Hobgoblin #8 November 2014 www.hobgoblin.org.nz

Goals and Instruments

What is it we need to do to create a genuinely socialist project on a small archipelago in the Southwest Pacific? The Hobgoblin Network view Election results notwithstanding, the issues of the left were the issues of the ordinary kiwi. Education, health, employment, poverty and wages were the issues of the election in poll after poll. The issues were ours, the solutions not. And that is the key lesson of 2014 – what the left proposes is not perceived as the answer – it’s not ‘common sense’. This is not news of course. Many have come to the conclusion that building an effective radical left counter hegemony is, along with its twin, the need for an ideological and organisational ‘home’, today’s task. Sitting around ‘hoping for change’ – and reprising the failed strategies and tactics of the last 25 years is just that: ‘hoping for change’ – and that ‘won’t cut it’. The NZ left needs to start taking itself seriously and engaging in a constructive discussion on Sue’s conclusions and the research that underpins them is a good place to start. A truly radical programme, a kiwi socialism, requires considerably more than a simple majority - it's radicalism will be determined in the end not by its programme but by the magnitude of popular and active support for that programme. The ‘lefts’ solutions need to be ‘common sense’. That ‘common sense’ does not grow on trees - it’s not conjured out of fresh air. Nor for that matter are the polices, strategy and tactics that underpin such radicalism. Sue has challenged us to think about how we build our future ; what is Kiwi Socialism in the context of 21st century global capitalism - what’s the goal? the strategy? and importantly what’s the instrument we need to deploy to win it - to move closer to that horizon.

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