What is Violence

It is this question of violence and our society which warrants further inquiry. It is a question which has been raised by the haka party incident, but not answered by it. Violence, and the role it plays in social change, is certainly not a question which is confined to the area of Maori Rights. Violence is a question which arises especially when we consider the prospect of fundamental changes being made to the type of state we have in New Zealand.

Our developed capitalist state is a pro duct and a manifestation of the irreconcilability of class antogonisms. That is, our society, and others like it, are constituted of several distinct social classes. The primary class antagonism in our society is that the interests of thworking class are diametrically opposed to those of the bourgeois classes; and it is a contradiction which, objectively, cannot be reconciled within the present system. Thus, the capitalist state is not an organ for the reconciliation of class antagonisms - rather, it is an organ of class rule, of the oppression of the "working class by the bourgoisie.

The state then, in New Zeland, creates an 'order' which both legalises and perpetuates this clas rule. The class antagonisms, however, cannot exist indefinitely; that is, social forces work towards the eradication of class oppression. But the oppressing classes will not give up their position without violent opposition. Obviously, the liberation of the working class requires a violent revolution in order to destroy the state power of the oppressor classes. It is in this context that violence and social change must be seen. To oppose violence as a means of solving any social conflict is politically naive. It is a matter of fact that to change the state in a fundamental way - violence is necessary and inevitable. The morality of the cause mitigates the use of violence.

The oppression of Maori Rights and the Maori people is part of the wider oppression of the state. It is an economic advantage to the ruling classes to keep the Maori people's status low. Racist attitudes are merely tools in this wider economic oppression. The liberation of the Maori people (and the eradication of racist attitudes) will come only through the liberation of the entire working class. Violence itself is a necessary tool in this eventual liberation; that the haka party could be stripped by no other method than violence indicates this.

This, I believe, is the light in which the haka party incident must be seen. It is an indication of the role that political violence must fulfil in the final working out of irreconeciliable social antagonisms. In itself, the violence cannot be called "revolutionary" — it simply indicates that the social con-tradictions that produce the oppression of the Maori people, cannot have a non-violent solution.

Stephen A'Court.