Chris Trotter is returning to form. After the death of his strangely beloved ‘social democratic’ Labour Government, he’s been in a much more reflective and insightful mood (rather than his previous phase of agit-prop defence of ‘lesser evilism’). In this week’s Independent Financial Review column he reflects on the political degeneration of what currently passes for social democracy. He shows how the Labour Party – and the much of the wider left in NZ politics – has a deeply problematic relationship with the New Zealand working class. Essentially Labour now sees workers as victims to manage rather than as a positive political force with the tremendous potential to change society. [Read more below]
Chris Trotter's view of the modern Labour Party (and left) as unfortunate surrogate parents who treat the working class as having pathologies which must be treated isn’t a new line for Trotter. Thirteen years ago he wrote a brilliant analysis of the new elite composition of the Labour Party. He said that it is particularly noticeable among Labour MPs today an increasing dominance of those from a background in community or social work. This new type of Labour Party MP is interested in managing rather than representing the working class. He argued that such MPs see working people as dangerous, weak, and unimportant, rather than a social force that can change society:
This professional-managerial stratum of society specialises in telling workingclass people what to do (how else does one define social workers, counsellors, probation officers and union officials?)... Politically speaking, Labour no longer regards the "proletariat" as the solution to history’s ills; on the contrary, the working class is seen as the prime source of society’s problems’... Rather than defending the capitalist establishment from the "revolutionary proletariat" through timely (and genuine!) concessions, the new social democrats seek to compete with the corporate elite in managing the working class (Trotter, 11 Aug 1995: p.6).
The trend detected by Trotter in the mid-1990s has only grown, especially with Labour’s increasing top-down and sometimes-authoritarian social engineering of recent years. But Trotter’s latest analysis was sparked when the new Minister of Social Development, Paula Bennett told John Campbell that as a solo mother she rejected getting politically involved in the Labour Party because she didn’t want to be a victim. Trotter is worth quoting at length on this:
The contemporary Left conceptualises the political dynamic between those at the bottom and those at the top of our society as being, essentially, therapeutic. Poverty, unemployment, domestic violence, dysfunctional child-rearing -- powerlessness in general -- are not understood as relationships which must be changed, but as pathologies which must be treated: diseases which must be cured. This conceptualisation of the social-democratic project is, of course, a profound revision of the original socialist cause. The consciousness of collective power, the assertion of collective competence, and a very clear sense of historical agency: these were the factors which drove the early socialist movement forward, and made its participants so certain that they could alter the exploitative economic, social and political relationships in which they were enmeshed. If there were problems to be solved, diseases to be cured, it was working people who would do the curing and the solving. They were history's subjects, not its objects. Contrast this with today's therapeutic social-democracy. Far from being the prime agents of historical change, working-people find themselves reduced to suitable cases for treatment. They're either patients to be healed; victims to be comforted; or delinquents to be rehabilitated. It was precisely this mindset that Paula Bennett wanted no part of: the mindset that disempowers working people by subtly but unmistakably infantilising them. The political dynamic which, having transformed working people into children, then proceeds to offer a vast array of middle-class professionals, teachers, union officials, social workers, probation officers, criminologists, sociologists, anthropologists and psychologists as their surrogate parents. The sort of people who send shivers up and down the working- class spine every time they deliver that immortal line: "Hello, we're from the Government/ministry/council/ CYF and we're here to help."
Trotter’s column is also insightful when he explains that in our modern atomized society that has no genuine leftwing pro-workers party, the more radical or exceptional working class members actually become aligned to forces like John Key and those that promise economic advancement:
Denied the opportunity to exercise collective power, is it any wonder that all those "aspirational" members of the working-class -- people seeking "inclusion" in the broader social narrative; citizens who, a century ago, would have built the workers' unions, the workers' party, and finally the workers' government -- today turn for inspiration to the boy raised in a state house who went on to become New Zealand's millionaire prime minister; or to the feisty solo-mum who went from being the recipient of a social-welfare benefit, to the Cabinet minister responsible for handing them out.
Trotter says that its in this context that ‘in which the revolutionary political slogan: "Yes, we can", can be quietly retired in favour of the transformative personal slogan: "Yes, I can".’
Trotter also analyses the original Solidarity Forever trade union anthem penned in 1915. He correctly suggests that this song is an ‘undisguised celebration of the raw power of working-class collectivism’ and thus ‘there isn't even a whiff of powerlessness, not a trace of victimhood’, and therefore ‘the modern social-democrat would, quite frankly, run a mile’ from it.
Hopefully this all suggests that Chris Trotter is now doing the opposite: running a mile from the degenerate Labour Party.
