People Power at the TPPA blockade a Taste of Revolution
At the beginning of 2016, on February 4th,
Aotearoa woke up. On that morning, one of the largest crowds this country has
seen in recent decades assembled in Auckland’s Aotea Square and in other parts
of the country, to protest the signing of the Trans Pacific Partnership
Agreement (TPPA).
New Zealanders were concerned about the TPPA’s unknown
effects on the country and its potential attack on their sovereignty. It is now
a matter of record that on the day an amalgam of the Left created the biggest
non-violent direct action in NZ history.
Underneath the TPPA issues are a raft of other closely
related subjects that helped to unite
the people and galvanise the actions that unfolded. For many, the government’s
blatant disregard of public opinion in ramming through this hugely unpopular
trade deal is symptomatic of National’s treatment of ordinary people. The
destruction of state housing, rising child poverty rates, attacks on
beneficiaries and other attacks on the working class have all stoked people’s
anger. Just last November more than 32,000 marched nationwide to protest
against another issue that defines all our lives: climate change. And as
socialists, our slogan on the day was ‘System Change Not Climate Change”.
Because while Socialist Aotearoa has been proud to get
involved in organising and building protests and direct action against this
shameful government, and to march alongside Kiwi families and workers to show
John Key and his cronies who has the power, ultimately we believe all of these
issues must be attacked at the root. It is capitalism itself that must be
challenged.
More than 150 years ago, Marx talked about “the irreparable
rift in the interdependent process of social metabolism” created by capitalism
– in other words, the tendency of capitalism to produce ecological crises. He
wrote of the assault on the planets’ resources created by human labour, and the
corresponding breakdown of the dynamic and complex relationship between us and
nature.
Just like his ideas on ecology, much of Marx’s writing
remain as relevant as ever. Because in a
world gone mad, where profit comes before people – giving rise to treacherous
deals like the TPPA - and economic austerity is the prevailing ideology, where
time and again the same tired rhetoric is used to justify atrocity toward all
life on this planet, where tens of millions of our fellow human beings are
starving to death whilst the rest of us grow fat and diseased on sugar and
salt, there has never been a better time to investigate the ideas of Marx.
I look forward to the Revolution, to the Great Transition to
a fairer more equitable world where we define ourselves as human by the depths
of our demonstrated attempts to de-construct Capitalism, heal the rift between
ourselves and the natural environment and build a world-wide humane society
based on the ideals of Socialism.
Gem SA
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