The meaning of the word “socialism” is not in dispute. The Oxford dictionary describes it as,
“A political and economic theory of social organisation which advocates that the community as a whole should own and control the means of production, capital and property. Also, a transitionary social state between the overthrow of capitalism and the realisation of communism”.
Now it’s indisputable that that is very clear. Given that why do so many female Labour candidates brag that they’re socialists?
Obvious explanations are stupidity and ignorance as I don’t for a second believe they really seek a communist society.
After the exposure of both communism and western big government in the 1980s and 90s and the substitution of market economies, the left’s women found it hard to abandon the word and tried to mute it by idiotically describing themselves as “democratic socialists,” as if that made any difference.
Yet the brighter Labour types knew as far back as the late 1970s that socialism was redundant and tried to shy from it.
In New Zealand cities in the late 1970s urban female trendies, driven by a loathing of Muldoon, flocked to Labour and preached what they had no wish to practise.
This reached a climax when one such, who being a relative shall remain unnamed, rose at the 1977 Labour annual conference, a huge event in those highly politicised days, and proposed the Party change its name to the New Zealand Socialist Labour Party.
Labour leader Bill Rowling was furious and I suspect blamed me as he’d done explaining his defeat in his opening words television concession speech in 1975.
Anyway, this put the Party on the spot. They did the sensible thing, namely voting to change the Party name then totally ignoring it.
In 1990 after Cath Tizard was announced as our first female Governor General she was interviewed a few days later on National Radio.
“I’m still a socialist,” she proudly proclaimed to which the interviewer asked what she meant by that.
For five or six minutes she waxed on, beginning every explanatory sentence with, “When I say socialist I don’t mean…”
We never did find out what she did mean.
I’ll excuse that madness through her then delirious state given a couple of days earlier at a function in Auckland I’d reminded her that as Governor General she’d also be Chief Scoutmaster.
She was horror-struck and went absolutely white, then declared “I won’t do it. I won’t do it”. And I suspect, if so to her great credit, it was she who put an end to this farcical linkage.
The latest female Labour politician to declare herself, not once but repeatedly as a socialist, was List Labour MP Ginny Andersen, in an interview a few days ago. She’s contesting the traditional Labour Hutt South seat, forfeited by Trevor Mallard who with Speaker ambitions, went on the list last time. Andersen then lost to the Nat’s Chris Bishop. I suspect Bishop will get up again while Labour will gain the majority of Party votes.
But regardless, I’d love to grill Ginny on her avowed state ownership of everything advocacy. I suspect the result would be another Tizard, “When I say socialism I don’t mean…” performance.
As written at the beginning the word has a clear meaning and she can’t shy from that.
I don’t for a second, albeit not knowing her, believe she wants to nationalise our farms and businesses and if I’m right she should stop unthinkingly calling herself a socialist.
17 Comments
In one his earliest interviews with J. Ardern,
Mike Hosking,asked her to describe her political viewpoint,to which she replied, “I’m a democratic socialist”.
He then asked something along the lines of ,” what do you think that term means to the average kiwi voter?”
To which she truthfully replied, “probably not much”
Hosking then said, “so why do you use it?”
Ms Ardern then gave that famous toothy smile,which the Labour Party electioneering posters and placards are festooned with, and nothing else of substance eventuated.
However,even a brief perusal of Ardern’s political apprenticeship,particularly in the light of the ghastly record of Socialism as a philosophy,should give serious pause for thought.
Duncan Webb Labour MP for CHCH Central, coming from a Blue Chip law firm also has claimed to be a socialist.
Democratic Socialism seeks to link arms with corporations (thereby moving responsibility/accountability). Benito Mussolini called that particular conjunction Fascism.
I think what they may mean is a sort of FDR (whose government was at times enamored with Mussolini) top down, big government, academic expert elite (“the non falsifiable science”) with a ‘we know best’ -anti democratic- management ethos and now mixed with identity politics and critical theory. Hedgehog thinkers as Isaiah Berlin put it.
As Alexandra Occasio- Cortez recently said when we get in there will be no more Brunches and we could add no more Chardy’s.
At least Mussolini got the trains to run on time. All Jacin dahas to do is to continue to juggle “case numbers” and threaten to lock you up at your own expense for breaking HER LAWS.
I hope your right Sir Bob perhaps they don’t understand the definition….or do they.!
Cindy has actually previously stated she is a communist. New Zealand may bypass socialism in a stumbling sprint to communism.
65-70% of our population only see a lovely kind person in charge, completely unaware of the trail of failures this government is responsible for.
Just look at the sentiment amongst our left estate. They have actually created a climate of shame amongst those that would work hard to achieve wealth and prosperity.
The age of woke entitlement so utterly backward and insane its easy to see why the eventual backlash might well be vicious.
Sir Bob.
I really do think you understate their ambitions.
Cindy calls her followers “Comrade” pure Marixism. I do believe they have figured out the Govt will never “own” farms (they’d give to Maori before then) or own business but “ownership” can take many forms and total control over everything can be tantamount to ownership.
I believe EVERY member of the Greens is a genuine Socialist. Half of the Labour caucus would easily fit that bill also.
One thing is certain. We will find out over the next 3 years just how Feral Cindy and her Comrades are.
We always get what we deserve!!!!
One definition of a democratic socialist I’ve read describes it this way.
Democratic socialists believe that both the economy and society should be run democratically—to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few.
The World Economic Forum’s Klaus Schwab ( born in1938 is a child of Adolf Hitlers Germany) founder and executive chairman articulates the drive for socialist change with the opportunity covid has presented this way.
He wants to “explore and monitor the issues and forces driving transformational change across economies, industries, and global issues”. The Great Reset he calls it
This quote from their website: https://intelligence.weforum.org/
Democratic (elected and mandated) socialists, J Ardern among them, buy into to the World Economic Forum’s concept of top down control of every area of our daily lives (socialism).
Lockdowns, contact tracing ( state surveillance) are just two examples that illustrate my point. They fit ideologically with both groups
Add digital currency introduction ‘cashless society’ and the stage is set for WEF’s Great Reset and more top down control (technocratic tyranny)
They know exactly what socialism and communism is – our dear beloved & benevolent supernatural prime minister had almost the entire country reliant on the government this year. I have no doubt whatsoever that if she could she would make it permanent. Don’t take my word for it though, watch this video of it straight from the horse’s mouth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9rsxFaq6Ig
Here are Saul Alinskys 8 steps to socialism, consider how many Jacinda Ardern has implemented in just 3 yrs – what does Ardern have planned next?:
1. Healthcare – control healthcare and you control the people.
2. Poverty – Increase the poverty level as high as possible, poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you provide everything for them to live.
3. Debt – Increase the debt level to an unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase taxes and this will produce more poverty.
4. Gun control – Remove the ability to defend themselves from government. That way you are able to create a police state.
5. Welfare – Take control of every aspect (food, housing, income) of their lives because that will make them fully dependent on the government.
6. Education – Take control of what people read and listen to and take control or what children learn in school.
7. Religion – Remove belief in God from the government and schools because the people need to believe in only the government knowing what is best for the people.
8. Class warfare – Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. Eliminate the middle class.
Unfortunately the only cure that I know of for socialists & communists is to give them exactly what they want along with the invoice, it’s just a shame the rest of us have to suffer as a result of their idiocy.
Mr Magoo, you are well self-named even if only because unlike our Knight, you are too frightened to put your name where your keyboard posts your data.
I see nil steps listed above that Labour has implemented over the past three years. None of your steps have ever been implemented to a socialist level in NZ and any steps even partly implemented have been endorsed by every gummint we have ever had.
Healthcare is closest in your list but still fully available to those who can afford to insure for or directly pay for it – and most of us could afford to pay if specialist Drs didn’t earn way more than they deserve much as business leaders do.
On another track, It has always amazed me how we rightly denigrate lawyers and the like for the ridiculous fees they charge for doing in the main what half the educated population could do standing on their heads – if we were allowed to do these things for ourselves but we can’t because lawyers have made…ahem…laws to protect their industry and those of their rorting buddies. Says me riding a consultant horse with a little hypocrisy but mostly protected by the work I do for free…I would say pro-bono but latin, like much of our law, is or should be a dead language.
Anyway we seem to think that anyone who works on the human animal is worthy of universal respect and adulation. And (for specialists) multi-million dollar incomes. My surgeon, for example has a brochure stating he performs over 200 operations per year. Based on my bill for surgery – this gives him over 1.8 million dollars of income annually before any often 5 minute consultations that earn him $300 a pop. And this when I have to stay in hospital for another night because he was too busy watching sport on a Saturday morning to come and approve my discharge when he said he would.
Yet it is the rare one of us who will criticise our medics earning what they do.
Yet while we congratulate ourselves on being the most successful and intelligent animal in the world we fail to acknowledge and own the fact that we are by most measures the most foolish and least successful animal given we are destroying our environment and show no signs of ceasing this folly. Instead our seemingly inherent greed leads to our preference of continuing to pursue the almighty dollar and giving capitalism a religious status well above any other belief system supported by the Homo sapien.
Cindy was president of the world Socialist Youth outfit so in my mind that brands her as a wannabee Commy dictatoress, especially addressing her mates as “comrade” at their gang meetings
Labour politicians, it seems, cannot be forgiven the folly of their youth.
More folly: I think it was Sir Robert Muldoon who banned radio airing of Split Enz’s great song “I See Red” on the grounds that it encouraged communism.
Frankly I liked Muldoon for muchg the same reason I like our living Sir Robert – his a great sense of humour and laconic delivery of same.
But Bob…socialists never admit to anything. Its all smiles to power is secured, then the teeth are bared.
Ms Ardern has a lineage, via her Presidency of an International Socialist Youth organisation, directly traceable to old school international communism.
Her present image is manufactured by some group within the broad Left. Masterfully so – PR Puffery of the highest order.
That image was test run through the Womans magazines 18 months to 2 years before Ms Ardern and her supporters staged a coup to replace Andrew Little without needing to go through a Labour Leadership contest.
(Go back and read the press and blog coverage in the months leading up to the coup if you think I am misstating how the Labour Partys constitution leadership processes were used to avoid a party and union vote for a new leader – as well as stopping anyone else making a case to be leader via a proper contest)
Ms Ardern is a deeply undemocratic leader – she constantly says ‘I’ and not ‘ the Government’ or ‘the Party’. Refer to her Captains calls destroying the Oil and Gas industrues long term prospects for her leadership style
She and her enablers have propogated a cult like movement and it deeply echoes deifications of Lenin, Stalin and Mao.
Even the posters of Ms Ardern on buildings on Wellington streets this election echo the iconographic nature of posters of Lenin from the 1920s – side on profile looking left. They just need the Red Flag fluttering on the breeze in the background to complete the mimicry
I fear NZ is heading for an economic disaster driven by economic policies of the far left, all enabled by female swing voters buying the image and not seeing the lack of substance and capability behind the glossy ads
On the money sir!
Excellent comments. Shame the rest of the populace can’t see through he ‘PR Puffery’ especially now we are facing another 3 years of her read my lips charade
Trevor: You have summed it up perfectly! Scary …
Given that Ginny Andersen is the grand-niece of 70s commie Bill Andersen, president of the Socialist Unity Party and admirer and frequent visitor to the Soviet Union who kept a bust of Lenin on his desk, it is not surprising that she is right at home in the current crop of Labour MPs. I think she will not only fail to take the electorate vote from Chris Bishop in Hutt South on Saturday, she is now far enough down the Labour list to not make it as a List MP either.
Not so glowing summary from the BBC
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-54444643
Just flicked the box on to be presented with prizzy little Jack Tame telling me about business leadership blah blah. What on earth qualifies this idiot to pretent any knowledge in this area?
It served to remind me of the concerted effort that has been put in to staff these propaganda outlets with children. No life experience, little or no knowledge and ideologically driven.
Control the press=control the masses so it makes sense they would fill these organisation with childlike dreamers and non achievers.