As I begin typing here, I’m not entirely sure what the end result of this piece will be. I find myself at wits end puzzling over what exactly the New Zealand radical left should do going into the future. It’s a problem that has particularly occupied my thoughts in recent months, the conclusion of the last year’s research throwing me into something of a crisis of faith.

Each conversation I have, each little new development, leaves me with an uneasy feeling of déjà vu as situations and debates among the radical left seem to fruitlessly repeat themselves. It is the total ignorance of this repetition that is most frustrating, and I find only myself to blame in it. Like the last year’s research has only served to obscure how I view the radical left, rather than clear it up. What have I missed that leads me to a completely different conclusions as to the state of the radical left today than the rest of the radical left? I’m part of it, I’m not seeking to make some pompous declaration of superiority to the rest of the left. To claim I, and only I, have found the correct line that will be the salvation of New Zealand socialism; I’d probably leave the left in an even worse state than it’s already in if I were to ‘take charge’.

I feel totally alien to the enthusiastic proclamations that the conditions are good, that things are looking up, that the New Zealand radical left today is in a better position than it has been in for a long time to grow and strike out with renewed vigor. A years research drives me inexorably to the conclusion that the exact opposite is true, that the radical left today rests in its worst ever state. Drained of resources, of people, with a shadow of the formal institutions it once had. By the later 2000s, the three largest socialist organisations in the country could muster perhaps 120 active members with a periphery boosting that somewhere a little over 150. Today only one remains, the ISO, it is unclear exactly how many members it has but the most optimistic estimates put it at 60 while my research points towards a number more realistically resting around 30-40. The descendants of the Workers Party and Socialist Worker, numbering maybe 75-85 by about 2007, together would be wildly optimistic in claiming 15.

The anarchist movement has dwindled from 100 in Wellington alone around 1999-2003 to a few dozen across the entire country today. Many of the smaller groups still around 10-20 years ago have disappeared or dwindled even further. True, a new communist organisation under the opaque banner of ‘Organise Aotearoa’ has apparently been formed, I hear with as many as 80+ members. But the group is in a half life, apparently made public too early with little information available and potential members seemingly left in the dark. Until there is something more to go on (as far as I know rumors of this ‘new communist party’ have been around since 2014) I don’t know how much this organisation could count. This is only one metric of measuring the matter, however.

I will concede that one could point to the scale of projects being launched as a positive sign. People Against Prisons Aotearoa has done significant work giving a black eye to the carceral system while materially improving the lives of those getting out of it. Auckland Action Against Poverty are similarly proactive. One could point to the launch of Counterfutures Journal; Economic and Social Research Aotearoa (a think tank); and the annual Social Movements, Resistance and Social Change conferences as a sign of positive intellectual development. But that’s an assessment devoid of historical context. There are plenty of examples of projects of an equally impressive scale (given our collective size) dotted over the last two decades. Unite Union; coalitions like Climate Justice, Free East Timor Coalition, or Peace Action Wellington; the hectic days of the anti-globalisation or GE movements; the successful RAM election campaign in 2004; Workers Charter; or any number of successful campaigns.

It is of importance, however, to note that compared to the last four to five years; the period at the start of this century had a far greater number of projects of a similar scale and ambition running concurrently than the left seems capable of maintaining today. This remains unconsidered in attempts at promoting a forward looking program, which present no reflection on the past few decades and a future which can only go up from here. That is dangerous. The same issue plagued the left of fifteen years ago, prominent sections of which proclaimed that a new fightback was always just around the corner – while others declared new tactics were simply making the problems of the lefts ‘lost generation’ in the 1990s irrelevant.

One of the most important revelations from my thesis research was what came after the immediate period of my study. That the radical left imploded over the late 1980s to early 1990s is well enough known. Most of the prominent organisations fell apart or went into steep decline. The four largest such socialist groups had a combined paper membership of up to 800 (probably several hundred committed activists), I’d guess the wider radical left milieu still numbered into the thousands by the 1980s despite a painful decline after the ’81 Tour. By 1995 those four large socialist organisations were gone, the new groups probably less than a quarter the size combined. At the start of the new millennium there was a brief improvement. Anarchism exploded, Marxism Leninism and Maoism let out their last gasps, Trotskyism grew in the form of the still young Socialist Worker/International Socialists/Anti-Capitalist Alliance (soon to be Workers Party).

Things quietened somewhat later into the 2000s, largely due to Wellington anarchism tearing itself apart in tragic circumstances. However, it was what came after my period that is of most importance here. MANA arrived in 2011 to great fanfare, nearly all of the major socialist groups joined and much of the radical left flocked to the banner. The story is recent and well known, but what is left out is that the socialist left emerged from MANA in the aftermath of the Internet-MANA debacle in a considerably worse state than it had gone in. The Workers Party and Socialist Worker were gone: Fightback (successor to WPNZ) proceeded to go into thus far irreversible decline, Redline (split from WPNZ) remains a tiny online publishing collective, Socialist Aotearoa (split from Socialist Worker) is a tiny grouplet stranded in Auckland and justifiably ostracized by much of the left. The anarchist movement never recovered from the implosion in Wellington and the ’07 Terror Raids. ISO for a time stood alone, slightly larger but nowhere near large enough to account for the collapse of much of the rest of the radical left. This state of affairs has never really been reckoned with, and the ‘second collapse’ of the radical left that we really only just experienced a few years ago goes totally unacknowledged.

There are other things that need to be properly examined. Much of the major movements of the past six to seven years have had a distinctly left-nationalist character, something more apparent over time. A tendency toward nationalism identifiable in the campaign against state asset sales (and earlier) was far more pronounced by the time of the movement against the TPPA, a shift reflected in the move by most of the major parties towards more restrictive immigration policy. The character of the radical left has changed in ideological terms, as well. Marxism-Leninism and its descendants had basically vanished by the later 2000s as the last holdouts folded, something that remained the case until perhaps 2015 (the periodisation could be contested). Anarchism (in various forms) and Trotskyism (eventually represented almost solely by the ISO at a genuinely national level) remained the dominant players until about the same time. Over the last two years, however, Marxist-Leninist tendencies have reappeared with some vigor. Trotskyism remains stable but lacks the dynamism that new M-Ls have roared onto the scene with. Meanwhile a more general heterodox Marxism has become popular among some (myself included) and a variety of Left Communist, Orthodox Marxist, Situationist, and other tendencies are starting to be read in New Zealand.

Whatever subset of the radical left you’re in, and however you view the other subsets (the relations are, to say it lightly, strained), it is important to understand why this is the case. If we are incapable of socio-political introspection, we are no hope of deploying such a rigorous analysis for New Zealand, the Pacific, or the world – as we must have if we are to be any hope of avoiding a future of unrestricted barbarism. There are and have been projects; now and throughout; of genuine value and impressive result – fantastic work is being done as I type. But to instinctively close ranks when we question how we got here, to point at all the good done and the moral righteousness of our cause rather than face our own weakness, cannot put us on the footing needed to rebuild. This is not a zeitgeist, not a new radical moment, not the mass explosion of anger over the state of things that will sweep the radical left back to mass movement status. At best, the first steps of rebuilding are taking place as the radical left slowly puts itself back together. At worst, we have ourselves deluded.

It will be a bitter and painful process, as we will be driven to ask ourselves: is it over?