Neoliberalism and identity politics (New Zealand)

[Hannah Bell]

Neoliberalism and identity politics

Many commentators and leftists have struggled to reconcile the parallel development and dominance of neoliberal economic policies with the development and dominance of social liberalism and identity politics in New Zealand. Since the mid-1980s, governments of all hues have, on the one hand been economically rightwing, and on the other, relatively ‘progressive’ on social issues.

For example, during the new-right reform period of the 1980s, feminists and gay campaigners were welcomed into the Establishment. And the current National regime has now embraced Maori nationalists. Yet these have not been distinct and unrelated developments. In contrast to the commonly held view that sees the coexistence of neoliberal economic, and socially liberal policies as a contradiction, this blog post attempts to highlight how policies such as biculturalism and neoliberal orthodoxies actually supplement each other....the new liberal social agenda promoted initially by the Fourth Labour Government...went hand in hand with neoliberal polices...

The more far-sighted elements of the New Zealand state, universities and the business class saw the need to deflect the potential dangers arising from the growth of new social movements, especially those with a Maori base. There was a conscious attempt to bring on board elements of these groups, to embrace and fuse identity politics into a new liberal Establishment, and to foster the growth of a ‘brown middle class’ and a ‘brown bourgeoisie...’

By 2010, New Zealand has had 26 years of the dual neoliberal and liberal identity politics model. But what has it achieved? The beneficiaries of the culturalist model have clearly not been ordinary Maori, but a small elite cultivated to blunt and further co-opt Maori radicalism. Maori in general have received no ‘special preferences’ at all, and in fact the culturalist project has politically disenfranchised most Maori due to their disconnection from iwi organisations. Like all forms of identity politics, the culturalist model has proven to be a dead-end...

http://liberation.typepad.com/liberation/2010/01/identity-politics-vs-class-politics-8-neoliberalism-and-identity-politics.html



The neo-liberal/social-liberal tradeoff in the 4th Labour Govt

One of the most perplexing questions in the history of the left in New Zealand has been: Why was it a Labour Party that implemented the radical anti-worker neoliberal reforms? What’s more, why did the ‘left’ of the party allow the programme of Rogernomics to be implemented? The answer is partly that the Labour ‘left’ was so surprisingly tolerant towards the economic programme of the government due to the political backgrounds of the now dominant social liberal element in the party organisation. Their experience within the new social movements had taught the ‘new left’ in the Labour Party to concern itself with identity politics rather than class politics.

The new milieu of socially-concerned liberals...had essentially joined the Labour Party to oppose Muldoon. So unlike the previous generation of Labour Party activists from a militant union background, the social liberals did not evaluate the reforms with the same class perspective as traditional working class members...

Within the Labour Party in the 1980s there was effectively a truce made between the right of the party that was keen to implement neoliberalism and the left of the party, which was now mostly socially liberal in its focus... Although what happened was probably more natural rather than contrived, nonetheless there is evidence that major players from both left and right factions were highly aware of the operation of the trade-off...

Maryan Street, who was active in the party at the time, and who later became party president, also had the impression that the dominant rightwing of the party were happy to let the leftwing carry through their social liberal reforms. According to Street: ‘Sometimes it was easy to get the impression as an activist that you were only allowed to do things that didn't impede the "important" things that were going on...'

http://liberation.typepad.com/liberation/2009/12/identity-politics-vs-class-politics-7-the-neoliberalsocialliberal-tradeoff-in-the-4th-labour-govt.html



The transformation of social liberalism into neo-liberalism

An examination of the history of left politics in New Zealand since the 1960s shows how liberal identity politics has actually aided the forces of the right in carrying out and maintaining the neoliberal project... At one level on the left there has simply been a shift since the late 1960s whereby a focus on economics and inequality has been jettisoned in favour of a concentration on identity politics... the priority has thus been in pushing for social change on non-economic issues.

As Dennis Welch has recently written in his biography of Helen Clark,

"the Marxist challenge to capitalism on fundamentally economic grounds – a challenge that had energized all movements of the left for a century or more – crumbled into identity politics and moral causes, leaving the field clear for the forces of the right to carry on more or less untroubled by the scattered legions of the left..."

The late socialist political commentator Bruce Jesson also examined in great detail the influence of the social liberals...Although they were leftwing in original orientation... Jesson pointed out, they had some important differences with the more established leftwing currents in New Zealand:

"Unlike the working-class movements of earlier eras, the protest movement was almost completely uninterested in economics. Protest politics was about foreign policy and moral issues, it was hostile to authority and to traditional moral codes, and its bias if anything was against the state. It was also a highly individualistic movement, concerned with individual rights, individual freedom and individual conscience.... And unlike earlier radical movements, the protest movement was liberal rather than socialist, a leftish liberalism but a liberalism nonetheless..."

For Jesson this change of focus was more than a just ‘a distraction from class issues’ – it was fundamentally self-sabotaging...

"Intellectually, the Left was too soft to resist the New Right coup of 1984. It was obsessed by social issues and by foreign affairs, and couldn’t debate economic issues. In the early stages of Rogernomics, it tended to concede the big issues of economic policy in return for some concessions on foreign policy and social matters..."

In this sense, Welch also says, ‘1968 lay the seed of 1984’, by which he means that many of those in the new social movements of the 60s and beyond very easily morphed into economic rightwingers at a later stage...‘Social-liberalism, exposed to crisis and the desperate desire for power, became neoliberalism...'

http://liberation.typepad.com/liberation/2009/12/identity-politics-vs-class-politics-6-the-transformation-of-social-liberalism-into-neoliberalism.html

[jpak]

1. In New Zealand - you can say fuck, shit and piss on commercial radio

and they have right wing talk radio hosts as bad or worse than El Rushbo

and tension The Maori and the POMs is palpable in many rural areas of the North Island

but by and large all Kiwis and Maoris I encountered were just way fucking cool

yup!

[Hannah Bell]

2. possibly the tension is high because neo-liberal identity politics don't deliver the goods

for most maori? yet nevertheless focus people on questions of identity rather than solidarity, leading to invidious comparison, separatism, racism, isolationism?

i've never been, so i don't know. just guessing based on what you said & what i've read & what the kiwis/aussies i've known have behaved like/talked about.

[jpak]

3. No, any problems kiwis have are due to plain old stupid racist conservative assholes

yup

[Hannah Bell]

4. really. i must visit this paradise, where the only problem is racist assholes.

not even racist murderers or anything, just run of the mill assholes, like non-racist assholes.

sounds wonderful.