Fiction" newspaper — their performance on this occasion was, to say the least, rather dismal. All George Fyson could find to complain about was that not enough of his (or Terry Marshall's, or Peter Rotherham's) articles had been printed. Perhaps George should learn to write the Trots' articles better. So George left, refusing to deny that he was anti-communist, which is, I suppose, pretty conclusive proof that all their YS activism is only a front for neo-fascism. No wonder Stalin presented Leon with an ice-axe.
Then suddenly it seemed as if someone was going to criticise Salient. A plaintive shout — "I don't like it, I can't read it, and I can't understand it". There was a hushed silence, but then the voice continued: "and my mummy doesn't either."
But no, nobody has really got any complaints to make about our Salient or our editors. They are absolved from blame by the massive vote of confidence in them by the non-attendance at the Forum, and the failure to inflict any damaging criticism. This is indeed a Kirk-like mandate for the continuation of present editorial policy.
South Pacific, we love you, but you are too costly. This appears to be the underlying theme which has resulted in the procrastination of the university about establishing a Pacific Studies Centre.
A Pacific Studies Committee was established by the Professorial Board in
In
This year a report prepared by Professor Joan Metge for the Faculties of Arts and Languages and Literature advocated the setting up of a Pacific Studies Centre. This report was referred to the Pacific Studies Committee who formed a sub-committee (an original idea) to consider the report and to make recommendations regarding the development of Pacific studies.
The sub-committee's recommendations were referred back to the main committee where it has since been hacked to unrecognisable shreds.
While the Pacific Studies Committee continues to go around in circles, it is necessary for the students to enlist support for a Pacific Studies Centre. Until there is such a centre no Pacific languages will be taught at this university.
Students should make it known to the deans and professors of the various faculties and departments their desire to see the establishment of a Pacific Studies Centre. A petition concerning the Pacific Studies Centre is being circulated by Tony Rea. Sign it.
It is hoped that when the deans and Vice-Chancellor consider the quinquennial submissions concerning the Pacific Studies Centre they will heed the following Samoan words: Aua Ne'i Tatou Va'ai. I Tua I Le Ita. Po'o I Luma I Le Fefe. Ae Vaai ma Le I Loaina. (We should not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness).
Whose pissing in whose pocket round "Salient" this week? Half the editorial board (i.e. Peter Franks) is away to be even further indoctrinated by the godless Asian hordes and the key men in the layout and general philosophising department (Neil and Bruce) are being tried for the crime of defending New Zealand against US Imerialism at Harewood. So the remaining Editor and the tattered remnants of his cohorts could be expected to have been busting their arses making up for lost time - fever eyed, hollowcheeked, their voices reduced to hoarse whispers around the layout table in the dead of night. Harried and battered, yet struggling ever onward in their glorious fight for justice and democracy..... Sounds fantastic? Exaggerated? And of course it is. The muted click of the pool balls in the room next door, a sound epitomising all that is decadent in western capitalist civilization points to the principal contradiction in "Salient" this week. Roger Steele edited the paper from the relative safety of the middle pocket. Claire Smith sorted out the balls and Rob Campbell, Gyles Beckford, Lloyd Weeber and Grub took their cue. The break was made collectively by David Tripe, Les Atkins, Tom Scott, Les Slater. Jonathan Hughes and Meg Bailey, and chalked up by Peter Rumble, photographed by Keith Stewart, and finally sunk by Graeme Clarke. Kathy Baxter, Helen Pankhurst and Stephen Hall refused to continue this metaphor, as they finished the job off with the help of Grub and little grub, and service beyond the call of duty from Karen O'Neill. Don Franks made the tea, and you, God help you, read the result. As our readers go in off the cushion we wish them good shooting in the great game beyond.
Contributions should be typed or written legibly double-spaced on one side of the paper only, and should be in the hands of the Editors by Wednesday evening. Late contributions will also be considered.
Our advertising manager Roger Green is going overseas very soon. As one of his last services to students Roger is calling for offers for his car - a fantastic
Our new advertising manager is Brian Hegarty, phone 70-319 (ext. 75 & 81) at Salient, or 87-530 (Upper Hutt) at home.
Salient Office: 1st Floor, University Union Building, phone 70-319 (ext. 75 & 81). P. O. Box 1347, Wellington. New Zealand.
The Economic Department of the Reserve Bank of New Zealand has a limited number of positions available for economic students or graduates who are interested in working in the fields of economic forecasting, policy analysis with particular emphasis on developments in the monetary and balance of payments areas, and econometric research. The Bank can offer work of a stimulating and rewarding nature to persons who are well qualified in economics, economics and accountancy, or economics and mathematics. Competitive salaries are paid, there is a range of worthwhile fringe benefits, and opportunities for promotion are excellent. For students completing their first degree this year the Bank has available a number of bursaries to finance study for an honours degree.
Any Stage III or Honours economics students or graduates who are interested in finding out more about opportunities with the Bank are invited to have a discussion with a senior economist from the Bank who will be visiting Victoria University on Monday, July Interviews can be arranged with the Secretary of the Careers Advisory Board, 6 Kelburn Parade, Wellington.
Reserve Bank of New Zealand
If, on a Friday night, you have elbowed your way roughly past Don Franks peddling Hart News, callously kicked a youthful pusher of Socialist Action, perhaps even flogged the tambourine of a Hare Krishna singer, and fought your way to Stewart Dawson's corner you have probably run into a curiously dressed figure hawking the People's Voice. You may, if you are exceptionally committed or kind hearted, have purchased a copy for eight cents, donated the change from ten cents to the cause and dashed to the Duke to swap your new possession for a copy of War Cry. If you are an ego-tripper you have possibly bought another copy of three weeks later to read "Fred 2 cents" in the donations list, along with "Digger — 50 cents" and "His Mate — 32 cents". You are by now a well-wisher, reader and supporter of the People's Voice, organ of the Communist Part of New Zealand, Indeed you would have been eligible to attend a criticism session on the P.V. held Last Sunday.
Ten people turned up, which no doubt reflects the distribution of the paper among the masses. Most New Zealanders would not be surprised at such a lack of response, but there are those in the world who would be shocked indeed the Communist Party is perhaps New Zealand's widest known political party, and the P.V. is standard fare for Chinese learning English, and keeping up on world affairs. To these people it comes as a shock to learn that there is not armed struggle in New Zealand, indeed it comes as a shock equal to that which the local communists would experience if it ever came. They are victims in a minor way of the deluded world view of the People's Voice.
The session on the People's Voice, was however of value in illuminating clearly what is needed, by way of negative example in the building of a left-wing press in New Zealand. A catalogue of mistakes of the P.V. is essential to this task as most of the classical works of Marxism. Consider the main points of criticsm that emerged in discussion.
First, the question of stodgy, predictable appearance of graphics and layouts. This fault is largely due to the — in a sense — outdated process of production of the P.V. using modern off-set printing, such as that used by Salient, it is possible to provide a lively, constantly changing layout corresponding to changing demands of style and content. Of course, such printing equipment lies solely in the hands of commercial printers — a problem which a recent Alternative Newspaper Conference bemoaned. Most of the Alternatives people however, were worried about their inability to print tit, bum, and libel. A paper with the outlook of Marxist politics is not likely to need to indulge in any of these activities and the fact is that at present there is virtually none of the copy of the P.V. (which libels only other leftists) or indeed most of the 'political' papers, which commercial printers won't handle. The problem lies far more in the nature of the party which produces the P.V. — that is one which fosters the in —bred, beseiged outlook of conspirators without a conspiracy. No one denies that a progressive, outward-looking political movement will eventually run into censorship troubles from presses which are in the hands of those threatened by such a movement. We still have, however, room to move within these structures.
Second, and again this reduces itself to a criticism of the party itself, the P.V. has developed a totally remote and anti-realistic view of New Zealand. Its front page article, in a week in which ordinary New Zealanders were worried about the impact of the Budget, was an attack on a group of people in Wellington whose names and whose politics are only slightly less remote from the day to day interests of workers, than those of Vic Wilcox. A newspaper which fails concretely to relate its political perspective to the concrete concerns of the people, is nothing more than a farce. A political paper must play a role along with a political movement, existing and fighting as part of that movement, helping to build disparate elements into a whole. The P.V. and many other papers of the kind, all too often ignores or skips over the disparate elements in a frantic effort to impose order on a chaos which it fails to understand. It is not the paper which creates the movement from outside.
The other element of this is the problem of personality attacks which riddle the P.V., ressurrecting years-old disputes between people involved in the left-wing. There have been elements of this fault in this year's Salient, particularly in the controversy centring around the Socialist Action League. These attacks, which are to be differentiated from in-depth theoretical discussions which build upon one another and the world around us, are counterproductive from two aspects. One, they divide people working within the left from one another, and divert them from the main tasks. Second, to people outside they project an image of petty bickering and insularity which can hardly be appealing. Nor does it develop understanding. In short, at present we do not have a left-wing paper which is a realistic development from and addition to the wide-range of radical political activity occurring in this country.
The fact that this is the case in no way denies the dedication and loyalty of rank and file New Zealand communist party members — although, for a communist loyalty by itself is insufficient.
It is rather a reflection on the un-Marxist character of the Party leaders and feature writers of the P.V. More analysis of concrete conditions and regard for the level of consciousness of the people is needed.
Scientific analysis and plain simple honesty is the mark of a true Marxist—Leninist periodical. Phrase-mongering, spite fullness and distortion are trends indicating a dangerous decline in a communist party. It is possible to correct such trends, but the time is now and the method will need to he drastic.
67th Annual Plunket Medal Oratory Contest — University Memorial Theatre at 8pm next Friday evening, July 6.
Oratory can be defined as a high form of public speaking. Public speaking (e.g. university lecturing) tends to be coldly intellectual, sometimes informative but most often boring. Oratory seeks a wider response through appealing not only to the reason but stirring the emotions.
Success in persuading and moving people is the test of whether a speech is an oration. Style is unimportant, effect is the crucial factor. Pomposity and elocution are sometimes associated with oratory. In fact they fail abysmally in oratory because they neither reach nor move anybody.
Few of the great orations of history have been made at oratory contests. Most have been made in response to real life situations. Although oratory contests are somewhat artificial, Plunket Medal frequently produces results that can properly be termed oratory.
Plunket Medal was established by the Debating Society in
Speakers will be John Laurenson: "The Late Great Human Race"; Veronica Mooney: "British Justice for the Irish"; Greg Everingham: "John F. Kennedy"; Phillip Green "A Product of Hate"; Tom Manning: "Commemorating"; Jeannie Scott: "Hemi"; Peter Coles: "But Absolutely the Last..."
In Salient 13 we published an insert which made lengthy mention of the dubious journalistic practices used by the newspaper "Truth". A copy came into the hands of some Porirua people who happened to be suffering from 'Truth's" tactics, so they got in touch with us to tell us the side they knew of the story on the back page of "Truth", June 19.
The story, headed A "life of hell" with their... Nightmare Neighbour was allegedly written from complaints made by the neighbours of a certain Porirua woman who had often had young people round at her house. The story is no exception to the rule that if you've read one "Truth" tale you've read them all. The neighbours had had enough of 'drunken parties, foul language, obscene suggestions and fights' they alleged went on at the house, so they went prattling to "Truth" who not only lapped it up but also frothed at the mouth. "The housewives — most of them with young families arc disgusted and alarmed at the activities of gangs of louts, college girls and a young woman neighbour."
"Truth" carries on the story with a blow-by-blow list of all the offences alleged to have been committed. They include details of schoolgirls wearing their uniform into the house and changing into jeans! Crime! All night parties, occasional fighting, and fooling around with old cars! All of which sounds like the typical, often high-spirited behaviour of young people to us, and none of which sounds offensive.
There are some slightly more 'serious' charges. Somebody urinated on a neighbours fence, somebody made an 'obscene' suggestion to a neighbour and 'men sometimes are half-naked and can be seen 'making love' when curtains are not drawn.'
So "Truth" added it all up, threw in a few hysterical quotes from uptight residents, and produced one of their made-to-formula sensations.
They omitted to do one thing. They never talked to any of the young people involved. If they had, they would never have published the story, because the young people firmly believe that they have done nothing wrong and they believe in the integrity of the woman who made her house open to them.
Maybe that's not so surprising. But "Truth" should have also taken note of what the parents of the young people involved think. Because they are right behind their children.
A meeting was held in Porirua shortly after the story came out. It had done its damage: the woman's name was blackened and so were the young people by association. They turned out in force to repudiate what "Truth" had said, and some parents came along to. "Truth" was invited to hear the other side of the story - but no reporter turned up.
After that meeting we spoke to some Porirua women who have no qualms about their children going to the house. But they aren't going there any more, because a national newspaper has said they're up to no good and its mighty hard for an individual or small group to disprove what is said by something the size of "Truth".
Most of the young people are moping at home now, or travelling into Wellington for their leisure. One had said "Now we have to hang around on the streets, Mum."
The parents we talked to had investigated all of "Truth's" claims and weren't impressed by any of them. The 'obscene suggestion' was indeed made, but the women had been standing, staring for so long that it wasn't entirely unprovoked. The only nakedness they, or their children, knew of was when men took off their shirts white working on their cars in the sunshine. The parents believed that no "making love" went on. And whether or not it did, it is of no concern to "Truth" and is only of concern to neighbours if they want to peer through windows.
The only perverse aspect of the story is "Truth's" involvement in it. It was no accident that the "Truth" reporter talked only to catty neighbours and failed to talk to the people actually involved in the story. Even if he had, it is likely that "Truth's " subeditors and editors would have hacked it out. "Truth" is only interested in presenting the "sordid" side of any story, and it is time that the widespread myth, that "Truth" acts as a watchdog on society, is utterly dispelled.
It is also time that such a paper took a look at the causes of social problems rather than look at, and in this case distort, the symptoms. Because the lack of social amenities for youth in a city like Porirua is a definite social problem. "Truth" should be prodding the government and the local bodies to do something constructive about it, rather than smearing the well intentioned efforts of a few private citizens.
When the 1971 Student delegation to China returned to New Zealand. Bob Wellington of Craccum conducted an interview with three of them: Paul Grocott, Kitty Haywood and Frank Hogan. What follows is part of that interview.
Bob: Has any one of you come back with an overwhelming impression?
Frank: What impressed me most is the coherence, the stability of the country: they have a Marxist—Leninist ideal and Mao Tsetung has applied this to Chinese history.
Paul: Everyone is actively involved.
Frank: I got the same impression; the masses, the great multitude of the people were generating the revolution themselves.
Genuinely? You felt that they were living the way they felt?
Frank: Yes — since the Cultural Revolution their political consciousness has been heightened. They're just wrapped in the whole idea and they want to purify it. The values of the revolution are perhaps incarnate in Mao Tsetung's life and thought and they want to renew it.
Presumably you contrast this with a country such as New Zealand which you would feel does not have one single principle as an impetus?
Frank: Our characteristics are mostly individualistic and that has led to a fracturing of .................social harmony.
Kitty: They're involved, totally involved, and we aren't. That's just it.
And you're implying that this is good?
Kitty: Well, it is I think. There's a fantastic feeling of unity and community that was everywhere. There's tremendous enthusiasm. You get a great feeling out of being with these people; there was just no alienation at all. They were involved with doing something, they had a purpose. They had a future which is something.... out of fashion in our society, I think. You live for today.
Yes, I hate to ask what may seem a trite question, but: they have a united guiding purpose but would you say the individuals are happier, more contented?
Paul: In my view they certainly were. Because the purpose we were talking about in very general terms is a commitment to a community ideal and everything that takes place, takes place within a framework of the commitment of the individual to an ideal of community service. And they do not see a role for the individual outside that of benefitting the whole community. The benefit and satisfaction for the individual is in working for and within the community.
This is an ethos and in a way it is obviously not an ethos of freedom. In Western countries we value individual freedom highly. Where a total population espouses one principle or national idea, it perhaps doesn't leave room for any other ideas or principles. Would you agree?
Frank: It's a very good point but it has to be seen in the context. In our society the individual becomes ego-centred. We think of the individual as doing something for himself.... or perhaps for a small group of people — his family. In Chinese society today the distinction is not important. A person ploughs all his efforts into the community, but so does everyone else. So the individual's progress is enhanced. It's not as though he's wringing all his efforts out and getting no return. Morally they seem to be a much healthier, much finer society. It's just that the terms of freedom as we understand them lead to self-centredness.
Paul: The freedoms you're talking about, the freedoms that we in our society would refer to under the general heading of Civil Liberties, they do not see as liberating the whole community. In a sense I feel they are quite right, and I didn't need to go to China to learn this. They are interested in freedom from exploitation. In a sense our society is interested in the freedom for the individual to do what the individual likes; I personally have never been convinced that this is an ideal worth pursuing. You see what the Chinese are saying is something which the Negro militants in America and also the Woman's Liberation people have been saying: That until all people are free, until the whole community is free, none of us, none of the individuals within the community, can be free either. And so individual freedom follows community freedom, it docs not precede it.
Will it ever be possible? If everyone works together with one aim which would seem to require a certain lack of suppression of individuality, are they going to be able, when they've achieved their unity or ideal to become free individuals or are they going to be completely lost as free individuals?
Frank: The don't lack or suppress individuality. We had discussions with people on the streets and they were articulate, and this is an important thing. The could argue, reason and answer tricky questions that we'd pose.
Paul: There were disagreements in some of the discussions we had with students, particularly at one of the universities in Peking where they were quite open about the disagreements and differences that the students have had during the Cultural Revolution. This is just one example that comes to mind. And people were very open in their admission of past differences and past disagreements among themselves. What impressed me most and I wonder if you'll agree with this Frank, was that there seemed to be common agreement about the need for unity; not necessarily a previous agreement about the particular direction that they would end up taking but an agreement that whatever that direction they would be there together.
Frank: Yes, it was clear that they had chosen a line — they were on the revolutionary line and it was becoming more clear which values promoted the revolution and which one didn't. Many of the systems we studied were in a process of struggle, criticism and transformation, which does demand differences of opinion, but out of these they will get a unity.
Would they align themselves with American blacks and other oppressed or so-called oppressed peoples? I was just thinking that Eldridge Cleaver for example takes the line that the American black people should work with any other oppressed peoples they can find.
Paul: Yes, they feel a unity with other oppressed peoples of the world because they feel that they themselves were oppressed for so long and they are still throwing off the last remnants of that oppression. But one comment that I would like to make — it's a moral commitment to other oppressed peoples, and time and time again particularly at the higher levels, it was made clear to us and I certainly felt very convinced by the sincerity of the explanations, that the Chinese are not interested in the export of Chinese Revolution.
No prosely tising?
Paul: Not at all and the reason is very straightforward and very simple. The Chinese revolution is a Chinese revolution and it will not have application in India or Indo-China or in New Zealand. These people are going to have to work out their problems for themselves. As far as change in these countries is concerned the Chinese are not interested in exporting their model at all. Their model is totally applicable only to the Chinese situation and the emphatic way I am presenting this is simply the emphatic way it was presented to us. So their commitment to revolutionary struggles elsewhere is a moral commitment, not in anyway an indication that the Chinese are interested in spreading their particular ideas of revolution into any other country.
Do you think it could conceivably happen, as Eldrige Cleaver might like to hope, that various oppressed peoples of different skins, of quite different races could come together in a revolutionary mood? Could it happen from a Chinese view do you think?
Kitty: The important thing is that they believe in a People of the World. And they'll support anything that to them is a people's movement. They are forever stressing international unity and the rising of oppressed peoples against imperialism. But for them to actually export Chinese revolution would be imperialism; they've got to give moral aid and sometimes material aid, like they're giving to the North Vietnamese, but they can't give anything else — that would be imperialistic because it would be intruding on other people's movements, and trying to influence them would be morally wrong.
Paul: Right, and these ideas of expansionism or imperialism are to them the worst possible characteristic that could be applied to anyone. Incidentally, there is one other very good reason too; it is not only their hatred of imperialism in any form, whether American imperialism or Soviet imperialism (they see them in a similar light even though the ideologists see them as different), but the Chinese themselves are very convinced of the need for what they call a policy of self-reliance and in a crude way you could say this
On a national level, that is?
Paul: Yes, and you could say this, that unless one is able to do this for oneself it is not worth doing. This idea of self-sufficiency has been ingrained into their whole way of thinking so they would say, even if by aiding a revolutionary people of one country we can help them to bring about their revolution, it would not be worth it unless they can do it for themselves, because if they don't do it themselves it will not be totally successful. So one has to wait until the revolutionary spirit is strong enough to run the country for itself. The reasoning behind the Chinese outlook is fairly clear. A characteristic that is well ingrained is not only the idea of self reliance, but the idea of the close connection between theory and practice, and they would. I think, regard the speeding up of these ideas as allowing theory to get ahead of practice; that's only one step away from the collapse of the revolution. So theory and practice have to be very closely in touch with each other. These two ideas, the proximity of theory to practice and the need for self reliance are.... pillars of the Cultural Revolution, and it is these ideas that dominate China today, I felt.
You visited schools and universities. Would you like to compare and contrast, or at least give a few impressions. You visited a primary school, Frank?
Frank: Yes.... the primary school in Nanking. A central feature of the education there is to ensure that no streaming occurs, that there is no preference, no advantage or privilege for those people who we would call in our terms 'bright'.
They give students... an appreciation of the ideology, the revolutionary thoughts of Mao Tsetung so that they can be applied in everyday life. The way this is reflected in their actual system now is in everyday life. The way this is reflected in their actual system now is in workshops where the children learn (among other things) techniques of production. The question was raised that this was sort of slave labour, a way of keeping production high; but the answer is no. The aim is to teach the methods of work, to teach skilled techniques (and to give everyone an appreciating in their early years of how it 'feels' to be a worker). There was (also) crop growing and seed planting. They go out to the countryside for about a month and a half every year. To live, to learn.
They were enjoying a good practical education?
Frank: Yes, marrying of practice with theory is very important.
What about classroom methods?
Frank: Well, we only saw one classroom in practice. We just sort of looked through the window. We couldn't find the teacher at first. She was sitting right down the back and there were kids getting up and giving talks about their living application of Mao Tsetung's thought, how they'd applied different ideas. But the most fascinating part for me was their exams. The ideas behind their exams. Formerly they had a similar approach to ours, but they recognised the error in this. Teachers were treating students like they would an enemy. That was the term they used. Because it wasn't assessing the pupil fairly, there was a lot of pressure on him, unnatural pressure. They still have exams, but they exist more as a form of assessment of the efficiency or effectiveness of the teacher the success of his teaching methods and whether he can get his idea across. That's the idea behind the exams.
This is tough on the teacher.
Yes, that's what they said. They said that before, the teachers saw themselves in a position of privilege, authority which they did not always earn. They got it without earning it........ While on the exams, to complete the picture: they will have the exams and then the teacher will gather up the papers and give them an initial mark and hand them back to the class. The class will discuss whether the marks have been fairly given and in discussion they will toss this around.... Then the teacher will listen to their criticisms then take the papers back for final marking.
Kitty: Another thing which might be mentioned, about the middle schools which are their colleges or secondary schools, is their discipline, in contrast with the caning and detention in our school system. The first step (in discipline) was criticism and self-criticism in the classroom. And the most serious thing that could ever happen to anyone was a warning from the school revolutionary committee. No one was ever expelled, they emphasised this to us — they must have heard about it happening here.
What comprised the school revolutionary committee?
Kitty: It was made up of students, teachers, and the local parents and workers.
Frank: Bringing it back to the New Zealand situation, we have the teachers, the Board of Governors, parent-teachers association, then we've got..... school councils. Over there all these three arc wrapped up, they're co-ordinated, whereas in New Zealand they're working on different levels for different objectives and therefore they're breaks on each other. It's just the difference in values. Here we've got the structure, we just haven't got the unity, the aims.
Talking about the free discussion idea of exam papers and so forth, you obviously approve, and I think the point may now be raised that if as many people seem to think, Chinese education is indoctrination or inculcation, this idea of free discussion which could satisfy the people and give them a feeling of being in command of their own destinies could be a fob, could be in fact a specious freedom. Indoctrinating people from the word go, you then, when they are eight or nine, give them some responsibility of discussion, being pretty well assured you're only going to get back what you have in fact inculcated into them. In other words you're fobbing them off, you're keeping the masses happy. Have you an answer to this?
Frank: Let's put it this way. They are not free to be destructive. They're not free to tear down the progress that they've been making. What they are taught is not formulas and answers, they're taught a method of critical analysis. There is a lot of room to manoeuvre with this critical analysis. They know the values and they know what seems to promote revolutions...... Indoctrination we think of as coming from a central thing and being imposed right down, but in China the revolution is very much a self-generating thing.
Would you say that there was any more indoctrination or inculcation than, say, in the New Zealand system?
Paul: Well, I didn't feel there was. When we were being entertained by some primary school students I couldn't help thinking of what we called (and perhaps still call) Sunday School... and it was the same sort of thing. Sunday School children sing particular hymns and chant particular slogans or particular verses. I found it really familiar. It didn't seem to me that there was any greater indoctrination than what I had experienced in my upbringing.
Frank: I had a religious education too and I felt that there were a lot of irrelevancies, a lot of unnatural pressure created by that. In China there seemed to be a healthy education system.
Paul: A comment which I would like to add: Frank said there is room for mancouvre within the framework in which things are taking place. This appeared to me to be so, time and time again. When we met students from one of the universities in Peking they told us about some of the disagreements they have had in the early part of the Cultural Revolution, and that the grievances had been very strong ones and it took them sometime to talk them out. And still today they have disagreements over the application of theory, the way in which theory is going to be put into practice. This was something they were quite happy to talk about; it was part of their social progress. There were other forms of disagreement, e.g. perhaps where one person found himself out of touch with what was going on around him. Well, in New Zealand the general response, and this applies to me as much as anybody else, is to think there must be something wrong with society and merely to look outside ourselves for the source of the problem. The Chinese do exactly the opposite. The immediately turn to themselves, and they say 'if I'm out of touch there must be something wrong with me. What is it that has caused me to be so indifferent to what is going on about me?' and the result of this attitude is not to put the blame onto something external, impersonal... but to recognise that it is within the person's own ability to adjust or to understand what is happening in his own environment. Everyone recognised this and when someone was in such a position other people helped, they also felt they were responsible for his dissatisfaction; so they were all helping each other and it is this community ideal, this way in which they are constantly aware of the need to work together to solve their common problems which constitutes their unity.
This contrasts very much it seems to me, with what is current in NZ, America, England, etc., where many young people hold widely differing views from those which they've been brought up. Now can this happen in China or are they not the kind of students we have here, who protest, who can espouse radical views which contradict established policy ? Do people become like this in China or do they not? You said they disagreed, but you seemed to imply that they disagree very peacefully, that they all understand unity at the end of their disagreement.
Paul: Well, they certainly didn't disagree peacefully during the Cultural Revolution and from what we were told I would say some of their disagreements were as active as they have been anywhere else in the world. Really, the answer to your question, I feel, lies in the dynamics of the society; the reason they are prepared to work for unity is because there is a process of dynamic social change taking place and for university students, for example, there is a constant process of reforming the educational system, reforming the universities: this is part of their life and they (and this is extremely important to understand the situation) have a direct chance to influence the changes that are taking place. You see, the idea of change is built into the system, not the idea of an established method or an established form. The idea of continuous change is built into the system and the students are guaranteed an opportunity to affect the directions which this change is to take. These two points make the situation so very different from that which I have experienced in New Zealand. And it was to me very understandable that even though students found themselves in a minority from time to time they were happy to accept the enlightened line that most of the students were able to agree upon.
Lastly, there is an apparent paradox that people like yourselves who have been brought up in New Zealand in what we might term a more open society or at least in a certain sense of the word, a more free society, having visited China, have obviously been impressed. You see a lot of good in the society which you've just visited, which you tend to contrast with your own. In a sense there is a paradox here because you're in a position because of your environment, the one that you've been brought up in, your educational system, to judge and assess what you've experienced. It may be because of the education you've received, that you can take the rational and open and free view that you take of Chinese society? Could that be correct?
Frank: I don't think it is because of, but in spite of.
Can we see it the other way round Would a 19 or 20 year old Chinese now be able to make the same free assessment of another society that you have made of theirs?
Paul: Well I certainly think so. They're doing this indirectly through the information they get. They are making assessments very similar to our own in many cases. I won't try and comment as I would like to in detail on your question because it seems to me to be predisposed to lots of things which I do not regard as being correct and valid. To me there is no paradox, even in the terms you have presented, and I don't actually agree with your terms; but according to your terms I still do not sec the paradox, and the reason for this is very simple. To me the extent of equality in China is far greater than anywhere else I have ever seen, and to me equality is far more important than freedom. Indeed, without equality, for me there is no freedom. So in our country I see a large number of inequalities and in Chinese society I saw far fewer inequalities, and, therefore, in my mind they are much closer to the ideal of freedom than New Zealand has ever been.
Nursing can be truthfully described as one of the most unliberated occupations for women in New Zealand. In spite of the fact that many nurses in the past one hundred years have been fighters and have wrought great changes and improvements in the care of the sick and other fields of social concern, the present image of the nurse is poor — she is the doctor's handmaiden, the professional mother or, more recently, a glorified technician.
The nursing system itself is trying desperately to change the image, but in what direction? The educational entry qualification is being raised, cutting out innumerable candidates who may not be scholarly but would make kind and excellent nurses. The status of the job is being valiantly propelled to professional level, the curriculum includes more and more theory, some relevant, some not, succeeding in turning out some "mini-doctors" but questionable nurses.
It seems that the image is being dragged further and further away from the bedside and people-orientation, to theory and status-orientation. Nurses are obviously aware of their second-class status and are trying to change it, but until they become aware of the basic reasons for it they will only succeed in achieving a new image at the expense of their patients.
Nurses in the last century have been predominantly female. Prior to this both men and women nursed the sick, either in a "freelance" capacity or as members of religious or charitable groups. Not until Florence Nightingale, against great odds and social disapproval, organised and made nursing both respectable and efficient, did the occupation become attractive as a career for women. The mawkish "Lady with the Lamp" reputation is the only one generally known, but in fact, Florence was a remarkable, strong and intelligent woman who not only established the Nightingale system of nurse training but also was instrumental in the introduction of changes within the British army. Her sojurn at Scutari was not merely the smoothing of fevered brows by lamplight either. The appalling physical conditions were matched only by the arrogant and unhelpful attitudes of the army officers who bitterly resented a woman interfering in army affairs.
Contemplation of the attitudes and social pressure faced by this radical woman in those times should help to raise the consciousness of nurses today and make them battle for liberation. All Florence's efforts did not succeed in breaking down the objections of medical men of the era to female nurses. Proof that they were 200% better (as women in an all male-dominated system need to be today) and the fact that they need be paid only Half as much as men, finally achieved acceptance by the (then) male doctors. Here was the start of male exploitation of female nurses.
The attitudes of male physicians is one of the problems in nursing today, the males being emphasised because they are predominant in the medical profession. Although more women are entering medicine these days there is not active encouragement, either from those involved in vocational guidance or from the medical profession itself. Methods of dissuation may not be as drastic as in the
Do doctors have so much influence on nursing? Doctors DO have a great deal of influence in many areas of our society, some completely unrelated to medicine, by virtue of their power over life and death. This power gives them an almost supernatural aura in the minds of the laymen. They certainly do have a great deal of say in nursing education and in the running of hospitals in spite of the fact that they occupy only one of the positions on the hospital team. They are therefore able to ensure that nurses are organised to suit their needs and the supposedly central figure of the health system, the patient often takes a backseat.
Up until now the lot of the female nurse has been the concern of this article. However, more and more men are entering nursing courses. This is good of course, to see the sex-role barriers breaking down, and for both men and women involved in the care of sick people. However, before too long - and this is happening already - the men will be occupying the top positions and the women will be subordinate. This situation already exists in other institutes in our society, because, of course, men are "more reliable", "don't get pregnant", are "less emotional" and "better administrators" 'and of course they Need the higher paying positions as they the breadwinners of families!
Wake up nurses - liberate nursing and make it a satisfying job for both men and women, but don't just sit back and let it be taken over! It is a shocking reflection on women in NZ nursing that the first radical breakaway group of nurses was formed in Auckland by a man. Where are the female activists in nursing? Florence we need you.
It would be simplistic to blame all the ills of nursing on the attitudes of the doctors. There are other sources of disatisfaction which are making large percentages of nurses drop out before finishing their courses, and causing many qualified women to be reluctant to practice. The roots of modern nursing lie in religion and the military system. These influences are still obvious today. The nurse who succeeds is a conformist. Nurses are required to do, not to think. Anyone who survives the three months of intensive brainwashing in preliminary training school where the most arrantly domineering treatment is rationalised (under the headings of "Hospital Courtesy" and "Ethics") as being necessary for the patient, and dares to protest, question or show any sort of initiative is persecuted and/or some way is found of dismissing her or him.
Moralistic attitudes prevail in the nurses' residences where trainees who have responsibility for the lives of many while on duty are treated as untrustworthy children when off duty. Petty rules and regulations are enforced in the interests of the patient. This form of emotional blackmail which is successfully used on nurses is ironic in that the patient is often the one who suffers as a result of it. Those nurses who stick out their training and emerge full of idealism, soon realise that no freedom has been gained. They are imprisoned in the boot-licking hierarchy, and they conform to the system or fall by the wayside.
Nurses could do so much to humanise the health system and to ensure much more satisfaction to sisters and brothers in the job. First they have to get rid of the mother/wife/subservient female image. The women (and this is aimed at women as they are still in the majority) must start seeing themselves as leaders and initiators, they must demand more respect and an equal status in the health system. The men entering the profession are not going to do it for them - far from it. The Women's Liberation Movement has gone a long way towards improving women's self-image and making them more effective human beings, a Nurses' Liberation Movement is needed to do the same for nurses.
Apart from the fact that King Norm and his men managed to score a "landslide" with less than half the valid votes cast, the most interesting aspect of the Now ("communication", "participation", "involvement", "decentralisation", "democratisation"), the reading list was up to date, if a bit gauche, and the spirit youthful, riding the wave of the ad industry's successful conquering of a hitherto hostile sector.
Beneath the exterior that Values tried to sell as real, however, major and minor antagonisms were evident. The Party decried materialism, yet wished to retain a materialistic incentive system; the Party wished to discourage advertising, yet used the slickest adverts in the campaign; the Party stressed and valued its youth image, yet advocated a stable population which would greatly increase the average age; the Party wished to redistribute wealth, yet leave the machines that create wealth in private hands; the Party wished to establish zero economic growth, yet - by some definitions - advocated a growth rate in excess of that achieved in recent years; the Party wished to retain links with our present allies, yet has expressed interest in recognition of the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam; the Party wished to abolish the Security Service, yet wanted to "screen" Party members and exclude "extremists", the Party shunned leadership and machine politics, yet has recently been the vehicle for both.
Many of the Party's current difficulties are the result of the sort of membership it attracted. Youth politics in recent years have been strictly issue politics - Vietnam, South Africa, the Security Service, cannabis etc. The Values Party, in seeking and attracting youth membership, built into its structure this sort of approach and adopted a markedly liberal stance on most of these questions. It attempted to tie up this rag-bag with a central but negative policy of zero economic and population growth, a policy of insufficiently imaginative and scientific proportions to secure a philosophical base by which the Party membership could be sustained during the waiting between elections. Party membership seemed to regard the
Into this gulf the Values Party wished to pour the festive resources of participation, democratisation and decentralisation. In short, new directions were up for consideration. But with the election gone the issue was settled and thus membership tended to drift away. The result has been the waning of Values fortunes and it may have been this that produced divisive bickering in the Party and some challenge to Brunt's leadership — Brunt has consistently refused to anchor his political philosophy to anything more than an eclectic liberalism, fearful — as he admits — of the appearance of dogma that a consistent, scientific, global critique can sometimes take. Other members of the Party, aware of ebbing support and conscious of the difficulty of working reforms in the face of Brunt's possessive disapproval, have advocated and attempted to institute a flexible Party structure that could cope with the need for a new and more sophisticated policy.
At the time of the general election the Wellington executive of the Party — all of the candidates from the Wellington area and some of Brunt's friends — was characterised by the sort of informality which adherents wished to make the political norm, but the election whetted appetites for politics over social action and some felt the Party would have to organise itself more efficiently if it were ever to take on either National or Labour in a serious way. The hope was that the informality which has characterised previous deliberations — much valued by those activists central to the Party's formation — could be retained but moulded into a structure that could make maximum use of the resources and information available — much valued by the general membership which had been latterly drawn to the Party as an electoral force. This groping towards political professionalism gave rise to a final and perhaps decisive antagonism between what subsequently became Values ideology and Values reality.
The first steps towards structural reorganisation were taken on
In Febuary came the National Conference and an attack on Brunt's leadership from a different quarter. Some elements in the Party were not happy with Brunt's leadership. The phrase "dump Brunt" was bandied about. At the same time Wellington's Guy Salmon suggested something that Brunt found unsettling. Salmon had been a persistent thorn in Brunt's side over the preceeding months, upstaging Brunt at meetings with cases that were always well prepared. As one Values member put it: "Tony read only the fly-leaf, Guy had always read the book." Salmon's suggestion was that leadership should be scrapped. He intended putting forward this proposition at the National Conference. When the two discussed the matter Brunt always found Salmon outarguing him. Further more, Salmon had evidence of the inefficiency that leadership can bring if in the wrong hands. The message was clear: if Brunt did not agree, the fight would spill over into the Conference, and the argument would spill over from the abstract to the concrete — Brunt's failings would be bandied about.
Brunt agreed to the reform. The vacuum which the move created in the Party needed filling and while those who were thoroughly imbued with the Values ideology were happy with developments, supporters in outlying areas and the small branches were not. By way of compromise, Wellington — thought by Brunt to be the strongest in support for Values — was given power by the Conference to establish a National Secretariat. Brunt returned to Wellington holding the opinion that he had been out-foxed by Salmon. The "We need you Tony" chorus from those intent on playing electoral politics convinced him that Conference's decision was not in the Party's best interests. It became obvious that in the absence of a formally elected leaders, the top-dog in Wellington would be top-dog in the Party. Brunt remained, for the time being, acting regional co-ordinator. Control in Wellington became the essence of his holding strategy. Salmon became an important figure in Brunt's strategy since Brunt suspected Salmon of having an eye on the leadership for the next election. Those in the Party closest to Salmon emphatically deny that this is so.
Early in March a meeting was held to discuss how to organise the Wellington Region in light of the discussion at National Conference. The existing executive (elements of which were not totally sympathetic to Brunt) favoured the retention of interest groups combing within their ambit research and activist sections. Guy Salmon and John Bartram (both sympathetic to this approach) were delegated to meet next day to formulate an organisational plan for the executive to consider. At the conclusion of the meeting, strongly pro-Brunt elements of the executive stayed behind to inform Brunt that he was being upstaged again. The following morning Brunt contacted Bartram, telling him not to meet Salmon since Brunt himself was going to write a paper on Regional Organisation for the executive to consider. In response to a question Bartram was told by Brunt that he was not a liberty to disclose the contents of the paper at that stage. Bartram contacted Salmon who said that he had already been telephoned and told by Brunt that Bartram had decided not to meet him. Unhappy with this discovery, Bartram talked to as many members of the 19—man executive as he could, finding as a result of these discussions that Brunt, in an effort to gather support, had told some of them what was to be in his paper, the essence of which was that a 19—man executive was too large and that six of the current executive would have to go. Apparently Brunt cited as authority for this proposition a study he had read on the psychology of organisational efficiency.
Bartram reacted sharply by calling an executive meeting to discuss whether or not the decision of the previous executive meeting (empowering Bartram and Salmon to write a paper) should be reaffirmed. Brunt of course was invited but seemed uncertain of whether or not he should attend. After reversing his decision a number of times he decided to attend. The meeting was something of a fiasco. Brunt initiated the discussion by reading out his proposals for reorganisation. The present executive, he said, had been the vehicle for cliques (a veiled reference to those who opposed him) and lengthy time wasting discussion. "I have therefore reconstituted the executive." It was apparent to some of those present that the new executive was weighted more heavily with Brunt's friends than the old. "Executive members may feel," Brunt said, "my arbitary reorganisation is undemocratic and dictatorial. It is." Brunt went on to justify his being arbitary and dictatorial by claiming — at a meeting initiated by someone else — that he was the only one capable of initiating such a change. When he had concluded Bartram delivered a strong protest, claiming that Brunt's proposals and attitudes contradicted the Party's principles of participation and democratisation. Brunt's paper was not mentioned again and the meeting metamorphosed into encounter group therapy. Two of the proposed members of Brunt's proposed 12-man executive confessed during the session that they were in the Party because of personal problems, another that he was only in it for "an ego trip". Emotions rose to the surface and several people were in tears as a result. With the table groaning under the weight of collective guilt, reconciliation was achieved and Brunt was given the go ahead to form not only a Regional Body but also the National Secretariat — however he pleased.
Things thus appeared to be going well for Brunt — he at least seemed to think so. He wrote a letter to a Party member in the Auckland Region claiming that he had "purged" the Wellington executive of eight members, adding that he'd got rid of "the wilful young Guy Salmon", the architect of the Party's present malaise. The first meeting of the Regional Secretariat formed by Brunt was in early April. To this meeting Brunt's erstwhile opponent Bartram was invited. He was not, however, invited to a subsequent meeting. Although the Wellington executive had decided that the Secretariat should sit on any Regional Council that was established this decision was not implemented after the all-important Regional meeting on May 31, the meeting at which the Regional co-ordinator was elected.
Prior to this meeting, Salient put the suggestion to Brunt, then acting regional co-ordinator, that the coordinator for the Wellington Region would in effect be leader of the Party. "It is possible that in the media's eyes I would still be de facto leader, sure," Brunt replied. Salient also asked Brunt whether or not he would be standing for the position. "I don't know — ah, well, put it this way, it's going to be nominations from the floor. There could be a number of nominations," he said. Asked whether or not he would be happy for the media to propagate the view that he was de facto leader of the Party Brunt replied: "If I'm elected regional co-ordinator, every press release will be signed by me as Wellington Regional spokesman." Salient then questioned Brunt about the fact that the meeting was to be held on a day when a possible contender — the wilful young Guy Salmon — could not attend. Brunt indicated that he did not know of this until after "we" set the date of the meeting. It was too late, he said, to change the date. He saw no reason, he said, why Salmon could not stand in absentia.
The meeting on May 31 was attended by only 70 people. The Chairman — Denis Tindall — was selected by Brunt who had also drawn up the agenda. The first item was the election of a spokesman/co-ordinator, the second the decision on the organisation of the region. At the beginning of the meeting Bartram handed the Chairman a motion proposing that the first two items be taken together, presumably because he wished to discuss Brunt's performance as acting co-ordinator in the light of the organisational wrangle and because he did not want Brunt's organisational proposals prematurely legitimised by Brunt's probable election as regional co-ordinator. The Chairman, however, ignored the motion and began to talk about the need for a regional co-ordinator. Brunt was elected unopposed. Brunt then proposed that a regional council be established comprising 23 people — 10 more than the figure he'd earlier cited as being the maximum compatible with efficiency. This council was to be the supreme governing authority for the Wellington Region, but its powers were undefined.
Some Values members claim that this executive will not be dominated by Brunt and his friends, pointing to the fact that a proportion of the members are selected by the branches of the Region. This argument is weakened by the consideration that most of the branches are some distance from Wellington (for example, the Palmerston North branch) and could not really be expected to send representatives to weekly, or even fortnightly meetings. Furthermore, to the extent that they do attend these branches will apparently rotate their representatives who will thus be prevented from developing the necessary continuity of knowledge to combat the machinations of a central bureacracy.
Bartram was again dissatisfied and wrote to Brunt, calling on him to resign and protesting the treatment his motion had received at the hands of Tindall. A meeting of six (see above) of the 23-member council unanimously rejected Bartram's letter, saying that to do otherwise would necessitate another general meeting what's leadership for if not to make decisions? Bartram was subsequently asked to deliver a letter arguing his case to the Deputy Co-ordinator, Martin Leqner (selected by Brunt and approved by the Regional meeting of May 31) by Monday, June 18. He was subsequently informed that a further meeting of the council to consider his letter would be held at the home of Dave West on Wednesday, June 20. West, however, had previously told Bartram that he had been invited to join the council but had refused. In the event, the meeting was held a day earlier than scheduled, Bartram being neither informed nor invited.
The situation was further complicated by the fact that Bartram wrote an article for the Dominion mildly critical of the direction the Party is taking. After publication he was contacted by Joan Beaufort, candidate for Bartram's electorate at the election, who said she had been contacted by a member of the regional council and told that the article was objectionable. She hadn't, at that point, read it. Bartram asked who had contacted her and she said "Martin". Bartram understood her to mean Martin Leqner. After she had read the article, however, Beaufort rang Bartram back, indicating that she thought the article praiseworthy. During this conversation she admitted that it was Brunt who had contacted her, not Leqner. If Beaufort was satisfied with the article, however, Brunt was not. According to one source he initially contemplated disenfranchising Bartram's branch, the Kapi — Mana branch, but contented himself, in the event, with going out to give the branch a "pep talk" at a meeting to which Bartram was again not invited.
Those now on the outer — typified by Bartram, Allum and Salmon — see the arguments as being between the activists and Brunt backed by general membership. "The Values Party is regarded by Tony as his baby," says one ex-member, "and he resents any move which seems to challenge paternity." "Brunt started the Party," says another, "and now seems about to finish it. The truth was that the Party began to outgrow Brunt under the influence of its activists. Brunt put a stop to any further growth by ridding himself of challenge with the aid of his friends and the non activist membership."
For the moment Brunt seems safe, the Party skeletal, perhaps finished. It all seems a pity, for the Values Party hit upon one of the conflicts of the era: the lack of fit, as one writer has described it, between old theories and new sentiments. The Party's failure seems to have been the failure to recognise the fact that there is also a lack of fit between new sentiments and the institutions the old theories served. In turning away from the social action approach advocated by Allum and others and towards the electoral aspirations of Tony Brunt the general membership seems to have an approach that contradicts all the Party claimed to stand for.
Last week Roger Steele interviewed Wellington property financier and millionaire, Bob Jones. Mr Jones has recently been indulging in his flair for controversy by making some comments on the notorious Rama Rent Strike. The bulk of the interview centres around the Rama dispute, but as the reader will discover, Jones incorporates some remarkable opinions on a wide range of topics. Some of the emboldened quotes are extracted from the interview as printed. Others occurred elsewhere in the conversation and are not, we feel, taken out of context. The interview took place at the Jones palace in Lower Hutt pictured above.
Well, do you want my comments on Rama?
Well we may as well get into Rama, yes.
Well perhaps I could tell you my history with Rama. I got into the act because I was asked to deliver an address which I did at the landlord's association's inaugural meeting. I deliberately deferred from becoming too actively involved because its not really my field. But nevertheless I've had the odd contact with people like Rippon and I said to them about March 'what's the story on this Rama fellow' and there was sort of general muttering and so on and I said 'is he a member?' and they said 'oh no, he's not 'we probably wouldn't have him' and this sort of thing and that settled that. Now like everyone else I assumed that Rama was a villain and I left it at that. And it came up again with Tizard in Auckland, he said "What about the likes of Rama, there are some around' and I said 'What's the story on Rama?' still rather naively and innocently assuming that he was a villain. He said 'I don't know...... but where there's smoke etc....' And I kept on asking this question and I started getting a little bit curious because I couldn't ascertain from anyone exactly what this fellow had done. There were only general sort of mutterings about high rents and nocturnal bloody visits to collect it and so on. So I went down and watched the court case which is how I got interested in this Patterson thing.
Well, can I just finish what I was saying then because I must say that I am not qualified to speak on specific Rama situations for the reasons that I outlined. Rama's son, not the articulate sophisticated one, not Peter, but the other one, who's a fruiterer came to the box after he had watched His father go through a grilling and he was pretty bloody nervous and bewildered when he went into the box. Were you there?
Yeah.
You'll no doubt recollect that what I'm saying is a fair assessment of what took place.
Yeah, but may I point out that he was no more inarticulate than the tenants themselves.
Yes that may well be true. In fact I would probably agree with you if you can assess these things on face value. From what I could see of what I assumed were the tenants standing in the back then I would agree with you. Young Rama got into the box, and when Irvin Hart got up there was a sequence of questions that went something like this: He said "Do you have spare keys to the flats?" and the bloke looked bewildered and lost and shook his head and the Magistrate roared at him and said "Answer the question". He said "no" and the next question, "How do you get into the flats?" and he answered "with spare keys" and he was roared at and bawled at by the Magistrate. Any reasonable human being would have realised that he was scarcely lying. Now we've got to give them a bit of bloody credit; if you wanted to lie you'd do it a little less blatantly than that. And the whole thing was a fiasco.
I spoke to Amanda Russell outside the Courtroom and she seemed to be a bit upset by Patterson's performance although she conceeded that... as a matter of fact her words to me were that the man was a in regard to his performance with Rama. But this started to get me interested so I then really got into it. I delved into it and started to make enquiries about Rama but I couldn't get much from anyone... I asked Amanda for instance, I said "look what does this fellow Rama do?" because I certainly wasn't going to learn anything from that particular court case. You know "where is he guilty?" and she said "well he's not too guilty, we just don't believe in private property, we don't believe in the existence of landlords and so on; we've got to make an example of somebody."She's entitled to her beliefs but I think she is the sort of person that runs around preaching brotherly love as well and I think that from what I could see there wasn't really very much understanding here. Now I kept making enquiries; the fault may be that I wasn't enquiring in the right places, but I wasn't able to ascertain exactly what he did that was wrong Now, if you look at your own publicity, the stuff you sent me the other day, there was some Rama material in there. If you look at that, it's abusive, it's derogatory, but it doesn't tell me one thing about this man, what his crimes are.
In the current situation I really don't have to push even if I wanted to. You can't help but get richer and richer ...
Well I think I had better intervene at this point because I think that you're misrepresenting Amanda there. Because she can cite case after case ...
I'm not misrepresenting her, I'm just telling you what she said.
Well let me just tell you about the latest Rama case. It concerns the flats in Laurence St. In February he signed the girls up for a six—month lease that would run out in August. They wanted to carry on and he wanted to draw up another lease which is legally unnecessary, further he wanted the girls to pay an extra $25 for the drawing up of the second lease although they had paid $25 for the drawing up of the first. The girls didn't want to pay this extra money so they got a legal opinion that said it was unnecessary and illegal. When Rama came around to collect the money for the new lease they refused to pay it and he gave them three days notice, again illegal because he's got to give a month's notice...
Okay, okay... now lets look at the other side of the picture then. Obviously there have been incidents and that's probably a pretty charitable word to describe them in your view but you are probably better informed about these incidents than I am because I've generally sought to find out but I haven't been able to do so. You see I've asked Amanda Russell. You say I'm misrepresenting her but I'm not misrepresenting her. I'm telling you what she told me. I asked Rosenberg (Chairman WPTA—ed) whom I met for the first time at Parliament and I said to him "Look this Rama thing bothers me. It seems to me that it's a bit bloody unfair." He expressed sentiments some what like Amanda Russell had to me, he said "sure, we had to take on somebody, we had to get our message across that we don't approve of landlord relationships" Now I'm looking at it from Rama's point of view. Look at the man himself, he is a man who worked seven days a week for forty years, a simple uneducated Indian, in this country where Indians are not liked. You know, if you've got the option of buying from an Indian or a Chinese you buy from the Chinese, and so on. There's something slightly distasteful about Indians to most New Zealanders. He is a simple man who worked his guts out for forty years flogging fruit up and down from a van in Wellington. Now I'm sure he couldn't have done that if he wasn't an honest dealer. For forty years he did that. Now legally, apart from technicalities such as you've just quoted, there's a general consensus that he does nothing legally wrong. You people say that it's a moral criticism, this is basically it, isn't it?
We have innumerable legal criticisms as well. Rama has exacted God knows how much in administration fees and key moneys and...
Well then if you want to discuss it from a legal point of view, what about the fact that these people are legally squatting?
Well, they've got into a situation where they've tried to negotiate with their landlord and he failed to negotiate and so they went on strike, eventually. Well, surely everybody's got the right to strike?
No, see that's where you're wrong.
I have never visited a dictatorship without feeling that it's a good exciting place to be in. You have the feeling that the people find it exciting too. Life is a lot fuller and a lot richer....
Do you deny unions the right to strike?
No, but a tenant doesn't have the right to strike. He has the right to bloody well reject the property, in other words not to accept it. The legal situation, at the moment, whether you like it or not is that the landlord may offer his property at any rent. So if all the problems stem from a dissatisfaction with his rentals then looking at it coldly and harshly, they shouldn't accept his properties.
What if there's nowhere else to go?
That's beside the point, just looking at the legal position. If you condemn this man on moral grounds as an unscrupulous, high charging landlord, lets look at him and discuss the morality aspect; now morality must be a personal judgement, you'll concede that?
Fair enough, for the time being.
Well, look, just to explore that one, just a little bit, there's always gong to be areas oí disagreement between people. I admire people who are moral people and a moral person in my view is someone who acts according to his conscience. It's conceivable that Hitler was a man to be highly admired in terms of killing six million Jews, because he had the courage to do so. A lot of people don't like Jews, they've been a popular target for many centuries, but Hitler had the courage to carry out his convictions.
Well that's where our definition of morality ...
Well I'm seeking out an extreme situation ...
........comes into direct conflict because according to my definition a moral man is someone who acts in the interests, not of himself but in the interests of his fellowmen, the interests of the broad masses of the people ...
That's your definition of morality, but then where do you get when someone has an entirely different definition. That's why I say, that when you're arguing morality you inevitably come back to the fact that it has to be a personal judgement. It's either a personal judgement, or a judgement on the mass level and that's where the conflict is.
I don't particularly want to get out of New Zealand because its a healthy place to live in for someone like me. If I shifted to the South of France I would become a vegetable, so its a self imposed discipline to live in New Zealand.
Yes I see, now if you say that morality is behaviour that is consistent with popular behaviour and popular sentiments then that disallows the man who has beliefs which aren't popular, such as your own in this country, so does it make you an immoral person in political terms?
It brings us into conflict.
I mean you have no doubt that in terms of your political ideology you are right and that your judgement on these things is highly moral but on your own definition of morality, you are behaving immorally because your sentiment are not those of the majority; I'm sure you'll concede that.
If it can be argued to me and I can be convinced that my actions are not in the wider interests of people then I will cease to act in such a way.
I wonder if you would though?
Even on your individualistic morality you come into conflict and ultimately even on your individualistic concept of morality you've got to resolve the inevitable conflicts.
I say that when you throw this thing around long enough I say that you must come back to the fact that morality is a personal judgement, and that a moral man is the man that acts according to his conscience...
There's been so many crimes committed as you've cited yourself throughout history by people who act according to their own conscience rather than ...
But offsetting that there's been so many good things done by people who have acted according to their conscience against the then current popular sentiment. What I'm driving at, if you look at this man Rama in terms of his background, he is probably a highly moralistic man. Certainly on mv particular terms of morality he would be ...
He cites God, he thinks God's on his side.
Yes I know he does. Now this is supposition, but I'm sure that he's been taught on his mother's lap and thereafter that the ultimate thing in life it to work hard, save your money and invest it. I'm suggesting that if Rama had been born in China he would have achieved the ultimate in personal success that his capabilities allowed him to. He's that sort of man. He obeys the dictates of society, he doesn't question them. He's not the sort of man that can understand or cope with a change of Government and a complete change of sentiment in the country. He'd be bewildered by it. He wouldn't be able to comprehend it. If they pass a law, "The Bob Jones Act" and grab everything I've got, well I can cope with that because I can understand it. I have the capabilities to understand for instance that 'Might is Right' and that when they've got control then anything goes.
The implications of what is happening are such that there is going to be a revolution my option is to stay here and participate in it..
Rama couldn't comprehend that sort of thing. What he was doing. I'm suggesting, was legally correct and in his terms morally correct.
Morally correct in the terms of the capitalist economic system maybe but the moral conflict is between what he believes is right and what the tenants believe is right.
Well that's probably just a mass assessment of the situation. I'm sure that you won't deny this, that Rama's tenants in the mam would be bewildered by this conversation. They wouldn't know what the hell we're talking about. They would be organised by some people that have those beliefs.
Well they could understand the conflict between the individual and the capitalist and their own interests as workers, as people who just want to have stable accommodation. They also work hard — you said Rama works hard, however he got in first and he's now manipulating them financially
You say manipulating them financially, well I think that's a complete distortion of the picture, he is being manipulated financially by them, surely.
The people are taking power into their own hands.
Well that's a rather idealistic dreamer's assessment of this situation.
But its realistic in that its costing Rama thousands of dollars.
The true position is of course that a small group are organising the people as has always been the way and always will be the way.
In the TPA we've always tried as hard as possible to get the tenants themselves making the decisions. The tenants themselves formed the Hutt Valley TPA and have taken over the policy making in the Rama strike. So we're not actually manipulating them.
Now you people do preach brotherly love a lot, now what about a bit of brotherly love for Rama What about a bit of consideration for that particular man; and elderly, inarticulate Indian who would have no comprehension of this particular situation. He must be bewildered by it. Now what do you want to do? Do you want to break him financially, now that's a straight question. Do you want to do that?
Yes we want to break him financially, but we also want to break every other person that is exploiting people in this society and we want to get on to the Rippons and the Cornes. [Two well known Wellington property speculators — Ed]
Yes, but now you are using the word exploiting. Now if you use the word, not in its unpleasant connotation, but just the factual description of the word exploiting then its the profiting by the existence of other people by the application of skills or money or special situation then, good God, you are going to be attacking a hell of a lot of people.
We certainly are. We're attacking the whole ruling class as we see it.
The Labour Government for instance says that they don't approve of people that take property and add nothing to it, this is now their qualification on this speculators tax as they call it, and sell it for a profit. Now so far they've identified people in property doing that, a very tiny handful. What about retailers, that's exactly what a retailer does.
Well, we agree that they should be attacked too. The mark ups that are going on are disgraceful. But what about exploitation? I mentioned the "administration fees" and that sort of thing. There's also the fact that whenever tenants left Rama's places he invariably raised the rent and he also gave the tenants to understand that it was their legal obligation, if they were going to leave, to find new tenants for him, which is simply not true.
Certainly, well all right., accepting that abuses have occured in discussing this Rama thing. Now you obviously have some influence with TPA so I assume you are a member. Are you genuinely interested in resolving this thing or are you more interested in breaking Rama?
I'm interested in resolving the relations of all tenants.
Well I'm sure that I could organise Rama to resolve this thing if we had a round table conference and agreed on certain actions and rents and everything else and took his affairs away from him and put them in the hands of a land agent to handle rents, administration and so on. Are you interested in doing so?
Yes certainly.
Do you realise you can't arbitarily set the rents that the legal situation is such that he may set his rents and that you have the power of appeal under the current regulations?
We believe that we're under a situation here where the law no longer protects people and the people have to take the law into their own hands. But we're certainly interested in attempting to reach a settlement. The facts of the matter are that the tenants are suffering all the time, they suffered....
They aren't suffering too much now.
No, but they suffered when he flogged all their furniture and all their entertainment facilities and so on.
But he didn't do it because he wanted to flog their furniture. There was a reason for it, just as he collects rents at midnight for a reason because they're not bloody well home any other time.
Well that's actually not true. They were home when he came round to take all the stuff. The wives were home. Admittedly the men may not be home at certain times, but....
You see, you put us in this situation. I mean I had to force the Landlords' Association to take this Rama thing up. They wanted to play it very carefully, and it was an unpopular cause. It's just I had the feeling that a very serious injustice was being done to an elderly Indian and I still think that's happening. I mean, I accept what you say, that there have been abuses, but I feel that you've gone too far now in the other way. It's vindictive and it's nasty.
I'd like to clear this matter up. Now we utterly reject the charge that our attack on Rama is a racist attack. It's not. The facts of the matter are...
But he is a good target, isn't he?
When we set up the TPA it so happened that the most number of complaints that we got were about Rama.
Yes....
But now we're getting into Mr Rippon, slightly, we're....
How do you feel about attacking someone like Rippon, for instance? I mean, would you feel confident? Would you do so? You've got to be practical and realistic....
We most certainly do. We've already achieved one or two small victories against Mr Rippon. On the other hand, we have suffered the odd defeat against him.
What I'm driving at is that you're dealing with a man that is capable of organising people to use physical force if necessary, so he's a more difficult target. Rama was in splendid isolation. Nobody wanted to help him. Even the police refused to carry out their legal obligation on Rama's behalf, as you know.
One of the things that would be helpful to the Maori people would be to have a Muldoon as Minister of Maori Affairs. There's been too much soft-soaping. You need a Cabinet Minister who would tell the Maoris that 'you're all a pack of lazy bastards'.
I think we're very good to the Maori. We're too good. There's too much of the 'free cars for Maoris' attitude around.
Well, we feel that the principles involved in our attack on people like Rippon and co are identical to the principles behind our attack on Rama.
Rama nevertheless, is a much easier target, or has been.
But Rama's tenants are a much easier target for a landlord too.
You see, Rama's a fool to have tenants like that. Am I not correct in saying that largely his property is acceptable property. He's not a rackrenter or anything, he's not dealing with slum property. Substantially, it's reasonable property, isn't it?
No. His biggest property, Lewick Flats, is a slum.
Yes, so I hear. That's one property, but substantially it's reasonable property, is that a fair comment?
The property at Upper Hutt is okay, but Lewick is an ugly place, Fergusson Drive's a horrible place and King's Crescent, where he tried to exact the arrears, is another slum. But, about the tenants themselves, we've been criticised for attacking Rama because he's an Indian, hut the fact is that we would attack a landlord like him whatever race he happened to be. We attack all exploiters. I think that we have effectively repudiated the charge that our attack was a racist one. I'd also like to make the point that most of Rama's tenants are Polynesians, some of them are actually Indians, and they themselves are leading the attack. So I think that in itself makes non sense of.....
The shame about communism is that it never took place as Marx planned it. He planned it for Germany and it would have suited the German temperament.
Well, It's probably a little bit of a distortion to say they are "leading" the attack. I mean are they..... leading the attack, or are they The "mentality of the landlord" ...... I see you have reference to me in here. You called me a speculator. Now I don't think there's anything wrong with speculation. It serves a useful economic purpose. Dealers do. Dealers are always disliked in any community, but we'd miss them if they weren't there. I'm described as a speculator. What else do you say? "Bob Jones would stoop to such bullshit as "the services we provide for a large section of the public." Well, that's wild supposition isn't it? You've never heard me say that. [Referring to Salient, June 15, page 11 - Ed.]
What does it say there? "Bob Jones wouldn't stoop to such...."
Oh, I'm terribly sorry. Well you're quite correct actually, because the reason I wouldn't... and I don't think it's bullshit... it's usually said with the inference being that that's the prime motive for being a landlord. Well, it's not. Now, that's precisely why I wouldn't do that. But, you see, you describe me as a speculator. Now I'll repeat this, to my mind the speculator serves a useful purpose, but you've done no investigation of that, in fact, I don't engage in that sort of activitiy.
Still, you do buy up fairly cheap property and develop it.
No, no. You see, what I do — and I don't spend terribly much time in property matters — I probably average half an hour a day just in business matters, on management and so on. But in the interests of accuracy, the answer is no. The economics of buying expensive property and developing it happen to be a lot better than buying cheap property. Cheap property is cheap, because it's nasty property. It pays to buy the best.
But nonetheless, you take risks?
Certainly, yes.
Well, that's sort of a loose definition of a speculator.....
Well, I don't see it as a speculation.
....a person who takes risk with property. But perhaps our term isn't exact. How would you describe yourself?
Well, the most accurate term is to say I'm a 'property investor" because that's what substantially I have been engaged in.
Trying to control inflation by price control is like trying to cure elephantiasis by putting a plaster cast around it.
Salient: You have been quoted as saying that you were thinking of seeing if some physical force could be applied to tenants.
Jones: If the need arose certainly. I accept as you say that the Rama strike didn't begin because he was an Indian and a prime target but that it began because your motivation was something you genuinely believed in. But nobody came to Rama's assistance and the thing got out of hand to the extent that it did and you found you could get away with it. Nine months have elapsed and people have sat there and not paid any rent. I have the impression that this is a situation that the tenants are finding very attractive for the obvious reason, and that their wish is for it to continue and not be resolved. Now if that is the case and if Rama is unable to recover possession of his property which he is rightfully entitled to do, legally and morally in my view, and if he is unable to do so and the police refuse to do so then we would have to take his property. He says he's not able, that he's gone in and said to some of his tenants 'if you won't pay rent then leave' and they said 'throw us out.' Well, I'm not going to stand by and see Rama get bankrupted, I'll make sure that he is backed up with sufficient force to throw them out.
So you'll bring down some of your heavy weight boxing friends?
Well I don't know who I'll bring down but they would be available I'm not seeking that situation, I would far rather ......I mean what do you suggest Rama do?
Well I think that your understanding of the situation is incorrect. At the moment it may look as though the tenants' situation is attractive to them in so far as not paying rent but most of them, as far as we know, are putting rent away.
As far as you know, have you investigated that?
We've investigated, yes.
But as far as I'm concerned, that's not the point. I don't think they should have been paying the full arrears either because that would be inconsistent with their belief that the rent was too high in the first place. Now if formerly, they've been paying their $25 or $35 a week rent for their flats and they've been working five days a week with overtime, or six days a week, in order to pay off their rent and they've been scraping and scrimping in order to buy things and if suddenly they're in a situation where they were paying no rent who's to blame them for spending a bit of the money they've worked for?
Nobody's to blame them but it would be inconsistent with what has been said, that's all.
Fair enough. Well this matter will be resolved when we finally get round the table and negotiate.
Well when is that going to be done?
Well as far as we are concerned its basically Rama who's being holding us all up.
Well, Rippon rang me this morning and I said, because I'm going away. I'm going off to South America in a fortnight, and I suggested to him that I think I have some influence over Rama and I suggested to him that he ring Amanda Russell which he's done and try and set up a meeting and let's see if it can be resolved, now whether it is genuinely wished to resolve it or whether the more attractive proposition is for the tenants to carry on not paying rent.....
Well I'd like to correct that impression too because....
Well clearly there has been a lot of misunderstanding.
......stressing that it is largely the tenants who are organising the strike, the continuing strike, it has been brought to our notice, there have been a few tenants who have wanted to opt out because all they want is secure accomodation.
What have you done about it? Have you allowed them to opt out?
We are not in a position, we don't actually have the power to say you can opt out or you can't opt out. We have never stood in their way.
No. But have you tried to influence them?
We haven't tried to influence them, no. The other tenants, may have tried to influence them, that's their right.
I was told this morning that Rama recently let a couple of properties about a fortnight age a couple of flats and that the Tenant's Protection arrived I think over the weekend on their doorstep and suggested that they join the rent strike. It does sound as if you are onto a good thing here. Now you make reference to the heavy weight boxers, well that's colourful and dramatic or melodramatic, but what other recourse of action has he had — you say its a battle.
He has one other recourse of action and that's to negotiate.
Well let's just remember that the legal position is that he doesn't have to. Just because it means that these people have a problem it doesn't mean that I'm unsympathetic to their problem. But we're discussing Rama's situation. The legal position is that he doesn't have to.
Damn the legal position.
All right if you say damn the legal situation let's remain consistent with that attitude. If Rama is able to gain the support of 20 heavy weight boxers, who will not have to do anything illegal anyway, they merely have to stand there when he takes possession of his flats and protect him. Look it's not a situation that I relish and I've got no bloody wish to help a man who is a villain, whether you believe that or not, its true. If he is standing over these people, look I'm quite sure that what you say is true about these incidents that have occured in the past, I do believe you but the thing is that I also believe that the reason that he's done this is consistent with his whole background and upbringing and attitudes. Perhaps you don't have to be sympathetic but perhaps you can understand it. He's surely had his lesson. Now what I want to do is get his affairs out of his hands because I'm sure this sort of thing doesn't happen generally. I mean there's been the suggestion that this type of property has been subject to this type of abuse, that its almost a norm. That's the feeling you get when you read the paper, particularly just after the elections. Now I've told you there are 200,000 rent properties in New Zealand. If there was any merit in that suggestion we'd hear a lot more about it. The average landlord-tenant relationship is a reasonably amicable one.
That's just why we've attacked the Rama situation because its not an amicable one. And that's the one concession that he could well have made, and he hasn't made. Even though he's human and deals with a whole lot of other human beings he's refused to talk to them and refused to negotiate with them.
All right, look. I've sought to find the facts about Rama and been unable to and I'm quite sure that what you say is correct, but as a result of that you people swung the pendulum completely the other "way and so you are equally guilty. You are equally guilty of all the charges that you lay against him. This sort of thing for instance [referring to Salient 13—Ed] your cartoons of Rama and his picture all over the place and the description of him, it's unkind and it's a distortion.
The only picture we've ever drawn is of a man sitting on a housing empire, that's not a racist cartoon, its not an anti-human cartoon. It's just a picture of a man who's sitting on an empire and is determined not to let it go.
Is Rama's property noted for the number of rats in them?
Yes, the Lewick Flats in particular are slums.
I think there's a lot of misunderstanding here, I don't think that you probably appreciate the problems that confront him. I think that the proper course of action is to try and get around the table and not fire abuse but get to the bottom of it and find out the sort of things he was doing and really don't matter much anymore anyway. We can get his property out of his hands and I think that if I can persuade him to do that....
Into whose hands?
Into an agents hands, somebody to act on his behalf.
Well, we want his properties to go into the government's hands.
Oh, that s, that's you see you say you want that, but do you believe that's likely to come about?
Not in the immediate future, although there are....
I have that 'trespassers will be shot' sign in my driveway because its a case of absolute need. I'm a bloke that likes my privacy, I'm funny about that, I'm a bit of a recluse. There used to be so many people coming into this place and driving around just gaping. So I put up that sign. They still didn't believe me. One day there was a Volkswagen crawling around at about two miles an hour. He left at 200 miles an hour after I fired one or two shots at his car.
....well we must talk about the immediate future.
....there are certain promising signs, for instance in London the Labour majority in the council there want to take over all privately owned accommodation and this will happen
Yes but you say that the Labour Council, want to in London but they're not impowered to do so. They can't pass laws to do so. This would require legislation from Parliament and Parliament doesn't want to in the foreseeable future.
But in the New Zealand situation, I think there are 16 branches of the Labour Party who put this very same resolution at their conference.
Yes and how was it treated? Well you don't have to answer that because I know the answer but do you see any signs, do you genuinely see the possibility in the next three years of that sort of legislation?
I don't care if it takes thirty years or fifty years. As far as we are concerned, if I can project some of what you call our 'hysterical' talk into this conversation, Rama and fellow landlords are a historically doomed class, and more and more people all over the world are coming to realise this.
Well yeah, possibly, you're possibly correct that they're a doomed class. I'd probably agree in the long term they are a doomed class but you see you talk of them as a class. They're not a class of people really, they're people who have saved some money and are putting it into property, the only sensible thing to do having saved some money. The other option is to bloody give it away.
What's so unsensible about giving it away?
Well that's a bloody good idea for the recipients.
What's so unsensible about having an economic system in which you actually don't make profits?
That's an entirely different question of course isn't it?
Well that's what we are aiming for.
I gather that but the fact remains that we are in such a system and....
We aim to overthrow it.
Well I know that but I think you're an awful long way away from that and I think further that you are not doing anything that's going to gain you any support. I think whilst the landlords are a doomed class, so's your ideology. I think that the end result may be the same but will come about through different means.
I don't think communism is a doomed ideology.
If you want my opinion on that, communism is a doomed ideology. I think that the end effect will be substantially the same, but its a doomed ideology. People get too fanatical about communism I mean, I once got fanatical about communism. The thing that seems to distort one's picture is that the people who don't make it in this type of society and there are very few people suffering, the people who encounter hardship are not really encountering hardship through the system but through personal circumstances. That's my view of the thing, and by all means help them. But I don't see anything terribly wrong with the system.
I was in Tashkent and I ran across some students who were boasting about conditions in Russia, you know, paying only one rouble a month for a heated room and that sort of thing. But when it came down to it they were pretty bored. There's a terrible frustration and gloom about the place. This has nothing to do with the economic system or ideology, it's a criticism of the sort of dull minded people in government and the life they impose.
But what often causes these so-called personal circumstances?
Things like run away husbands, that sort of thing, I'm talking about, you know, wife left behind.
Well, what causes unsatisfactory marital relationships? You don't believe in the old original Sin that people are basically bad do you?
No, no that's got nothing to do with it. I've been married unsuccessfully. We all make mis takes in a marriage and the husband shoots through and leaves the wife with three kids,all of a sudden she's in terrible bloody financial, strife. These are the sorts of people who are suffering hardship. In our political system the bit that worries me most of all is that you're not allowed to bloody well practise medicine, you can't design buildings, you can't do anything anymore, and rightly so, without the proven qualifications and yet the most important area of all, that of Government, any bloody man, any bloody man can participate in and unfortunately the system is so geared that mugs do. I think its a shocking thing, I mean, you've only got to look at the Parliamentary system and the sheer stupidity that is spoken in Parliament frequently. The absolute ignorance of a great number of the members and cabinet ministers, and I'm not referring just to the Labour Government because many of their predecessors were equally stupid, makes me think its a terribie bloody system. But I don't see any reason why we can't continue with roughly the same system. There are other areas that bother me to. There should be a degree to qualify members for parliament. Its the most important area of all so there should be a university degree. And it should be the most difficult of all.
Well there is a university degree in political science.
Yes but that's got nothing to do with reality.
Well, take a country where politics is far more sophisticated, where you don't get in unless you're not only highly intelligent but also have million of dollars to back you up — the United States. Look at the sort of mess that they get into.
Yes but they do have aspects of their system that I wish we could borrow from. For instances one of the things that I find appealing about their system is the fact the Government having gained power does call upon outside individuals of proven ability and gives them the equivalent to cabinet positions. But I don't really believe in democracy anyway. Democracy's not applied in any other area so I don't see why it should be applied in the political area.
You're an expert on certain aspects of business dealings — would you like to be in government?
Not in this system. Trudeau I think made the most fitting comment when he was being interviewed by Edwards. Something I've always remembered was when Edwards endeavoured to embarrass him with that glib question to embarrass all politicians "What makes you think you're so special? Why do you want to be prime minister?" Most people have difficulty answering that sort of question but I think he handled it well, he said "Being prime minister is the most exciting job in Canada". I think its a bloody good answer. Government is an exciting thing to be in, not in this country because being in government in this system is largely frustrating. I mean look at Kirk there's a man that's achieved the ultimate presumably in his aspiration and I don't think it would have been worth it to have to go through the frustration and disappointment and time, unless you're religious and believe you'll live for ever, you only live once. And to have to waste so many years of your life to achieve that, its just not on. Look at blokes like Bassett and Frank O'Flynn. They're probably so busy that they haven't got time to think about it, but nevertheless, they must be a little disappointed with the time they have to waste because of the system. The sheer frustration of going through this bloody nonsense which is the debating chamber, sitting at the back there and having to sit there hour after hour and finally getting up and having their say and they're not allowed to read from notes for instance, this sort of thing, it's just so time wasting.
You haven't wasted much time in getting to the top in your practical field, have you fulfilled your ambition?
Well I don't have any ambitions to get to the top in business, business really doesn't interest me, believe it or not.
What are your ambitions?
I wish I knew. At the moment I'm involved in lots of things, but I don't know what I'll do yet. I really don't know what I'll do, but I don't spend much time on business, I spend about half an hour a day and its just overseeing. I don't push, I don't get out there and look for more and more properties, there's an optimum bloody amount. In the current situation I really don't have to push even if I wanted to. You can't help but get richer and richer, in the inflationary situation that we're in which is covered up by government. When it first started, I wrote an article in the Dominion two years ago predicting exactly what would happen, and put it in terms of the property owner. It was one of two parts and I never wrote the second part because I had so many people ring me up and say 'what's this bloody nonsense' and so on. Nevertheless it was embarrassing although I knew what was happening and what would happen and all one had to do was go out and buy some millions of dollars worth which is easy to do when you know how, of the right type of property. You can finance them 100% and two years elapse and you've doubled the value of the thing. Now government's been lying about it, its like Topsy, it just grows you don't have to do anything, you know I don't get out and push for more and more property.
I don't think anyone's inherently lazy but a bit of a spanking, even a verbal one, might be a good thing for the Maoris... the modern Maori is a disgrace. Ministers of Maori Affairs go around the country talking about what a noble race they are. They aren't. They're a disgrace.... Its not so much their character, the most harmful thing to the Maori is the way the Government treats them... There's nothing wrong with being lazy but they shouldn't expect society to support them.
I
I can see what took place in France in the
They are issuing statistics talking
about an 8% increase per annum in building costs over the last two years, well I know the facts of the matter and it has been 100%.....
Governments are not doing anything about
Ten years after this play's first performance. Unity Theatre belatedly announce its 'New Zealand Premier'. One wonders why they bothered to resurrect this tortuous piece of desiccated realism, the larger part of which is given over to the central character's monologues. Indeed, it could be conjectured that Arthur Millar has simply edited a representative series of episodes from the files of his Psychoanalyst and dressed them up in dramatic form.
The central figure, Quentin, a middle class American intellectual reviews the pattern of his life focusing primarily upon his relationships with women and 'Socialism'. While his relationship with 'Socialism' — of which we learn nothing is not even substantial enough to warrant an appearance before McCarthy's notorious tribunal, his various wives all end up on the analyst's couch. His last wife, Maggie, is apparently based upon Marilyn Monroe (Millar's former wife). So represented here it is difficult to divine what fascination she could have exercised over Kennedy.
Formally, the play is presented by means of Quentin's monologues to the audience. The order of his dialogue with the other characters is dictated by the order in which they appear in his freely associating mind. However this is all realised in a fundamentally realistic, linear framework which merely juxtaposes episodes, never allowing any development of them.
Instead of providing the audience with multiple perspectives in which to assess Quentin's life, we are offered mannered soliloquies in which the banal predominates over the illuminating. Finally we are left with a static set of mimetic frames in which Quentin is gradually drowned in his own verbal diarrhoea. Consequently his forced expression of optimism at the end is a weak and ad hoc conclusion.
I left the theatre feeling that I had witnessed the product of a diseased and decadent culture — a meditation on its own vacuity.
Chekhoy's impressionistic, delicate characterisation and slow development of plot is an unusual choice for Downstage, which tends to prefer strong, pouncing writers. It's understand able that the cast seemed uneasy with the first scenes, tending to parody and play for the laughs they're accustomed to receiving. Gradually, however, the actors became absorbed in the pitiful collection of unrealised, self absorbent lives, to give some superb performances. David Tinkham as Vanya at lust overblown and self-conscious, suddenly improved after the interval. The histrionics became natural and fitting in the portrayal of a middle-aged man overcome by the discovery of a self denied for many years in the service of a man he now despises and envies for his wife. Janice Finn complements Tinkham's performance with her characterisation of Sonya, equally put upon and equally aware that love, and through it life, eludes her. Chekhoy rightly refuses to celebrate their self efacement and devotion to others who are hardly devoted to them; such indirect living is for him a tragedy, a negation of humanity. David Tinkham and Janice Finn give compelling, anguished performances. It's a pleasure to discover how good an actress Janice Finn can be, in a part that exerts rather than the smart, saucy roles that are usually her lot.
The other characters arc more cut-and-dried, certainly deliberately unsympathetic, even at times a little caricaturish - particularly the domineering 'professor', the old nurse, and the distant mother immersed in her feminist tracts. Grant Tilly is magnificent as the doctor caught up in provincialism, teetering on the edge of an abyss of fear, lost hope and sterility, talking of destruction of environment and humanity in terms that present day activists would applaud. At the same time he is ignorant of the quietly desperate plea of real people close to him. Vanya and the unbeautiful Sonya. I'm beginning to think that Grant Tilly is not only the most versatile actor in the country, but also one of the more intelligent and conscientious (partly because he refuses to be stereotyped?). Anne Flannery as the bored young wife of the elderly 'professor' who plays little-girl games with other people's feelings is at times very good, at others a little strained.
This production of 'Uncle Vanya' is a fine disturbing piece of theatre at its best — when it enriches understanding and, at the same time, questions the theatregoer's presumptions and his own communication lines. Chekhov's criticism is not confined to the bored and insensitive. The play is, ultimately, a plea for self respect and knowledge, without which communication is tenuous at best.
"Tartuffe" was written as a satire against the hypocrisy of concealing manipulation beneath an ideological front. Moliere's barbs are directed equally at the gullibility of those duped, those who place importance on exterior attributes (right dress, right vocabulary... rather than the hidden interior, Unfortunately, Diane Hawker's production, imaginative and well staged as it is gives the dupes sympathy, and thus converts the play from comedy to an uneasy melodrama. Jeremy Littlejohn's Tartuffe, the pious masquerade who seeks to seduce Orgon of home, property and spouse, is too credibly evil, which makes it hard to see him as an object of ridicule. Orgon himself, played by Peter White, comes close to being comic, but somehow always misses, becoming in turn pathetic and authoritarian-again too credibly for the needs of the play.
Much of the dialogue, particularly in the first half is inaudible: the cast try to imitate a sleightness of speech which takes years to master, and successfully distance the audience in a blur of emoted syllables. Some of the minor parts seem uneasy, a little forced; two mysterious stagehands in stockinged heads, feet muffled elaborately change furniture between scenes, which arouses associations in my mind far from the theme of 'Tartuffe', and were in general, one of the main sources of amusement for the sparse audience. The whole production comes close to comedy but never masters it completely. It's a very interesting failure with a director 'who should go far' as the saying goes. Certainly the production did not fail because of a lack of thought, or from an attempt to try too hard and to show how exciting, how daring she could be, unlike other more pretentious university productions.
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Victor Serge is one of the writers of previous revolutions whose work is presently having something of a revival in young radical circles. He is a writer of total revolutionary committment, who presents work as an artistic and political totality. The sixties and early seventies, although decades of turmoil and genuine political unrest, so far as the countries of advanced capitalism are concerned, have failed to produce fiction of enduring standard from the turmoil. The reasons for this no doubt lie to a large extent in the nature of the radical movements themselves — fragmented coalitions of disaffection rather than revolutionary movements concious of themselves in that role. Serge belongs to a different age but one that has lost its literary imperative no less than his subjects lost their political imperative.
Birth of Our Power begins with a failed uprising in Barcelona in which the narrator participates, clearly paralelling Serge's own experience. The uprising has an air of unreality about it — being postponed for an important bullfight — and acts as an example for the revolutionary activity which falls short of revolution. The attention passes, through a lengthy internment in a French internment camp, to where 'our power' has at last been born — Bolshevik Russia. The dialectic of the three phrases is mediated brilliantly through the experience of the narrator, always in terms of his human contact with those around him.
Serge (his real name was Victor Lvovich Kibalchich) had revolution in his blood. "On the walls of our humble and makeshift lodgings," he recalled in his Memoirs of a Revolutionist, "there were always portraits of men who had been hanged". He lived his life with living portraits such as those in Birth of Our Power, with the knowledge of future hangings in their hearts. Writing was Serge's means of expressing such an existence. He wrote his first novel Men in Prison after a five year prison term to "free myself from this inward nightmare, as well as the performance of a duty toward all those who will never so free themselves."
The revolution flows on within him and without him. Serge takes into his philosophical/literary practice Lenin's concept of the actuality of revolution, that is the understanding of the total process of social development as a revolutionary. As he writes in Birth of Our Power, "Nothing is ever lost.... Tomorrow is full of greatness. We will not have brought this victory to ripeness in vain. This city will be taken, if not by our hands, at least by others like ours, but stronger. Stronger perhaps for having been better hardened, thanks to our very weakness. If we are beaten, other men, infinitely different from us, infinitely like us, will walk, on a similar evening in ten years, in twenty years (how long is really without importance) down this rambla, meditating on the same victory. Perhaps they will think about our blood. Even now I think I see them and I am thinking about their blood, which will flow too. But they will take the city".
Birth of Our Power, as a novel of the revolution is a part of the revolution. It is now available in a 280 page hardback edition for only 90 cents from the Salient Office. The book is being distributed at this low price by Project Books, a left-wing book grouping, Box 704 Auckland.
"Women are the race itself...... the strong primary sex, and man the biological afterthought."
This is just one of the hundreds of provocative statements contained in Elizabeth Gould Davis's controversial book, "The First Sex".
Davis's book is based on a double thesis: first that thousands of years ago, before the earliest recorded civilisation there existed a great civilisation which had a matriarchal social structure.
This is not mere speculation, but the result of extremely well-documented research. Concentrating mainly on the second part of her stated thesis — that matriarchy is the primary form of human society, and women have been the major civilising force since the dawn of humanity — Davis backs up her assertions with evidence from archaeology, anthropology, mythology, literature, philology, and history. She uncovers a mass of facts that will fill most female readers with a mixture of exhilaration and rage: exhilaration at finding out that the depressing versions of history and biology we learnt at school were full of lies about women, and our inferior status is not ordained by nature; and rage that the truth about our heritage has been hidden and discredited for so long.
Popular belief, nourished by biblical myth, holds that men are the human norm form from which women were modified, whether by God or evolution, to perform a reproductive function. Davis however, tells us that, on the contrary, "man is but an imperfect female". The Y chromosome that produces males is a deformed and broken X (female) chromosome.
"The first males were mutants, freaks produced by some damage to the genes caused perhaps by disease or a radiation bombardment from the sun." That the Y chromosome has a negative effect is borne out by the fact that females are freer from birth defects and congenital diseases, free from colour-blindness and haemophilia, and generally physiologically tougher than males.
Another pillar of the patriarchy that Davis destroys is the familiar image of the hairy caveman leading civilisation out of apehood and on to civilisation by inventing the wheel, discovering fire, pottery, agriculture, animal domestication, tanning and all the other crafts that first set human beings apart from the animals. In fact, it was woman who was responsible for all these vital discoveries, while man was occupied with the relatively unimportant task of hunting.
Davis cites evidence of the high status of woman in classsical Greece and Rome, and vindicates many great women who masculine historians have either consigned to oblivion or turned into laughable curiosities. One such woman was Boadicea, the warrior queen of first century Britain who by contemporary accounts was highly revered by her people and feared by her enemies, but who lives in history only as an "unnatural virago".
The masculinity of God is accepted almost without question in our present society, but the first deities of humankind were invariably female. The well-known "words of God", "In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth", were in fact adapted, like much of Genesis, by Jewish priests in the sixth century BC from an ancient Babylonian scripture that began, "In the beginning Tiamat brought forth the heaven and the earth... Tiamat, the mother of the Gods, creator of all." Davis also cites many instances where the Jewish patriarchs' attempted to rewrite the ancient scriptures, so as to disguise the original matriarchal nature of their culture, and where this lead to inconsistencies. The Song of Deborah in the Book of Judges has remained relatively intact, despite Deborah's high status, only because it is a prized Jewish literary gem.
The early Christian church, which in its fanatical patriarchalism had set out to annihalate the goddess-worship still widespread in Europe, found itself forced by popular demand, and in order to ensure its own survival, to recognise Mary as divine. It was not to Jehovah or Jesus that the classical gods fell, but to Mary, and the rapid spread of Christianity from that point is attributable to her.
A large section of the book is devoted to detailing the abominable way in which women were treated by the early Christian church in its ruthless efforts to win the masses over to its patriarchal ideology. Davis offers this as the sole reason for women's present subjection, without even attempting a political analysis of sexism. As her analysis is never political and this is obviously not her field, Davis is perhaps wise to keep to what she knows rather than weaken the credibility of the whole book by drawing false conclusions. However, neglecting to mention any other factors contributing to the downfall of women, Davis places a rather disproportionate emphasis on the role of Christianity in this process.
Another criticism of the book that should be made is that Davis's excellent documentary tapers out around the nineteenth century. The courageous struggle of the early feminists in winning the vote and other reforms is not even mentioned, and although the book was first published in
I was lucky enough to pick up a preview of "The First Sex", but haven't seen any copies around the local bookshops since then. Keep asking for it, place orders for it, make the bookshops and libraries get it, because in spite of my minor reservations, I feel this is one of the most important feminist books to emerge for some time. For anyone who thinks there's nothing new to say in support of women, for anyone who wonders why we need women's studies courses, and certainly for everyone with any interest in feminism at all, "The First Sex" is compulsory reading.
Jesse Winchester is an Amerikan, domiciled
Sessions for the album began with the Full Tilt Boogie Band, the same group that supplied the backing for Jams Joplin's Pearl". Relations between Winchester and the band grew strained and fell apart in the studio, however, so he handpicked a different set of session men. None of those he came up with are "known", but their performance is all that could be wished for. Three tracks were recorded in
No strings of adjectives this time around: quite simply. Winchester is a genius, in the only sense of the word. If you buy one album this year, make it this one. Using acoustic guitar, flute and puno with consummate artistry, he's attained a standard that most artists could struggle for all their lives and still never come near.
Of the 13 songs only one runs to over three minutes, and each one says more within its alloted time span than most other performers could say with an entire album. I hesitate to select single tracks because of the overall consistency, but the opener, "Isn't that so", seems to me to be one of the two highlights. The seemingly simple guitar backdrop sets an uneasy mood for a fine critique of plausible, but fallacious reasoning: "Didn't He know what he was doing putting eyes inside my head?/ If He didn't want me watching women/ He'd a left my eyeballs dead" ....... "You've gotta go where your heart says go/ Isn't that so?"
The other outstanding track is North Star, a perverse, brilliantly sustained flight of allegorical fancy, underscored by a solo acoustic guitar: "Does the world have a belly button/ I can't get this out of my head/ Cause if it turns up in my yard/ I'll tickle it so hard/ that the world's gonna laugh to wake the dead".
Elton John's "Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only the Piano Player", is a reprise, with variations, on his last release, "Honky Chateau". That album marked an abrupt change of direction for the John—Taupin team after the vapid excesses of "Madman Across the Water" and this one continues it. It is not, as the weekend muckrakers would have us believe, the best album released so far this year. It is, however, a carefully planned, logical extension of the "back to basics" approach formulated on "Honky Chateau", and that's enough to ensure that it is a pudgy Englishman's personal best.
The album is based on a sequence of American-orienta led fantasies, extending from the recreation of a
"Teacher, I need you" and "I'm going to be a teenage idol" are also rooted in nostalgia, and are successful for all that, but the best cut is the catchy single release, "Daniel". Elton, doubling on "flute" mellotron and electric piano, and Ken Scott on A.R.P. synthesizer make full and fitting use of the electronic instrumentation to frame Taupin's best ever lyric. Full marks to Festival for the lavish presentation, which includes a 12-page book of coloured photographs and lyrics.
The same company is also responsible for the Rita Coolidge release. Ms Coolidge's only real claim to fame was as a backing vocalist, but somehow she's managed to talk enough bread out of Herb Albert for three solo albums. It must be something to do with having the right connections — many of whom have pitched in to supply the music for "The Lady's Not for Sale" They include Carl Radle. Jim Keltner, Kris Kristotterson and the seemingly inseperable Kunkel—Sklar duo, but they sound as if they know they're backing a loser, and play like a soulless version of Booker T and the MGs. Everything works, but it lacks any distinctive quality which would set it apart from the 30 or so albums released every week.
Above them, Rita has assembled a goodly collection of lyrics from pens as diverse as Marc Beno, Dylan and Kristofferson. The unfortunate part is that she sings them with a voice as bland and as uninteresting as vanilla instant pudding, as mechanically as a primer reciting the alphabet. Her gentle approach makes even a tune like "Bird on the Wire" too saccharine to take. It has absolutely none of the anguished desperation of the Cocker or Hardin versions, nor the bitter pathos inherent in the Cohen original. Given the familiarity of the song it should be easy enough to listen to. Not so. After about 45 seconds your concentration wanders. I wonder where she'd be if she wasn't screwing Kristofferson.
Dobie Gray, mercifully, is something else again. He represents MCA's attempt to crash the soul market dominated by Stax, Tamla and Atlantic. With "Drift Away", produced in Nashville by Mentor Williams, they've made a promising start. Like Elton John's album the stand out track is the single release, which gives the album its name. Basically, it's a bittersweet paen that can only be described as cathartic: "Day after day I'm more confused /yet I look for the light through the pouring rain /you know that's a game I hate to lose /and I'm feeling the strain /ain't it a shame ....give me the beat boys and free my soul /I want to get lost in your rock and roll and drift away". The lyric is expressively put across by an appropriately intense vocal, nestling neatly into a sympathetic dual guitar backdrop, which pushes the song through several verses and then dissolves into an incredible acapella section. The rhythm section doesn't mess around either, they're tight and round out a pop masterpiece that could give a lot of pointers to other singers who burble about their fanciful notions of "reality" and such like from behind a lack of sensitivity.
There's nothing else on the album that matches that. In fact when he slows down the tempo he comes out sounding a lot like a syrupy O.C. Smith, notably on "We had it all". His forte is medium and up-tempo numbers — particularly impressive is his rendition of Duck Dunn's "Rocking Chair", and his own. "City Stars" which is brilliantly lit by Weldon Myrick's stabbing steel guitar licks.
The remainder of the album is slightly above par Tamla-type material, competently performed but not music that leaves much of an impression. Most albums these days can be boiled down to a single. This one is no exception, but if Gray can sustain the quality of the single for an entire album the results will certainly be worth hearing.
Now here's a nice competent album from Argent. Nice blue cover of the boys swimming underwater in a London pool and eight nice innocuous songs.
Argent, as we all know, are — for the most part — The Zombies. And whether it matters, the only place I've ever seen the odd Argent album is in the omnipresent "Sale/Chuck Out Bins".
"In Deep" is adequate. Like Free though, it's also all highly predictable — die chord changes come exactly where you expect them and Russ Ballard's tunes have that (for me) annoying quality of 'deja yu'.
Peter Rotherham would be pleased to hear the Socialist-inspired "It's Only Money Parts 1 and 2" with a mass of Grand Funk and Ticket (yes!) vocals. Family's Roger Chapman probably died in the arse at Rod Argent and Chris White's "Be Glad", an almost infallible rip-off from "Save Some for Thee" from Family's
Excuse the vapid cover notes and it's a fair enough album. A wee bit of it is quite excellent and no one could be unmoved by the soul in the six-minute "God Gave Rock 'n' Roll to You".
Aaah, slut. Gimme some Roxy Music any day.
Ineptly titled, "Songs of Joy" covers a wide span of diluted music in capsule form varying from Bach to Satie. It all makes for very pleasant listening as the emphasis is on melody, harmony and arrangement, but I have my reservations on the treatment of this type of music, even by groups of this kind. At times, Werner Muller sounds like a cross between the Philadelphia Orchestra and Franck Pourcel. More to the point is "Latin Splendour" in which a large instrumental combination brings into play the many evocative and torrid sounds of this fine ensemble.
Her first album to win her an award since she attained stardom, "Liza with a "Z" " is a musical showcase for the gregarious talent of Liza Minnelli. With such a flexible organ (which sounds like her mother Judy Garland at times) she manages to extend every shred of sentiment to this selection as she flits from one note to another, from one mood to another, and with the greatest of case. Particularly noted, is her handling of "Mr Mammy" and "Bye, bye Blackbird".
Barbara Streisand's fans will recognise a number of hits taken from other previous albums especially "Funny Girl", still her best LP so far. Some are new versions with a more updated treatment, not always to her advantage as she seems to be under stress at times. "People" for instance does not measure up to the original stage arrangement, although "Mr Man" remains virtually unchanged. Nevertheless, in this "live" recording, her magnetism is still very much in evidence.
When the long-playing record was first introduced, the recording companies stored the masters of their old 78 rpm's m vaults where they were soon to be forgotten. It was only after experimenting with new techniques such as recording the highlights of an entire show or the "live performance" that requests for re-issuing some of the more popular 78 rpm's on LP's started to trickle in. At first, these requests were ignored. The reason given was that it was not profitable to release these old records in view of the limited demand. In some cases, the masters were lost. But when a small but dedicated band of music lovers started to record their, old jazz and opera 78 rpm's on to LP's and sell them to an ever-growing public, the major labels were obliged to take note. Especially, when one "bootlegger" flouting international, commercial practices, re-recorded a complete library on to LP's without prior permission and set himself up in business under the conspicuous name of "Jolly Roger". In the long run, the pirating of private property was stopped by court action but by then the lesson had been driven home. The recording companies were now ready to press their own masters. The result: a fabulous wealth in musical recordings by famous artists was immediately available. Not only were they preserved for posterity by means of improved reproduction techniques, but students were in a position to listen to some of the finest renditions in musical history. And this is how "Immortal Performances" came about— a collection of "unforgettable voices in unforgotten performances".
The list includes "Caruso.
The age of the greatest glory of the harpsichord can be situated between the 16th and late 18th centuries. Derived from a plucked string instrument which had been used since ancient times, the harpsichord served to emphasise the new harmonic orientation of ensemble music and as an important medium for the flourishing solo keyboard work. The music on this recording, composed over a period of almost three centuries in most countries of Western Europe, shows the capacity of the harpsichord for expression as a solo instrument in works of varied mood and style. Even though the harpsichord was to slip in popularity at the end of the 18th century in favour of the more powerful tone of the puno, it still remains as an aura of musical grace and sensitivity a potential factor in a musical world where the combination of sound involves the deep with the delicate.
As a composer, Vivaldi is noted for his architectural quality, his almost dainty and serence elegance of style in expressing sound to serve purely musical instincts. Although he has written opera, religious music and symphonies, Vivaldi has mainly acquired a reputation in the concerto form and this predilection is possibly due to his standing as a famous violinist and virtuoso. These Concertos belong to both his ecclesiastical and secular periods and are very easy to listen to.
These recordings represent the outgrowth of an initiative taken several years ago by Peter Munves, merchandising director of Columbia Records in New York. A firm believer in the lowbrow syndrome, Munves deliberately picked the melodic fragments of a composer of his choice as performed by top artists and packaged the selection under the title of "The Greatest Hits" as if they belonged to the pop scene. The series, which featured over 20 composers, was an instantaneous success. "Melody is what turns man on", claims Munves. "melody is for the people." The "greatest hits" of Beethoven and Tchaikovsky have been issued individually as two-record sets and it is fairly obvious that selecting the proper material remains a very important function. In this case, I would find it difficult to disagree with this judicious choice: Beethoven (First and Final Movements of Symphonies Nos. 5, 6 Pastorale, 3 Eroica, 9 Chorale; First Movements of "Moonlight" and "Pathetique" Sonatas and Concerto No. 5 Emperor; Turkish March, Fur Elise, Minuet). Tchaikovsky (Waltzes from "Nutcracker Suite", "Serenade", "Sleeping Beauty", "Eugene Onegin", "Swan Lake"; "Andante Cantabile",
The Mozart opera suites are from " The Abduction from the Seraglio", "Don Giovanni", "The Marriage of Figaro" and "The Magic Flute", all performed by an unusual aggregation of woodwind and brass instrumentalists to which have been added a harp and double bass. It is refreshing to listen to these 46 musicians, drawn mainly from well-known London orchestras as they create sounds which make Mozart even more likeable.
The Wagner selections were written at a time when the composer was immersed in Romanticism and ideas of political and social upheaval. In this, Wagner found much of his inspiration not only in the rigid, nationalistic concepts of German mythology but also in the modem outlook of "Young Germany", a group of writers whose most prominent member was the poet Heinrich Heine, who inspired the legend of the Flying Dutchman. "Rienzi" is based on a story by the English novelist, Bulwer Lyton.
Letters to the Editor: should be given to one of the editors, left in the box outside the office or posted to Box 1347. If at all possible they should be typed, or printed legibly, double-spaced on one side of the paper only.
We try to impose a limit of 300 words per letter—if you find yourself unable to work within these limits then come and see us about the possibility of putting it in the form of an article.
Hopefully we will not receive any more forged letters from the pens of well-meaning but, nevertheless misguided correspondents who seek to propagate their foul smears while remaining anonymous. Letters should be signed by the writers real name even if a nom-de-plume is used.
IT seems most important to me that the present scries of cricket test between England and New Zealand should not be ignored by progressive people. So it is most encouraging to me to note the study of cricket that is occurring among the staff of Salient.
Perhaps it is not apparent to readers why the current cricket series is so important. In simple terms, it is a matter of the struggle against neo-colonialist domination by the mother country. Since the granting of independence to New Zealand in
To examine this idea in greater detail, I will illustrate from the two most recent tours of New Zealand sporting teams to Britain. The
And so now the importance of the current cricket series is becoming clear. Every time the New Zealanders approach a victory in a test match, monopoly capitalism cringes in fear. Thus we witness the event, in the First test, of the Englishman Greig bowling a short ball to Dayle Hadlee, causing him to collapse on to the stumps when hit by it, and thus sealing victory for England. Such are the filthy tricks that arc employed by imperialism.
That is why progressive forces in this country should be taking an acute interest in the cricket scries. Until the colonies can beat the mother country at its own game, how can they possibly throw off the last shackles of imperialist domination?
I was one of the disappointed many at the "Why I Am Pissed Off With Salient Forum". There were so many criticisms from the right wing and the God Squad about Salient (most of them unjustified) that honest lefties and others, such as me, did not get a chance to attack and smear the reputations of the current editors.
Salient is giving far too much column space to people who could best be described as part of the emerging ruling class, i.e., your average students. It is getting so bad that its hard to find the Marxism—Leninism—Mao Tsetung thought among all the reactionary crap.
Large numbers of articles written from a rabidly left wing point of view have been rejected by yourselves due to lack of space. In fact Roger Steele admitted to me that Salient has been playing down the secterian raving, and has rejected letters that attack class enemies! Certain members of the progressive movement in Wellington arc beginning to ask an important question: Is Salient selling out to the impartial, 'giving both points of view'?
We will be eternally vigilant against any creeping liberalism in Salient. Transgressions will be remembered, and, come the revolution, three guesses what will happen.
Mr Steele's article on NZUSA reveals a basic misunderstanding of the make-up of that much maligned body. His criticisims are sound, but they arc not criticisms of NZUSA but of the Students' Association who at present exercise a majority vote. If Auckland and Canterbury students can find no better representatives than the career bureaucrats they elect to manoeuvre behind the scenes for further advancement and self-gratification, then NZUSA Officers can do no more than follow the directives these people vote through at Council and National Executive meetings. Since "Salient" is an organ of VUWSA Mr Steele would do more service for students if he told them how much effort Victoria student representatives put into trying to direct their funds in directions other than bureaucrats salaries.
His assertion that NZUSA is a mutual protection society for student bureaucrats is pure crap. At the last National Executive some of the delegates were more interested in manoeuvring for their own political futures than in running a national students' association. The way they spread despicable lies behind one another's back hardly sounds like mutual protection.
The blame for all these charades lies not with NZUSA as a body but with the silent majority of apathetic ignoramuses who don't bother to vote, or don't know how to vote when students' association officers are elected. How about an analysis of the political ignorance of Auckland and Canterbury students who elect these people. How about an analysis of the distorted articles on NZUSA which appeared in "Canta" and "Craccum".
I was delighted by your article on NZUSA in the June 27 issue of Salient. No doubt this will serve to arouse much debate either for or against the Salient styled bureaucrats who inhabit NZUSA offices. I am only sorry that your article was so factually incorrect and that it saw fit to devolve from time to time into pettiness.
I shall answer your points one by one.
In your article you were at pains to state that David Cuthbert neither wanted nor needed the money. David has in fact accepted his well deserved rise in salary.
At a recent Victoria University Students Association Executive meeting I quite clearly explained that the question of salaries would have arisen at some imminent date any way. If I could take up your badly related example of STB, I should point out that this service to students is rapidly gaining gigantic proportions. David Cuthbert will not be director for ever. By the time he leaves the post, the operations of STB will be such that no amount of unskilled enthusiasm will be able to keep such high standards.
All elected officers of NZUSA will retain the same reasonably low salary. However, the NZUSA Council that fixed such "egalitarian" and unworkable salary structures built in a dichotomy between rates of pay for elected officers and appointed officers. The appointed officers were chosen by a committee set up to investigate their professional skills. These "professional" people were to have been paid $1000 more than the elected officers. This recognition of professionalism or whatever was advanced as an egalitarian exercise which failed to appreciate its inbuilt dichotomy. NZUSA has now simply exaggerated that dichotomy. It has not this year begun the wild exercise of differentiation between this salary and that salary. It has simply made more workable the badly conceived legacy it was saddled with.
As for your final point about cutting NZUSA in to autonomous sections, I am pleased to inform you that this is in fact almost exactly the case. Each one of NZUSA's divisions is given a separate annual budget. Moreover this year I have been quite confident that the various officers looking after the various divisions arc fully competent individuals. Consequently, they are not at all directed by myself but rather left to develop the fields that they are most expert in.
I hope this clears up a few points.
A couple of Salients ago J. Olsen, in an endearingly honest disclosure informed us that a man's main fear was his fear of sexual failure.
The Men's Club-Playboy atmosphere which permeates our society would hardly be one which would dispel this sort of fear. In that atmosphere pretentions to and recipes for the attainment of instant and everlasting stiffness would be an impossible achievement which could only be upheld by myths maintained by the Brotherhood.
It would not take many women to dissolve these myths — hence my conjecture that this is one of the keys to the apartheid-like situation which exists between the sexes — at least in the big world outside university (a situation 'explained' by J. Olsen's "equal but different" theory). The fear of sexual incompetence is one reason which makes it imperative for men to keep control over women (John Stuart Mill called it "keeping them in subjection") so that it is men who make the rules and call the tune — in sexual relationships as in the larger society. The particular "system" doesn't seem to make much difference although we do hear some hopeful reports from Sweden occasionally.
The divide and conquer approach seems to have applied fairly universally and so we have the dichotomy of "pure" and "evil" women (not men, note), virgin and prostitute. The need for female eunuchs — pure and ignorant virgins and monogamy (for women only of course) can be seen. These people have no basis for making invidious comparisons.
Then on the other hand is that very convenient category of evil women ranging from the high-class call girl to the common or garden-variety prostitute, who serve the twin function of sewer and scapegoat for the baser instincts of none-the-less noble man.
This is a sad and hypocritical situation to say the least but I would remind J. Olsen that reputable experts assure us that male "sexual failure" (so much more visible than the female variety) is more a psychological thing than a physiological one. It should also be of interest to note that some female experts have made the astounding (?!) claim that "a man without a penis could make a very good lover." This statement should be recognised as a liberating idea and not as a castrating one (because a penis in its more usual place is lovely too) — its just that its not always essential and there should therefore be no need for talk of "sexual failure".
The sooner we get away from the Kama Sutra thirty-day-crection performance mentality the happier we might all be.
In this day and age, what earthly use are principles? Take No. 1: 'Thou shalt not kill'. To kill presumably means to deprive something of life. That includes not only humans, animals, and jelly fish but plants and bacteria. So, to slick to this principle one must never cat any animal, plant or jelly fish. One must not use soap, disinfectant or any kind of antibiotic — and of course, never use flyspray, or rat poison. So one lives in considerable discomfort. So where does everyone draw the line? Presumably at killing humans. Why is a human being worth anything more than a blade of grass? Isn't it easier to discard this principle, and prefer to think in terms of convenience for those living a full life now, where an unborn child's life is perhaps worth as little as a blade of grass? Even though it is extremely abhorrent to sterilise, the concept of abortion is perhaps necessary, to allow life to function adequately as it is now, in society.
An Unprincipled Heathen
It is interesting to read that 'Norman the Conquerer' claimed that the 'Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam had no status as a government and suggested that it was merely a puppet of Hanoi.
This argument seems to ring a bell. Checking through 'Keeping's Contemporary Archives' (page 23507
Well it seems that birds of a feather still stick together.
P.S. In
With reference to your plans to sell Salients in Wellington — what are you some sort of latent capitalist? Are you not aware as Mr Tripe (symbolism there?) points out in his fascinating letter (June 27) that 'Marxism-Leninism, however, shows the impossibility of using the institutions of the bourgeois state for the purposes of the proleterian state'? If selling papers isn't a capitalist trick what would you call messers Blundell/Gendall — cultural revolutionaries?
On the other hand, possibly your reluctance to perform the 'heroic act of the peoples' revolution' i.e., giving the fucking things away is based on your shrewd appraisal of the fact that 'the masses' of Wellington would probably, like us students, prefer the Dominion: But going by the piss-poor rag you produce, who's fault is that?
P.S. I'm sorry I spelt Leninism wrong the first time, but it's not a word I use very often — on the other hand, I suppose that considering the number of limes I've read the bloody word in Salient in the last three years, you're probably right, the mistake was inexcusable. Fraternally yours, Doug.
When, in his letter to you, Don Carson writes about the National Socialist Educational conference that the Socialist Action League held recently, he almost exposes the true nature of the organisation. However, there is a subtle, though unimportant distinction between Trotskyism and Fascism. Trotsky was an international socialist whereas it was Hitler who was the national socialist. I hope that it will now be possible for your readers to understand the relationship between the Young Socialists and Hitler Youth, and therefore to see the Young Socialists in their true light.
How, I ask, can your correspondant claim to have reviewed Bertolucci's Let's Tangle in Paris when he committed all reference to that powerful central scene, so arresting in its primitive aggression, which strains from every pore to the single leaping flame, - a veritable flagstaff - that climbs unstoppably, hopefully, towards the ceiling, so that she trembles as the colours approach, wondering if she should stand, or kneel, out of respect. His hands rasp over her, burning her spine, shoulders, biceps, nipples, navels, thighs, shins, never tarrying, eager for new ground, new lands to prospect and milk of their precious secretions, until her body bums, melts like buttered toast and she reaches out resolutely with both hands for — it is some distance away — the central heating switch. 'Get your head down that end,' he says, ' and dangle your legs over the clothesline.' So saying, he crawls under the bed, balances on his neck backwards, and does it over her left shoulder.
I must say that on first viewing the extraordinary, highly significant scene, I thought that it represented the crowning, well-nigh miraculous achievement of an artiste long up- and-coming, now truly engage vers the unique possibilities that are his, available to his penetrating — and the word seems scarcely adequate — intellect, which is so typical of the thrusting restlessness of the modern age, - its eternal quest for new vistas of experience, - while pursuing the ultimate relentlessly, revoltingly.
'Do you think ultimate sex is really possible?' is Jeanne's critical question, as she lies smoking at the end of the scene.
It is scarcely one of the questions modem cinema would not do well to avoid.
I suppose I'd better apologise to Alan Coulston for "destroying a beautiful ideal in the eyes of the people". That is, if a simple cartoon of a yank loving piano player can actually accomplish such a heinous act. I can't support Ashkenazy's views either Alan, in fact I actively oppose them. To keep silent in the face of a homage to imperialism just because an apologist for Western decadence can play the piano "en- thrallingly" and has been given a hard time in a revisionist country is mere sentimentality. And my fellow traveller doesn't substantiate with any examples his charge that I'm a rigid dogmatist. I try not to be dogmatic in my own "twisted" way, although I'll certainly admit to the odd blue here and there. Dogmatism is a tendency to be watched for and corrected, but as the Chairman said once "It is better to be a dogmatist than a revisionist." I would submit that it's also better to be dogmatic than to represent the USA as an admirable country.
Your guide to vocabulary in Salient; I don't want to scratch all that handyman's gloss sprayed over the complicated world, only to note your claim that "questions and criticisms will be published and answered as is necessary". As is necessary? If you like them? If you think you can edit or discredit them easily? Anyway, try the following quote for size. It's certainly not at all "necessary" to publish it, as it's by that old hack Orwell; none of your favoured governments sees it as "necessary" to allow their citizens to read him, so I guess you'll forget to publish this too.
"In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible... thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called 'pacification'. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry; this is called 'transfer of population', or 'rectification of frontiers'. People arc imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called 'elimination of unreliable elements'. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them.... When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink."
You, if not your readers, might like to look at your own collection of dead lumber in the light of those principles. Marx actually wrote well in German; what you can't understand is that a term like bourgeois died as a meaningful word or concept a long time ago. You're using it as a Catholic mutters responses to the Mass, essentially because you can't be buggered thinking or analysing freshly for yourselves.
This criticism will be answered in the "Readers Guide Forum" next issue. D'F'
"They fail to understand that voting within the bounds of institutions and customs of bourgeois Parliamentarianism is a part of the bourgeoise state machinery that has to be broken in order to pass from bourgeoise democracy to proletarian democracy." Lenin
The first article of the "Reader's Guide" indicated that the whole state apparatus of a capitalist country is geared to benefit the ruling class, the bourgeoisie. The state is an instrument of class rule, in the words of Lenin it is the "creation of order, which legalises and perpetuates this oppression by moderating the conflict between classes."
A few individuals of bourgeois origin (such as Lenin himself) may betray their own class, and work in the interests of the proletariat. However the contradiction between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat cannot be resolved by peaceful means. The relationship between the Federation of Labour and the Labour Party in New Zealand is merely an exercise in "moderating" the conflict between classes. At the moment this relationship, in combination with all the other devices of trickery and deceit possessed by the capitalist state of New Zealand is doing its work well. But this in no way alters the fact that the monopolies continue to grow, that the workers continue to create surplus value, and become more and more alienated by the system of capitalist production, in which they are economically, culturally and spiritually oppressed. This situation can only intensify .
"The essential condition for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class, is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage labour. Wage labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoise, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of modem industry, therefore, cuts from under it's feet the very foundation on which the bourgoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoise therefore produces above all is its own grave diggers. Its fall, and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable." (Communist Manifesto)
Thus we may see that the vital question is the contradiction between the social character of production and the private character of ownership - as the monopolies expand so too the proletariat grows in strength, in organisation, and in knowledge of the relationship between itself and the class rule which holds it in wage slavery i.e. "A dictatorship of the bourgeoise masked by Parliamentary forms." (Lenin) Ultimately the only way this contradiction can be resolved is for the working class, under the leadership of a genuine workers' party to destroy the old bourgeois state structure in all its forms and to create a new state the dictatorship of the proletariat. "The Proletarian movement is the self conscious independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole incumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air." (communist Manifesto)
Under the leadership of a revolutionary workers' party the proletariat immediately establishes and consolidates its position by the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. This dictatorship of the majority over the minority is an essential stage in the construction of socialism. Lenin commented, "Only he is a Marxist who extends the recognition of the class struggle to the recognition of the dictatorship of the proletariat." During his life time of successful
The dictatorship of the proletariat must therefore be maintained to ensure that the national bourgeoise do not regain power - by means of power or assets they may retain, by infiltrating and subverting the workers movement or by any other means. But this is not the only reason for the maintainance of a socialist state, of the proletarian dictatorship. Stalin pointed out another aspect of the class struggle in a socialist country in
Although history has shown that Lenin and Stalin were correct in insisting that it is possible to build socialism in one country Stalin's comment points out the necessity of maintaining an armed, vigilant organised socialist state in a hostile, capitalist world. The uneven development of capitalism (and therefore of socialist revolution) in different countries ensures that forces hostile to socialism will exist for a long time, this is why there are no "communist countries" at present. A communist society is one in which the state (an organ by which one class opposses another) is no longer necessary to defend socialism from attacks, internal or external. Communist society is a classless society. The state is not necessary for its function and consequently withers away.
In the present period of history there arc many different opponents to the liberation of the working classes of all nations. As we have indicated these opponents may be clearly seen in the existance of the powerful, capitalist countries referred to by Stalin, the imperialist countries. Opposition to the struggle of the working class is also evident in the workers movement itself. This takes the form of various "false Gods", of theories demonstratably unworkable in practice. In order of their historical development these trends are anarchism, syndicalism, reformism and revisionism.
Anarchists believe that the abolition of the state is the immediate task of the proletariat, not by forming a workers' party, not by any political struggle at all, but simply by direct action.
"Individualism is the basis of the entire anarchist world outlook... Failure to understand the development of society — the role of large scale production — the development of capitalism into socialism. Anarchism is a product of depair. The psychology of the unsettled intellectual or the vagabond, not of the proletarian." (Lenin)
Syndicalism is a close relative of anarchism. It repudiates the dictatorship of the proletariat, maintaining that through the trade unions the workers can call a general strike, seize control of production and overthrow capitalism.
Reformism is the doctrine of the Fabians. It is a movement largely of intellectuals upholding the thoroughly unMarxist idea of the "inevitability of gradualism". This position maintains (falsely) that capitalism can be transformed into socialism by a series of gradual changes, without a revolution, or qualitative change. At present, none of these discredited theories have significant working class support anywhere.
Revisionism, of which there arc varied forms, is reformism represented as Marxism. The modern revisionists of the Soviet Union claim to be Marxist—Leninists, but their practice exposes the true nature of their treacherous position.
Trotskyism is a form of revisionism aptly described by Mao Tsetung as being "Left in form and right in essence" i.e. having the outward trappings of Marxism—Leninism but being objectively a servant of the bourgeoise. Trotskyism has not had any significant working class support for many years, it has been predominantly reduced to movements of petty bourgeoise youth and students in western countries. (In New Zealand the Socialist Action League and their campus front the Young Socialists.) Trotskyism denies the possibility of building socialism in one country (a position proved false by history). Trotskyism fails to distinguish between the bourgeoise democratic stage and the proletariat socialist stage of the revolution. In the countries where the peasants constitute a large mass of the rural proletariat and petty bourgeoise it denies the revolutionary role of the peasantry. This position has also been disproved in practice. Trotskyism also takes the anti Marxist—Leninist position of demanding factions within the workers' party.
"The essence of Trotskyism is, lastly, denial of the necessity for iron discipline in the party, recognition of freedom for factional groupings in the party, recognition of the need to form a Trotskyist party. According to Trotskyism the communist Party must not be a single- united militant party, but a collection of groups and factions, each with its own centre, its own discipline, its own press and so forth. What does this mean it means proclaiming freedom for political factions in the party. It means that freedom for political groupings in the party must be followed by freedom for political parties in the country, that is, bourgeoise democracy," (as opposed to proletarian democracy.) (Stalin)
The opinion of Lenin on Trotsky may be indicated by an excerpt from a letter written in
The only means by which the proletariat may establish the dictatorship of the proletariat and build socialism is by means of a Marxist-leninist communist party run on the lines of democratic centralism. A united and militant party run on democratic centralist lines is essential for the proletariat to gain victory. As Lenin stressed "organisation is the only weapon of the working class." This disciplined organisation has the police, and ultimately the armed forces of the capitalist state to confront.
But although it is disciplined and thoroughly united the workers' party is also essentially democratic. "We have already more than once enunciated our theoretical view on the importance of discipline and how this concept is to be understood in the party of the working class. We defined it as unity of action, freedom of discussion and criticism." (Lenin)
"If we are to make the party strong, we must practise democratic centralism to stimulate the initiative of the whole membership...... centralism must be closely linked with democracy. Let us apply democracy and so give scope to initiative throughout the party." Mao Tse-tung.
An excellent example of this style of work may be found in the book "Vietnam will Win" by Wilfred Burchett, where the revolutionary fighters for Vietnamese liberation are shown to have successfully applied Lenin's principle of unity of action and freedom of discussion and criticism.
Only such a party of the most politically conscious and advanced elements of the working class can lead the masses to victory.
This has never been more true than in the present era of imperialism. Imperialism is, as Lenin pointed out, the highest stage of capitalism. It is the financial and political control of one or more countries by a highly industrialised country in the interests of obtaining at the cheapest cost the minerals, products and labour and selling at the highest profits. If the exploited people resist then the military of the imperialist country intervene.
The relationship of people's liberation movements and imperialism may be illustrated by a comment from W.W. Rostow, one of Lyndon Johnson's advisers. (We always give the other side of the story!!!)
"The location, natural resources, and populations of the underdeveloped areas arc such that, should they become effectively attached to the communist bloc, the United States would become the second power in the world... If the underdeveloped areas fall under communist domination or if they move to fixed hostility to the West, the economic and military strength of Western Europe and Japan will be diminished, the British Commonwealth as it is now organised will disintegrate, and the Atlantic world will become, at best, an awkward alliance, incapable of exercising effective influence outside a limited orbit, with the balance of the world's power lost to it. In short, our military security and our way of life as well as the fate of Western Europe and Japan are at stake..." (W.W. Rostow)
And of course Rostow's "military security and "our way of Iife" is the way of life of the bourgeoise, the exploiter.
As Stalin correctly pointed out in "The Foundations of Leninism", "Leninism is Marxism in the era of imperialism and of the proletarian revolution."
The progressive people of the world, the oppressed masses of Africa, South America and South-east Asia, the working classes of the capitalist nations are all struggling in a common battle to the death against imperialism and capitalism.
"People of the world, unite and defeat the U.S. aggressors and all their running dogs! People of the world, be courageous, dare to fight, defy difficulties and advance wave upon wave. Then the whole world will belong to the people. Monsters of all kinds will be destroyed." (Mao Tsetung).