Zhao Ting and Liu Shiyuan: A Study of the New Left’s Socialist Thought in New Zealand
The New Zealand New Left was born in the 1950s and declined in the 1970s; its modes of social movement and guiding ideologies differed from those of the traditional Left. It critiqued the capitalist political-economic system and political trends of thought, aiming to explore a new socialist road that transcended traditional communism and social democracy. It attached great importance to New Zealand's colonial history and the social rights of the Māori people, emphasizing the need to integrate indigenous Māori culture with socialism to build a socialist society with New Zealand characteristics. Currently, the focus of the New Zealand New Left’s struggle has shifted from social movements to academic theoretical research, attempting to reconstruct the socialist ideal, which has exerted a certain influence within New Zealand.
I. The Historical Evolution of the New Zealand New Left
Many scholars believe that the term "New Left" was first proposed by a group of former members of the Communist Party of Great Britain and was a "middle-class movement" that was not only alienated from the working class but even in a state of hostility with them. Some American scholars argue that the New Left, unlike the Old Left’s focus on the working class and its struggles, was a radical student group primarily composed of young white men that relatively neglected the mobilization of groups such as African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, Asians, women, gay liberationists, and leftist Vietnam veterans. In contrast, the New Zealand New Left shared common characteristics with the European and American New Left, such as a focus on student movements, but also possessed unique traits, such as emphasizing the establishment of links with the working class during a certain period.
From its rise in the 1950s to the present, the development of the New Zealand New Left has roughly undergone three stages.
(1) The Origins of the New Zealand New Left (1951–1968)
In 1951, the Communist Party of New Zealand led the largest strike movement in the country's history, known as the "1951 New Zealand Waterfront Strike" [1]. However, the strike was quickly blockaded and suppressed by the authorities, resulting in a crushing defeat that dealt a serious blow to the Communist Party of New Zealand. Some even asserted that the class struggle emphasized by Marx and Engels was obsolete. Influenced by the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956, the "Poznań protests" [2] and the "Hungarian Uprising" [3] occurred successively in the socialist camp, once again causing an ideological shock to New Zealand leftist groups. The New Zealand New Left was a product of this international situation.
The early New Left did not believe that New Zealand was already a classless society, but they basically agreed with the assertion that "class struggle is obsolete." For example, Jim Delahunty, leader of the Wellington "Socialist Forum," argued that New Zealand workers were more like the "labor aristocracy" described by Lenin than the proletariat described by Marx and Engels, because they had gained increasingly abundant material benefits during the development of capitalism; although they were still exploited, they lived comfortably. The members of the early New Left were mainly composed of students, teachers, and civil servants; although they paid attention to class issues, they did not conduct in-depth discussions on them, and their links with the working class were not close enough.
(2) The New Left during the Period of New Social Movements (1968–1976)
In the 1960s and 70s, under the influence of the climax of Western new social movements, the New Zealand New Left began to use strikes, sit-ins, and other methods to resist. At that time, the core members of the New Left numbered only 500–600 people. The limited results of their struggle led them to gradually realize that no matter how radical they were, they could not change the status quo of society. Therefore, they began to strengthen cooperation with the working class, frequently participating in protests organized by trade unions, and for a time formed alliances with radical worker masses and the unionist left.
After the 1970s, the New Left began to seek links with the domestic working class, establishing "People’s Unions" in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch, and other places. They organized workers to carry out a series of struggle activities centered on prominent problems faced by working-class communities, such as poor housing and sanitation, high rents, and excessive poverty. However, frankly speaking, although the People’s Unions won the support of many working-class communities, the actual practices of struggle they carried out were not numerous and were merely a "flash in the pan." During this period, although the New Left established links with the working class and trade unions, the cooperative relationship between the two was not lasting. The main reasons were: on the one hand, most New Left members were far removed from factories and workers, lacked a profound understanding of working-class demands and the class situation of New Zealand society, and believed that because they were highly educated and belonged to the middle class, they deserved privileges, attempting to lead the working class in an elitist manner; thus, they could not fully mobilize the working class for effective struggle. On the other hand, workers also harbored suspicions toward the New Left, viewing them as children of wealthy families who wasted workers' tax money on extensive social activities.
With the Labour Party reforms in the mid-1970s and the withdrawal of New Zealand troops from the Vietnam War, the New Left movement, based primarily on social movements and protests, fell into a low ebb. It began to concentrate on propaganda for anti-war, denuclearization, anti-racism, and women's liberation, no longer opposing the authorities through labor movements and class struggle, nor proposing specific struggle strategies and goals. Obviously, these struggles were insufficient to attract the working class to fight alongside them, nor could they change the relations of production in New Zealand society; they remained confined to single-issue social movements.
(3) The New Left's Turn Toward Academic Critique (1976–Present)
Starting from the mid-to-late 1970s, the political practice and social movements of the New Left gradually stagnated, and New Left intellectuals turned to investing more energy into academic theoretical critique. They critiqued the capitalist social, political, and economic conditions of New Zealand in different periods primarily from the fields of sociology, history, political science, and economics. However, their positions were not solely Marxist; there was no lack of social democracy, Weberianism, and Neo-Trotskyism. Consequently, New Left forces were relatively dispersed in their academic research and theoretical systems.
In the late 1970s, New Left academic critique focused mainly on the welfare state and the new middle class; after the 1980s, the focal point of their critique shifted almost entirely to neoliberalism. The New Left was divided into several schools: the Classical Marxist school was deeply influenced by Ernest Mandel’s "Late Capitalism" thesis and had limited contact with the Neo-Marxist schools then rising in Europe. The Social Democratic school mostly turned a blind eye to the structural problems facing the capitalist mode of accumulation, still firmly believing in the effectiveness of Keynesianism. During this period, the number of academic journals founded by the New Left gradually increased; journals such as the New Zealand Monthly Review, The Republican, Race, Gender, Class, New Zealand Political Review, and New Zealand Sociology exerted a certain influence. However, they suffered from a lack of richness and diversity, as well as a dearth of theoretical debate and innovation. After entering the 21st century, with the passing of the older generation of theorists and the fact that some young scholars gradually abandoned their political stances, the status of the New Zealand New Left in academia has been further marginalized.
II. The New Zealand New Left’s Critique of the Welfare State and Neoliberalism
Because New Left members came from dispersed political groups, it is difficult to clearly and completely summarize their theoretical system. Generally speaking, based on a Marxist standpoint and a passion for the labor movement, the New Zealand New Left conducted an in-depth critique of the welfare state and neoliberalism.
(1) Critique of the Bourgeois Welfare State
In the eyes of New Left scholars, the welfare state imported by the New Zealand Labour Party from Britain was nothing more than a reconciliation of class interests in the name of the "national interest." However, the national interest is not equivalent to the interests of the proletariat; this policy was essentially just an "outpost" for capitalism to extract wealth. They also believed that the welfare state had problems ranging from its theoretical origins to its policy propositions and political practices: welfare legislation was not the result of capitalist economic prosperity but one of the necessary conditions for the existence of the capitalist economy, with welfare legislation preceding economic growth. The emergence of the welfare state was not accidental but an inevitable result of the development of the capitalist system, developed to avoid the "inevitable demise of capitalism" predicted by Marx in political and economic terms. As David Bedggood argued, the welfare state was the result of capital accumulation in a specific period; the post-WWII discourse of welfare liberalism was rooted in the normalcy of state interventionism, with the state playing an important role in the formation of the "affluent society," as did large-scale international interventionism. Historically, as a weak, semi-colonial economy extremely dependent on overseas capital, New Zealand’s capitalist development was characterized by foreign intervention from the very beginning.
New Left scholars further pointed out that the welfare state led to the legitimization of capitalist power and inequality in the distribution of wealth. Under the influence of the so-called "welfare consensus," the masses imperceptibly accepted the demands of capitalist political power and lost their rational perception of the bourgeois regime, making it difficult to realize that they were encountering injustice. In this sense, under the cover of the welfare state, human beings are systematically alienated. At the same time, the welfare state did not reduce labor costs but inherited the market function of maintaining the unequal social relations of the capitalist system. Under the guise of an "affluent society" and "per capita prosperity," it further consolidated the system of exploitation and designed a large number of methods to transfer social public wealth into private hands. New Left scholars stated bluntly that the "redistribution of wealth through taxation and social services" by the welfare state essentially imposed on the working class the obligation to share the inflation of the capitalist economy, further leading to "unequal distribution of wealth, while those oppressive and mysterious administrative and cultural institutions are responsible for continuing to deceive the masses."
(2) Critique of Neoliberalism
In the mid-to-late 1980s, New Zealand sociology, which originally represented a leftist position, was eroded by rising neoliberal ideas, gradually replacing class identity with identity politics in its discourse system. This shift protected the interests of the bourgeoisie who controlled the means of production and possessed purchasing power. New Left intellectuals gradually realized that the neoliberalization of the Labour Party reshaped New Zealand’s society, politics, and economy.
According to the views of the French Regulation School [4], the neoliberal economic model is a new regulation system for European and American countries to deal with the "stagflation" crisis of the 1970s, which basically negated the welfare state, supported the capitalists' suppression of workers, supported the profit demands of financial capital, and supported "shareholder primacy." However, it cannot be denied that it is also a new stage and policy succeeding Keynesianism. But the situation in New Zealand is different; it was successively dependent on the British Commonwealth and the United States, and its capitalist development relied heavily on transnational capital and overseas political forces. New Left scholar Bruce Curtis pointed out incisively that neoliberalism in New Zealand was merely an absurd lie that created an oligarchy; the Labour Party’s neoliberal policies would not only fail to eliminate these monopolies but would instead strengthen the power of transnational monopoly capital.
To further explain the continuous crisis brought to New Zealand society by neoliberalism, Paul Dalziel and Caroline Saunders proposed the concept of "wellbeing economics." Its core idea is that individual citizens, community groups, markets, and the government work together to improve people's ability to work and enable them to lead lives of value. Although the capitalist system has loopholes, it has, after all, created an "affluent society," and "wellbeing economics" will reproduce this prosperity. The New Left does not agree with the explanation of "wellbeing economics," arguing that its problem lies in presetting a "good side" of capitalism and solving problems based on this assumption. However, capitalism is not like this; its fundamental driver is profit, and neoliberal reforms merely slowed down the superficial speed of capitalist profit-making. Neoliberalism has further led to class polarization in New Zealand, with the gap between rich and poor widening further.
Regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, the New Left scholars utilize the Marxist dialectics of nature to analyze the logical relationship between globalization and ecological disaster. David Neilson rethinks the maladies of capitalist economic globalization and neoliberalism from the dimension of ecological crisis: "the globe-trotting bourgeoisie and middle classes of the developed world made the greatest contribution to the global spread of COVID-19." Through various business or cultural projects, they moved freely across the globe, bringing the virus to low-income laboring groups in every locale. In other words, the displacement of COVID-19 onto the "relative surplus population" [5] resulted in a global pandemic. The global pandemic of COVID-19 highlighted the political and class nature of the virus, which is precisely what the neoliberal-led mode of globalization brought about. From the perspective of ecosocialism, one of the inherent essences of the capitalist mode of production is the exploitation of nature; neoliberalism has expanded and intensified the exploitation of relative surplus value within this process while simultaneously shackling the development of social productive forces. The COVID-19 pandemic fully exposed the decay and backwardness of capitalism. More fundamentally, the expansive and destructive nature inherent in the capitalist mode of production has been further reinforced under the neoliberal system.
III. The New Zealand New Left’s Reaffirmation of the Marxist Class Position
Behind the New Zealand New Left’s critique of the welfare state and neoliberalism lies a reflection of its Marxist stance—specifically, the position of applying Marxist class theory to the realities of New Zealand and seeking theoretical innovation.
(1) Analysis of the Class Situation in New Zealand
Since the 1960s, the New Zealand Labour Party has avoided discussing class issues, while during the same period, the Communist Party of New Zealand suffered severe internal friction due to the split in the world socialist camp [6]. This resulted in a mechanized interpretation of Marxism, ideological confusion within the party, and organizational principles and systems that existed in name only. Starting from Marxism, the New Zealand New Left redefined classes within New Zealand’s capitalist society, returning to the category of class in the analysis of social problems. Patrick Ongley argues that New Zealand has undergone three social transformations since the 19th century, all involving major changes in class relations and structures, yet most New Zealanders lack enthusiasm for this topic or even deny the existence of class consciousness among the public. This stems from the historical "egalitarian ideal" [7] in New Zealand, which, combined with the leap in social productive forces and the transformation of socio-economic models, has led the public's self-perception toward individualization and fragmentation. However, this does not mean that class is insignificant in New Zealand society; the structural inequality of social, economic, and political resources highlights that it remains a class society.
Another issue attracting the attention of New Left scholars is the positioning of the "new middle class." Ongley observed major changes in the social class structure of New Zealand during this period, arguing that the working class began to transform into a middle class—a shift caused by the expansion of material production and new technological progress leading to a greater division of labor and the replacement of human labor by machinery. Sharing a similar view, Rob Steven further introduced Samir Amin’s theory of "unequal exchange," arguing that since World War II, New Zealand society has been divided into four distinct classes: the bourgeoisie, the middle class, the petty bourgeoisie, and the working class. Regarding the definition of the middle class, he continues Henri Lefebvre’s [8] classic interpretation: "The power structure undoubtedly relies on the middle class, that is, on their ambiguity. In terms of production and consumption, they are attributed to economic reality." He believes the middle class is not a class-for-itself [9] and cannot act as a social force independent of the bourgeoisie and the working class. This is due to the contradictory position of the middle class in modern capitalist society—it must surrender surplus value to the bourgeoisie while finding itself in opposition to the working class. Analyzing the formation of the petty bourgeoisie, Steven argues: "If the middle class is the pillar of legitimacy for the New Zealand bourgeoisie's rule, then its foundation is the petty bourgeoisie—those who work for themselves but do not hire wage labor." In Steven’s view, the petty bourgeoisie sees itself as independent of both labor and capital, rather than as being between the two.
(2) The Rediscovery of Marxist Class Theory
In their analysis of the class situation in New Zealand, the New Left adheres to Marxist class theory. According to Marxism, the relationship between capital and labor defines class relations in capitalist society; through the subordination of labor to the labor process and the mechanism of capital exploitation, the majority of the laboring population is forcibly pushed under the same "roof," forming a massive industrial proletariat. However, with the global expansion of neoliberalism, the New Left discovered that the new transformations of capitalism have changed the landscape of the modern laboring population. The once abstract and singular concept of the proletariat has been concretely stratified, and the class structure of the world's laboring population exhibits multiple paths of generation—a trend further reinforced by the insufficient and unbalanced development between contemporary nation-states.
The New Left believes that under new historical conditions, it is necessary to rediscover Marxist class theory. Epistemologically, they critique Althusser’s "epistemological break" [10]. For Althusser, only Marx’s mature works can be regarded as scientific treatises; this division leads to the disappearance of the distinction between the "in-itself" and "for-itself" aspects of the class concept in Marxism. Steven criticized: "If a wage laborer identifies with bourgeois ideology and politically supports the bourgeoisie, then an Althusserian would classify this laborer as bourgeois." Therefore, for the New Left to clarify basic issues regarding the concept of class, it needs to focus on the distinction between "class-in-itself" and "class-for-itself," and the subordinate relationship between the labor process and capital. For instance, David Neilson critiques Erik Olin Wright’s theory of "contradictory class locations," arguing that Wright's analysis conflates class with mechanisms of exploitation and distribution, one-sidedly assuming that class is simply exploitation. Although exploitation is the basis of Marx’s class analysis, there is an essential difference between it and class itself; class analysis requires a distinction between the mechanisms that produce classes and the classes themselves.
The New Left adheres to the Marxist theory of proletarianization and agrees with E.P. Thompson’s assertion that "class is a socio-cultural formation that forms itself in concrete historical struggles and the process of people's movements." The New Left believes that the process of proletarianization evolved from two stages of labor’s subordination to capital: "formal subsumption" deprives people of the means of independent survival, where "the labor process is subordinated to capital (it is capital's own process), and the capitalist enters this process as a manager and director; for the capitalist, this process is simultaneously a process of direct exploitation of others' labor." The concept of "real subsumption" highlights the establishment of the capitalist mode of production as "a mode of production that changes both the real nature of the labor process and its real conditions." Therefore, the real subsumption of labor to capital establishes the relations of production that allow capital to continuously accumulate and expand, while also serving as a means to place labor entirely under the power of capital.
The New Left’s theoretical exploration was influenced to some extent by Neo-Marxism, while also incorporating the theories of non-Marxist scholars such as Weber and Bourdieu. This led them to either one-sidedly understand class theory from a philosophical-sociological perspective or to directly equate Marxist class theory with empirical economic analysis. The problems exposed by these one-dimensional academic studies are as Marx stated: "If I do not know the factors on which these classes rest, such as wage labor, capital, etc., 'class' is an empty word."
IV. The New Zealand New Left’s Vision for Moving Toward Socialism
On the basis of critiquing the welfare state and neoliberalism, the New Zealand New Left focused on academic discussions of Marxist class theory and, by integrating the real-world problems of capitalist society, proposed their strategic vision for achieving socialism.
Politically, the New Left strongly calls for the overthrow of the long-term oppression of New Zealand by colonialism and neoliberalism. The New Left argues that New Zealand has a long history of being colonized during its modernization process. Early British colonizers completed the colonization of New Zealand through the annexation of land, the elimination of Māori people, and immigration. In this process, the British colonizers brought devastating destruction to Māori society through force, religion, and ideological suppression. The Governor-General system supported by Britain became the "midwife" of New Zealand’s historical evolution, and modes of rule built on a capitalist economic base began to be introduced. After World War II, New Zealand transitioned from an early agricultural and raw-material colony to a "neo-colony" dependent on international markets. During this period, New Zealand's monopolistic oligarchs and transnational capital seized political discourse through their monopoly position in financial capital and foreign trade, thereby achieving the goal of controlling state affairs. The penetration and development of neoliberalism in New Zealand is merely "neo-colonialism" under a different guise; the more fully neoliberalism develops and the larger the scale of monopoly, the more it reflects the political attribute of New Zealand as a "neo-colony." Curtis argues that in New Zealand, monopoly is actually difficult to distinguish from neo-colonialism; there has always been a struggle within the ruling class between the domestic bourgeoisie and the transnational comprador bourgeoisie, with the latter enjoying greater political power. In New Zealand, the victory of capital and the realization of its political interests were achieved under the background of neoliberalism: "the so-called autonomy, the myth of New Zealand autonomy, is nothing but the reality of neo-colonialism." The New Left pays particular attention to racial issues, emphasizing the empowerment of ethnic minorities and advocating for an alliance with the left wing of the Labour Party to establish a proletarian coalition composed of the working class and ethnic minorities.
Economically, the New Left believes that for New Zealand to move toward socialism, the rule of financial capital urgently needs to be replaced. Since the implementation of neoliberal economic policies, the degree of monopoly and concentration of financial capital has further intensified, leading to a more serious polarization in wealth distribution. Data from the Reserve Bank of New Zealand shows that over 85% of assets are held by New Zealand’s four major banks. Data from the Household Economic Survey (HES) also indicates that the gap between ordinary New Zealanders and the wealthy continues to widen, with the top 10% of the wealthy controlling over 60% of the national wealth. At the same time, New Zealand’s financial industry and foreign trade are heavily dependent on international capital. World Bank data shows that New Zealand's net foreign investment hit a historic low in 2022 at -US$6.97 billion. This means international capital has a huge impact on New Zealand’s economy; once an international financial crisis breaks out, New Zealand will be severely impacted. The New Left calls for a radical transformation of financial capital and a change in New Zealand’s long-standing colonial-dependent economic structure. In recent years, some New Left scholars have also paid special attention to the productive and economic conditions of the Māori, proposing a "Māori socialist economy." They emphasize that socialism is not just about liberating the productive forces of white New Zealand immigrants, but also the productive forces of indigenous minorities represented by the Māori. This is a unique characteristic of New Zealand compared to other Western capitalist countries.
Ideologically, various factions within the New Zealand New Left hold differing understandings of socialism and the means of its realization. The revolutionary Marxist and Neo-Trotskyist factions advocate for an ideological return to Marxism-Leninism, the establishment of a united front against monopoly and imperialism, and timely attention to changes in the numbers and ideologies of the bourgeoisie, middle class, and petty bourgeoisie to facilitate flexible action. Regarding the petty bourgeoisie, they argue that these groups only become "candidates for an alliance with the working class" when they "recognize the impact that monopoly capital and imperialism have upon them." David Bedggood argues that there is no such thing as "market socialism" or "people's capitalism" in New Zealand; he thus proposes a "theory of transcending capitalism," emphasizing that to transcend dependency and poverty means to transcend capitalism itself. He stresses that only through the political mobilization of the working class and its international allies, and through the revolutionary transformation of capitalist relations of production, can such inequalities be eliminated. However, Bedggood did not delineate a clear blueprint for struggle strategy; segments within the New Left also view him as a Neo-Trotskyist and an "Old Leftist" holding an obsolete revolutionary outlook. As a major representative of the new generation of the New Left, David Neilson adheres to a Marxist position in his theoretical research, yet shifts toward democratic socialism when addressing specific practical strategies. His solutions blend Marxism and democratic socialism, reflecting a pragmatic style. He proposes establishing a democratic socialist transnational/local political-economic regulatory model based on international cooperation. Furthermore, he introduces Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony into democratic socialism to construct a "counter-hegemonic," universally inclusive, and amicable model of democratic socialist development based on the principle of solidarity and mutual assistance among all nations and peoples. However, his democratic socialist regulatory scheme contains significant utopian elements and a spirit of compromise, making it impossible to implement under the current constraints of globalization.
Conclusion
From the 1950s to the present, the New Zealand New Left has shifted from broad participation in socio-political movements to theoretical research and academic critique, advancing the New Zealand left-wing movement at both the theoretical and practical levels. Throughout this process, the New Zealand New Left has also manifested certain limitations. Looking at the early social movements, a gap existed between the New Left and the working class; the former did not regard the working class as a constituent of its allied forces and ignored new changes emerging under the wave of "new social movements." Regarding its subsequent theoretical research and academic critique, the New Left's theory lacks systematicity and rigor; its understanding of Marxism is influenced by other schools of thought, lacking scientific judgment and a clear framework, and its cognition of scientific socialism is colored by subjectivity. Organizationally, the early New Left lacked a primary leadership core and possessed a heterogeneous internal composition, with New Left organizations in different regions acting independently. After the shift toward theoretical critique, the movement continued to suffer from fragmentation into numerous factions and significant ideological divergences. It failed to propose realistic and constructive strategies for achieving socialism, and its influence among the proletariat and the broad masses remains limited. Today, amidst the powerful rise of the "Red-Green Alliance" between the New Zealand Labour Party and the Green Party, the New Left has fallen into an ideological and political trough, with its political and academic status further marginalized. Nevertheless, its theoretical research and academic critique of capitalism still merit our serious attention.