Radio National Nights Interviews

You can access and download my interviews on various topics by using this link:
http://www.radionz.co.nz/search/results?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=Brian+Roper

The interview on the Pike River Mining Disaster is at:

http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/ngts/ngts-20121119-2045-thinkers_politically_left-048.mp3

Key Sources of Information on the Pike River Mining Disaster

The following are some links to key sources of information on the Pike River mining disaster. I'll be building this up over the next few days. 

The first and most important place to start is the Royal Commission report:
http://pikeriver.royalcommission.govt.nz/Volume-One---Overview

And for the full report including Volume 2:
http://pikeriver.royalcommission.govt.nz/Final-Report

Very useful articles include:

http://gordoncampbell.scoop.co.nz/2012/11/06/gordon-campbell-on-the-royal-commission-pike-river-report/

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/comment/columnists/chris-trotter/7924949/Labour-shares-Pike-River-guilt

Bryce Edwards provides a useful set of links to material in his NZ Politics Daily, November 6th, 2012. This is reproduced in the NBR:

http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/nz-politics-daily-death-neoliberalism-ck-131940

He also has a useful collection of images, cartoons, and so forth at:

http://liberation.typepad.com/liberation/2012/11/the-politics-of-the-pike-river-tragedy-in-images-and-cartoons.html

For his criticism of Labour and the EPMU see:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/politics/news/article.cfm?c_id=280&objectid=10846245


There is some useful background on wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike_River_Mine 

You can watch John Key's response to the report at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qWTnPPokM&noredirect=1


Pike families' lawyer, Nick Davidson QC, and spokesman Bernie Monk emerged from the Greymouth report release and commented briefly on TV3:

http://www.scoop.co.nz/multimedia/tv/national/72640.html 

The Tragedy at Pike River

Check out this article on Pike River. It isn't critical enough of the failure of the Engineering, Printing, and Manufacturing Union to organise its members to take industrial action over safety concerns at the mine, but it is still provides a powerful critique of the other key factors that led to the tragedy: a business that put profit ahead of its workers' safety, neoliberal deregulation by successive neoliberal Labour and National governments, which among other things meant that the Department of Labour was insufficiently resourced to inspect mining operations and operated on the basis of the assumption that business can be trusted to largely regulate itself with respect to health and safety. 

http://iso.org.nz/2012/11/06/the-tragedy-at-pike-river-an-indictment-of-capitalism/#more-818/ 

Knowing Victims: Feminism and Victim Politics in Neoliberal Times

This important book will be essential reading for everyone who is interested in feminism and critical of neoliberalism. Written by the wonderful, brilliant, word smith- Rebecca Stringer.

http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415643337/ 

Red versus Green explanations of the mounting environmental problems that confront humankind.

Today I was made aware of two articles providing very different assessments of the underlying causes of the mounting environmental problems that confront humankind. One provides a socialist interpretation in which capitalism (correctly in my view) is identified as the most environmentally destructure social and economic system created thus far in human history (available on the IS0-NZ website).
http://iso.org.nz/2012/10/31/how-the-1-percent-conjured-a-monster-storm/#more-808

The other is an interview in the NZ Listener magazine with the current Co-Leader of the NZ Green Party, Russel Norman, who states: 'capitalism was “humanised” between the 1930s and 1950s and “the next challenge is to green it”. It may surprise some people to learn that Norman is not anti-capitalist. “I support a market economy with an important role for the state. I am not radically different from an old-style social democrat.”

http://www.listener.co.nz/current-affairs/politics/interview-green-party-co-leader-russel-norman/

Is Socialist Participatory Democracy a Feasible and Desirable Alternative to Capitalism and Liberal Representative Democracy?

People commonly think that there is no alternative to the status quo. Yet there is an interesting and important body of literature that focuses on the issue of whether a socialist and democratic alternative to capitalism is feasible and desirable. The next book in my democracy research programme will directly address this issue. It is tentatively entitled – The Future Socialist Society.

If you are interested in finding out more about the feasibility of socialist participatory democracy, then start your reading with these sources: 

*A. Callinicos, “What will socialism be like?” in Socialist Review, Jan. 1993, pp.18-20.

*A. Callinicos, “Socialism and Democracy” in D. Held (ed), Prospects for Democracy,  ch.9, pp. 200-213.

*A. Callinicos, An Anti-Capitalist Manifesto, Polity Press, Cambridge, 2003.

*P. Devine, Democracy and Economic Planning: The Political Economy of a Self-Governing Society, Polity Press, Oxford, 1988, “Introduction”.

*E. Mandel, “In Defence of Socialist Planning”, in New Left Review, no. 159, Sept-Oct 1986, pp. 5-38.

*D. McNally, Against the Market, Verso, London, 1993, ch. 6 “Beyond the Market”. 

*D. McNally, Another World is Possible: Globalization and Anti-Capitalism, Second Edition, Arbeiter Ring Publishing, Winnipeg, 2006, chs.1, 6 & 7.

*J. Molyneux, Arguments for Revolutionary Socialism, Second Edition, Bookmarks, London, 1991, ch.7 “The Future Socialist Society”.  

Beyond this, more detailed discussions of particular aspects of socialist participatory democracy include: 

E. Mandel, “Socialism and Individual Rights” in Against the Current, vol. 6, no.2, May-June 1991, pp.41-42. In POLS 208: Democracy Readings.

A. Campbell, “Democratic Planned Socialism: Feasible Economic Procedures” in Science and Society, vol. 66, no. 1, 2002, pp.29-42.

P. Cockshott and A. Cottrell, “The Relation Between Economic and Political Instances in the Communist Mode of Production” in Science and Society, vol. 66, no. 1, 2002, pp.50-63.

M. Albert and R. Hahnel, “In Defence of Participatory Economics” in Science and Society, vol. 66, no. 1, 2002, pp.7-21.

P. Devine, “Participatory Planning Through Negotiated Coordination’ in Science and Society, vol. 66, no. 1, 2002, pp.72-87.

P. Devine, “Market Socialism or Participatory Planning?” in Review of Radical Political Economics, vol. 24 nos 3&4, 1992, pp. 67-89.

P. Devine, Democracy and Economic Planning: The Political Economy of a Self-Governing Society, as above, Ch.6 “Democracy”.

D. Kotz, ‘Socialism and Innovation’, in Science and Society, vol. 66, no. 1, 2002, pp.94-99.

E. Mandel, “The Myth of Market Socialism”, in New Left Review, no. 169, May-June 1988, pp. 108-120.

N. Geras,  “Seven Types of Obloquy: Travesties of Marxism”. In The Socialist Register, 1990, 1-36.

C. Harman,   “The Myth of Market Socialism”, in International Socialism, 2:42, 1989, pp. 3-63.

G. Pearce, et al., “The Case for Socialism Restated”, in NZMR, no. 303, November 1987.

The fire last time: the rise of class struggle and progressive social movements in Aotearoa/New Zealand, 1968 to 1977

Abstract:
A dramatic upsurge in working class struggle, surpassing in magnitude the rise of the Red Feds from 1908 to 1913 and the 1951 Waterfront Front Lockout, took place in New Zealand from the Arbitration Court's nil general wage order in June 1968 to the union movement's defeat of the Muldoon Government's attempted wage freeze in 1976. This article describes and analyses these struggles and their impact on progressive social movements, particularly the anti-war, women's liberation and Maori protest movements.

The article was published in the Australian journal - Marxist Interventions (Issue No.3), 2011, pp.7-30.

It can be accessed at: http://www.anu.edu.au/polsci/mi/3/3.htm 

Key words: Class struggle in New Zealand; New Left; 1968; women's liberation movement; Maori protest movement; anti-war movement; Muldoon; Marxism; 1970s; New Zealand, 1968-1979.