The Cause of the Problems

Maybe one shouldn't expect too much from a legal eagle, but Palmer neither asked nor answered the fundamental questions: Why is it that today, in a sophisticated "democratic" welfare state like New Zealand, the Executive branch of government is tending to centralize power and decision-making? Why is parliament being reduced to the status of a mere talking ship?

It is evident, in various parts of the book, that Palmer basically shares the belief of most liberals, whose answer to the question would be merely that their favourite ogre Muldoon, loves power too much and has fascist tendencies. Bridle him with a written constitution and the problem will be solved. Marxists would take a different view, for they have no illusions about parliamentary democracy. As Lenin said "democracy has the best possible political shell for capitalism, and therefore, capital, once in possession of this very best shell, establishes it's power so securely, so firmly, that no change of persons of institutions or parties in the bourgeois state can share it" (The State and Revolution)

New Zealand's welfare state developed and flourished after the 1930s in a period of relatively stable and successful dependent capitalism. That period of tranquility came to an end in the early 1970s as monopoly capitalism, having consolidated its international hold, went into crisis as the tendency of the rate of profit began to fall (as Marx predicted) and competition for new areas and forms of investment renewed, resulting in increased mergers, takeovers and bankruptcies.

The old form of liberal democratic state is becoming obsolete as the powerful multinationals, spanning old state boundaries, can easily ignore, cushion themselves against or take advantage of the effects of different state policies in various parts of the world. Multinational enterprise, creating inter-national problems demand larger political units to deal with them, hence the pressure is on the ideological representatives of international capitalism in the bourgeois parties in New Zealand to "restructure" the economy and the state apparatus in favour of multinational monopoly capital. Note the "back to basics" and "free enterprise and individual initiative" movement of George Chapman, within the National party. Also Ron Trotter's club of the captains of industry who are now urging political and economic union with Australia, to widen the area of competition, trade investment and markets.