Workers Party NZ election video

[Saorsa]

Edit: This isn't actually our election video, my mistake. This is a video a comrade made to go with our radio ad, so feel free to watch, enjoy and/or critique it anyway. The actual video is further down the page.

http://nz.youtube.com/watch?v=eHw7YoAl6mI

Now that my organisation, the Workers Party of New Zealand, has secured enough paper members to register as a political party, we get $10,000 to spend on whatever election stuff we want and we also get free airtime on the radio and TV channels. This is the video we put together. What are people's thoughts?

This is the first time in history that a revolutionary communist option has been on every ballot in the country, and it'll be the first time New Zealand's radios and TVs have had anti-capitalist material playing on them. So yeah, this is a pretty big deal.

[chegitz guevara]

Nice

[S&Y]

Kind of corny.


You should use demands in your video not songs.

Like free educations, free and universal health care, an increase of the minimum wage to the national average etc.

These are just examples I am giving you.

But if you want indeed to persuade some people to vote for you , you need demands.

[Martin Blank]

Very nice. The music sends a message that, I think, people will not easily forget. I would imagine this will bring a lot of people to your website to see what you're about, where they can read your platform and decide for themselves.

[Random Precision]

Very well done. Your country has much more progressive election laws than the United States it seems, and it's great to see a revolutionary party that is taking advantage of this platform.

[Saorsa]

Kind of corny.


You should use demands in your video not songs.

Like free educations, free and universal health care, an increase of the minimum wage to the national average etc.

These are just examples I am giving you.

But if you want indeed to persuade some people to vote for you , you need demands.

I thought the song sounded a little corny when I firsat heard it, but it's kinda grown on me... :lol:

I can't upload the video yet, but we have another one for our Opening Adress, which will air tomorrow night. It's a bit more flash, and has demands such as freedom to strike, no GST (flat 12.5% tax on all goods and services), equality for all etc

I'm not sure what the balance of playtime will be for each video, but they each have their charms.

[Saorsa]

Lol, it turns out I made a mistake. This video wont be playing on TV at all. The song will be our election ad, and this is just a Youtube video a comrade made for it.

I'll post the actual election video tomorrow night, after it's shown!

[Prairie Fire]

$10,000? Damn. Your Liberal democracy is more liberal than ours. One of the major demands of the CPC-ML in my country is "fund the process, not the parties", precisely because the major parties use tax-payer funds, and the smaller parties get nothing in terms of funding.

[Saorsa]

$10,000? Damn. Your Liberal democracy is more liberal than ours. One of the major demands of the CPC-ML in my country is "fund the process, not the parties", precisely because the major parties use tax-payer funds, and the smaller parties get nothing in terms of funding.

The fundings determined on the basis of how many votes you got last time round, so it still ensures that it's largely a two horse race. Labour and National both get over a million dollars, plus the backing they have from big business. Here's how it all balanced out;

Labour Party

$1,000,000

National Party

$ 1,000,000

Green Party

$240,000

Mâori Party

$6,605

NZ First

$246,605

The ACT Party

$100,000

Progressive

$2,752

UNITED FUTURE

$102,752

Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party, Democrats for social
credit, New World Order, Residents Action Movement, Alliance
, Family Party, Workers Party of New Zealand

$10,000

As you can see, it's not exactly fair and democratic. And the Electoral Law has an additional undemocratic part with regard to public servants, saying that they can be forced to take unpaid leave by their employers. One of our candidates, Paul Hopkinson, has been forced to do this for the duration of the election, as he works as a teacher in a state school. This means that only public servants with independent wealth or wealthy backers are able to participate in the democratic process.

Paul's the breadwinner for his family, so this is going to hit him and his family hard.

[Q]

Now that my organisation, the Workers Party of New Zealand, has secured enough paper members to register as a political party, we get $10,000 to spend on whatever election stuff we want and we also get free airtime on the radio and TV channels. This is the video we put together. What are people's thoughts?

How many paper members are that?

[sunfarstar]

good!:rolleyes:

[Saorsa]

How many paper members are that?

You need 500 financial members to register, and we signed up a total of about 750 people. You obviously need more than 500, as there's always going to be people who forget they joined, were drunk at the time or somehow didn't realise they were joining a political party.

[S&Y]

You need 500 financial members to register, and we signed up a total of about 750 people. You obviously need more than 500, as there's always going to be people who forget they joined, were drunk at the time or somehow didn't realise they were joining a political party.

This is pretty serious.

A Leninist organization should be made up by serious activists and should not allow just anyone in. Now if the party is not your organization but just a front group for an independent organization then it is all good.

But if your party is all you' ve got then comrade, if you'll excuse me, I don't think that you are heading on the right path.

There is a need of an independent organization of serious and committed activists.

You cannot just let anyone in to that organization. That is why you build front groups for that.

You should propose to your comrades that you build an independent organization of the most committed activists inside the party which will act as a front group.

[Saorsa]

Mate, these people we're signing up are not cadre. They're solidarity members, who join us because they like the sound of what we're saying and want to help us get registered.

In a country like New Zealand, in the present conditions, it's ridiculous to suggest we need to build a hard-core Leninist party with strict democratic centralism, a Central Committee and so on. The WP has about 40 activists, making it the largest revolutionary group in NZ and the only nation wide one, but that's still tiny.

There is technically a "core group" within the WP, called the Revolutionary Workers League, but seeing as how all the activists in the Party are Marxists anyway and we don't have a mass membership, the RWL is essentially dormant.

[S&Y]

Mate, these people we're signing up are not cadre. They're solidarity members, who join us because they like the sound of what we're saying and want to help us get registered.

Fair enough. I am not an expert in NZ politics.



In a country like New Zealand, in the present conditions, it's ridiculous to suggest we need to build a hard-core Leninist party with strict democratic centralism, a Central Committee and so on. The WP has about 40 activists, making it the largest revolutionary group in NZ and the only nation wide one, but that's still tiny.

No. There is always a need for a nucleus of educated activists commited to Marxism Leninism as they will be able to guide the party in times of distress.

Revolution is not an easy thing and although in these conditions there is a need for more democracy than centralism in the party, centralism is needed in order to hold the party together.

Also as you will grow you will see that there will be some revisionist/reformist elements.

Centralism is needed in order to counter these trends.


There is technically a "core group" within the WP, called the Revolutionary Workers League, but seeing as how all the activists in the Party are Marxists anyway and we don't have a mass membership, the RWL is essentially dormant.


That's what I am talking about:)


Anyways I think it is a waste of time to participate in ellections so early and with so few activists.

Elections are used in order to agitate widely and to include the most backward layers of the proletariat.

Due to your size though you will get few results from the participation in the elections which will not be worth the work put into by the activists.

Trust me some people are going to burn out.

I would suggest that in this stage of development of the party , that you do more trade union , local work in order to build the nucleus and after that participate in elections.

that is just my opinion.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Lenin did not advocate a cadres-only party until sometime during the Russian civil war. Not every "professional revolutionary" (spare time after working as usual in the factories and other workplaces) in the RSDLP was cadre.

[S&Y]

^^^ Lenin did not advocate a cadres-only party until sometime during the Russian civil war. Not every "professional revolutionary" (spare time after working as usual in the factories and other workplaces) in the RSDLP was cadre.

Tactics change in a dialectical relationship to the objective material conditions.

We will open the doors and windows to the workers once there is a leap in class conciousness.

It times like now we need a nucleus of cadres and strict membership.

Also we might need a strict membership whenever all the opportunist careerists try to come in during and after the revolution.

But in these material conditions at least in the First World we need a party of cadres.

There is no point of signing up anyone. Those who are not cadres will be sympathizers but nothing more.

[Saorsa]

No. There is always a need for a nucleus of educated activists commited to Marxism Leninism as they will be able to guide the party in times of distress.

Which we have. We have cadre from every single major revolutionary organisation that has existed in NZ in the last 50 years, including the (Trotskyist) Socialist Action League, the (Maoist) Workers Communist League and the (originally pro-Stalin, then Maoist, then Hoxhaist, then Cliffite, now dissolved into reformism :lol:) Communist Party of New Zealand. We make the political education of our cadres our highest priority with them, and would rather have one revolutionary whose broken with reformism than ten angry liberals. We've been rewarded for this approach by consistent growth and the opportunity to lead many struggles, including the recent bus drivers strike and lockout in Wellington (the President of the union is a WP member).


Revolution is not an easy thing and although in these conditions there is a need for more democracy than centralism in the party, centralism is needed in order to hold the party together.

I totally agree, and it's something we're working on improving even more.


Also as you will grow you will see that there will be some revisionist/reformist elements.

We will indeed. As things stand we're a small group of revolutionary cadre without any mass support, so this hasn't been a problem, but it will happen and you're right that we need to ensure that our comrades are ideologically clued up and organisationslly disciplined to meet this threat when it does arise.


Centralism is needed in order to counter these trends.

Agreed.



Anyways I think it is a waste of time to participate in ellections so early and with so few activists.

Totally wrong. Elections are one of the few times when large masses of workers who wouldn't ordinarily be interested in politics prick their ears up and listen to what the various groups out there have to say. It'd be foolish not to take advantage of this. As well as that, the emdia pays a lot more attention to what you have to say than it does most of the time, and you can gain publicity for your organisation and your ideas.

We see elections as a platform to capmaign from, and we make sure to put forward revolutionary socialist politics and be open about our Marxism when we run in them. We've picked up a number of dedicated comrades through the exposure gained in elections, so it's utterly ridiculous to call it "a waste of time".


Elections are used in order to agitate widely and to include the most backward layers of the proletariat.

We use them for the former and I'm not sure what you're trying to say with the latter.


Due to your size though you will get few results from the participation in the elections which will not be worth the work put into by the activists.

We're fully aware that we're not about to win a massive vote any time soon, don't worry about that. But that's not the point. The point is to use elections as a means of reaching people with our ideas and promoting our organisation, as well as challenging the bourgeois candidates. This is entirely worth the work put into it by activists, and I think it's a very dogmatic approach to say that elections are somehow objectively "not worth it".


Trust me some people are going to burn out.

Trust me, no they're not. We've run many candidates in several elections now, and not one of them has burned out. I know of only two people who have left the Workers Party over the past six years, and neither of them did so due to getting burned out in elections.


I would suggest that in this stage of development of the party , that you do more trade union , local work in order to build the nucleus and after that participate in elections.

We have about ten union organisers in a party of forty cadre, including some people on the Executive of Unite, the most militant union in the country, and the President of Wellington Tramways, the bus drivers union that recently won a small victory in it's industrial action. We do a hell of a lot of work apart from participating in national and local elections, and those are by no means our main areas of activity. They are, however, useful areas of work that we intend to continue in.

I'm not sure exactly what you base the idea that there's some critical mass of membership your party has to reach before it's worth participating in elections. What should we wait for? 100 cadre? 200? 300?


that is just my opinion

And you're entitled to it. Some aspects of it are very good, but others, such as your approach to revolutionary intervention in bourgeois elections, are very wrong.

[Saorsa]

There is no point of signing up anyone. Those who are not cadres will be sympathizers but nothing more.I'd say $10,000, free radio and TV time for our ads and free help from TVNZ to make the below video are a very good reason for signing up sympathisers as paper members!

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=FWCZIEeGMJA&eurl=http://workersparty.org.nz/2008/10/12/workers-party-tv-address/

What do comrades think of this video?

[Q]

I'd say $10,000, free radio and TV time for our ads and free help from TVNZ to make the below video are a very good reason for signing up sympathisers as paper members!

http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=FWCZIEeGMJA&eurl=http://workersparty.org.nz/2008/10/12/workers-party-tv-address/

What do comrades think of this video?

I think this video is much better then the first.
Very nice indeed.

[Saorsa]

Well it was made with actual professionals, rather than by one guy on his computer! I'm pretty bloody happy with it. :cool:

[Herman]

"Get involved, you son of a...!"

[redarmyfaction38]

i think it's a good video, simple and effective.
best of luck comrades

[KurtFF8]

Good video, hopefully it attracts people to the party.

[Colonello Buendia]

I wouldn't use a music video as an election broadcast. the broadcast has to give an explanation of your policies and the reasons for people to vote for your party. but hey, I'm an anarchist what do I know about partaking in elections:D

[Saorsa]

I said in my note that the first video isn't our election video, you should have read my note. The video further down the page is our election video, and it has all the things you said we should.

[KurtFF8]

Is the video going to be broadcast less than the ads of the main two parties or is there a law on equal time?

[Saorsa]

It's going to get broadcast like twice. The electoral laws aren't that favourable to small revolutionary groups!

We have had a few people getting in contact with us already after they saw the video and heard our ads, and our website hits have skyrocketed, so it was definitely worthwhile registering.

[Die Neue Zeit]

On the national ballot (http://www.cpgb.org.uk/worker/743/onthenational.html)

Now that New Zealand's Anti-Capitalist Alliance has become the Workers' Party it is on the ballot everywhere. Philip Ferguson reports

On November 8 workers all over New Zealand will, for the first time ever, have the chance to vote for an uncompromisingly anti-capitalist and pro-worker party.

Several weeks ago, the Workers Party (formerly the Anti-Capitalist Alliance) succeeded in becoming an officially registered party. To do this, we had to sign up at least 500 formal members - we eventually reached 770 (the equivalent of about 10,000 paper members in Britain) - and then had to go through a membership audit by the electoral commission and meet various other formal, legal requirements.

As a result of becoming a registered party, WP is now on the ballot in every constituency across the country for the party vote, as well as running a small number of candidates in the three major cities of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

Getting registered also meant we got a free one-minute TV ad (which had to be made in one day as a result of just making the deadline for registration - the ad can be viewed at workersparty.org.nz) and about $10,000 of state funding for other advertising, which we are using for radio ads.

The Workers Party has a five-point minimum platform, highlighting opposition to imperialist intervention in the third world; the right of workers to free speech and organisation; equality for women, Maori and gay people; open borders and full rights for migrant workers; and a working people’s republic. In the elections we are also highlighting specific issues - for instance calling for the complete abolition of GST (the NZ equivalent of VAT), using our campaign to support workers in struggle, and highlighting the fact that society is divided into a class that produces the goods and services and a class that produces nothing but appropriates the wealth.

Our candidates exemplify our fighting stance. They are a combination of blue- and white-collar workers, union organisers and student militants. For instance, first on our party list is Don Franks, probably the most well known worker activist in Wellington, with a record going back to the city’s militant car plants of the 1970s and anti-Vietnam war campaigning. Also on the list is Paul Hopkinson, a former soldier and the first person ever charged with burning the NZ flag. Hopkinson is currently suspended from his teaching job while running as a candidate, due to the draconian provisions of the NZ Electoral Act, which restrict state employees’ rights to participate in politics, especially in elections.

Another candidate is party national secretary Daphna Whitmore, who is a full-time organiser for the militant young union, Unite, which organises fast-food workers, hotel workers and others who have been ignored by the ‘mainstream’ union movement. Also on the party list is Nick Kelly, a bus driver who was recently elected president of the Wellington bus drivers’ union in a landslide victory and who helped lead the Wellington drivers to a significant victory in an industrial battle with their bosses a few weeks ago.

The modest growth of the Workers Party, now the largest far-left current in NZ, has shown that even in a long period of downturn growth is possible. This contrasts sharply with the fate of the Socialist Worker group. In the 1990s, SW was by far the largest far-left group in NZ. However, its absurd line that the 1990s were the 1930s in slow motion led to continuous exaggerations of the possibilities for mass agitation and organisation and, as these failed to materialise, to subsequent loss of members, political disorientation and a lurch rightwards. SW has now virtually liquidated into its populist front-group, the Residents Action Movement, whose key demand is the removal of GST on food. The wholesale abandonment of any pretence at anti-capitalist politics has, far from leading to growth, simply ensured the further decline of SW into a tiny, populist sect.

The other left group contesting elections is the left social democratic Alliance Party. In the early 1990s, this was a significant force, winning almost 19% of the vote in 1993 and gaining 13 seats in 1996 and 10 in 1999. The Alliance imploded after it went into coalition government with Labour and the Labourites decided to join in the invasion of Afghanistan. There was a rank-and-file revolt and a massive split and meltdown. In 2002 the Alliance lost all its seats and is now numerically about the same size as the Workers Party.

In our view this is a reflection of the fact that today there is neither a material base nor political space for anything resembling classic social democracy. Nevertheless, WP maintains good working relations with Alliance activists where we agree on issues and, in several places, we will be holding joint election night socials with them.

In canvassing in working class areas, WP has met with a good response. There is a layer of workers who recognise that Labour is not really a party of labour and are at least prepared to entertain the idea of an alternative.

With the economic situation looking bleaker, we can expect the squeeze to hit workers, regardless of whether the incumbent Labourites or, as looks more likely, National, win the elections. The opportunities for building a socialist alternative remain modest, but we intend to take advantage of them to the best of our ability.

[Schrödinger's Cat]

I think this video is much better then the first.
Very nice indeed.


Me too. I love it.