Patience is a virtue that you never seemed to learn
You were born with nothing, to nothing you’ll return

– New Model Army, “Lights Go Out”, The Ghost of Cain (1985)

I find myself in a peculiar mood these days with respect to Notes South from Nowhere. It occupies my mind a fair amount, and yet most of my creative and political efforts have been in other projects (something which has been the case for years at this point). When it was originally launched as The Ice Bloc, the blog was largely the product of a deep disillusionment with the extant socialist left. There were few if any avenues to write or record outside a vanishingly small number of sect papers, only one of which took submissions from outside the organisation. I wanted to write, I wanted to make my contribution to the political life of the socialist movement, and so establishing my own outlet for doing so seemed the only real option.

As I attempted to develop my intellectual engagement with socialism, the seemingly unshakable anti-intellectualism of New Zealand culture – that colonial pragmatism in which so many take unwarranted pride – felt as though they were closing walls around me. It is worth noting that I was very unwell at the time, and personal circumstance intermingled with political frustration to breed a cynical despair at the prospects for a broad socialist project. At the time it was difficult to disentangle my own circumstances from considered critiques of the political waters in which I felt to be drowning. Resultingly much of what I wrote in the early years, with a few exceptions, was not of great quality (even if some of the intentions I still think were well placed), and much of what I wrote is either now gone, rewritten and updated, or segmented off into other places.

The total number of outlets for such political engagements has only expanded a little, but the will to start new projects or collaborate across organisations seems to have developed healthily. My feeling when this blog was launched was that an overwhelming focus was placed on nonstop action, often with a massive toll on a limited number of committed activists for very little in the way of tangible results. The hostile and disinterested opposition to intellectual development on its own merits (“everything must be for the movement, comrades! these books will keep you off the streets!”) has dissipated with time. This is not to say that New Zealand is now a hub for radical intellectual insight at the grassroots level, but the avenues for engaging if one wishes to with the intellectual heritage of socialism are less clogged than they once were.

Where once a new reading group would have been accepted only with a certain snark, a snide comment about being too good for protest politics or disconnection from “the people” (who always seemed to be framed as borderline illiterate and hostile to big ideas), it seems to me now that such a development would be welcomed on its own terms for what it is – a genuine attempt to contribute through intellectual development to the wider political development of socialism in New Zealand. This is something I am incredibly pleased to see, and it has significantly altered how I view the socialist left in this country, as well as how I conceptualise my own contributions and place in it.

The political landscape of the socialist left has changed considerably, with only one of the major organisations (the International Socialists) which dominated that scene when I was in high school still around in any notable number. Instead, most organisations (with a few exceptions) have emerged in the context of, or contemporary to, the two major organisations of the last decade: Organise Aotearoa and the Federation of Socialist Societies. These two organisations, the former to my knowledge now existing as a rump primarily in Auckland and the latter the dominant force on the socialist left, are the only ones of their kind in New Zealand to have consistently breached 100+ formal paying members this century. The Federation of Socialist Societies now maintain somewhere a bit below 200 members, while Organise Aotearoa peaked (again to my knowledge) at somewhere around or a little below 300 members in the late-2010s.

Crucially for this discussion, both organisations have been encouraging of members expanding their intellectual capacity for political engagement (albeit in very different ways and directions). While I cannot speak to experience within Organise Aotearoa, I was never a member, it seemed from the outside that its multi-tendency nature while remaining an explicitly socialist project had a pronounced impact of the wider socialist left. It did something no organisation had done for decades – it became a pole of attraction and organisation for what was once termed “the independent left”, those with socialist inclinations who were active within the wider progressive movements but had little interest in the established socialist organisations. The path forward to organise the broader fractured mass of socialist sympathisers, not a large demographic but one significantly larger than the membership of any one organisation, seemed to be starting to clarify.

While Organise Aotearoa did not prove to be the central tentpole of a mass renewal in “Kiwi socialism”, it seemed to shatter an ossification which had set in among the socialist left. In certain respects, the Federation of Socialist Societies (to which I should mention, I am a member of my local constituent society) has stepped into the gap left by Organise Aotearoa – at least in terms of size and momentum. What seems clear to me, however, is that a precedent for organisation on a fundamentally larger scale than had seemingly been possible in the 1990s through mid-2010s has now been set. So, as my health has improved, my central frustration with the socialist left diminished, and a political ‘earthquake in a teacup’ took place on the socialist left, my perspectives and activity have likewise shifted.

Notes South from Nowhere has transitioned from a central repository for my writing and recording, with everything I do being originally published here or republished here from elsewhere, to more of a central hub to link through to an array of publications and projects which now stretch across the country. I take down more material than I put up, with only a few original pieces living on the blog itself and most of my writing being for other outlets. Much of what I publish or run through my own outlets is now done through other places and are simply connected by this blog. In short, as the situation has changed, Notes South from Nowhere has ceased to really be an outlet. Less of what I write is here, none of my recordings are hosted here, the archival material is hosted elsewhere and promoted here, and republication is reserved for individual segments from larger items (such as an individual article rather than an entire magazine).

So, that peculiar mood regarding this blog is – has it served its purpose? The blog has had a faithful if not particularly big readership since the start, and that readership has followed along through periods of inactivity and multiple migrations across the internet as major and minor social media websites have undertaken a process of utility decline. The website will go on, but it will largely serve to redirect readers to the appropriate place for a variety of projects, outlets, and organisations. More things will go on the blog itself, especially as I have begun my PhD, but less of it will be the kinds of articles and reviews that long-time readers originally came for. That original material which is posted here (such as the recent article on students) will only be that which I feel is not fit for the other publications I write for, or will otherwise be more fragmentary in nature and as such better suited to blog posts than formal publications.

You got a lot to give, don’t throw it away
You’ll have your way some day, it will come to you
…
So quit thinking (Now’s the time)
And start doing (Now’s the time)
Now’s the time, now’s the time to live

– Descendents, “Ace”, I Don’t Wanna Grow Up (1985)

That mood, however, has extended to a broader reflection on the socialist left and why, through all of it, I stuck to this movement at every turn. While my politics have shifted from a loose teenage anarchism towards a kind of eclectic socialist republicanism, it never left the waters of socialism. It has led me to look back at some of the contributions I have made, and to wonder what future contributions will look like. As much as anything else, it has been my reengagement with the local artistic and intellectual scene that has pushed me towards such reflection as much as anything else. I have a habit of isolation, an unfortunate side effect of my health conditions, and recently I’ve made a solid commitment to get back to such events.

Wandering home from a gig recently, I found myself thinking about the interaction of my love for local art and music, and my membership in an organisation which places a strong appreciation on (among many others) the works of William Morris. Certainly, I doubt that the music I gladly volunteer to get battered watching was likely to be what Morris had in mind when putting into practice his commitment to a world of beautiful and worthwhile things. But in nursing sore feet and a few new bruises, I couldn’t help but think the spirit of the event was very much exactly that kind of useful and beautiful thing in which we might imbue our fruitful labour. To be sure, such fruitful labour will also look like many things more or less immediately “productive” in terms of the reproduction of life. I think of the workshop in which a heritage society I am a member of repair and maintain old fire engines, or the home mechanical work friends do in restoring old cars or maintaining bikes to give away. Both are, in a manner, immediate necessities in the reproduction of life. Both are sapped from our daily lives by a mode of production in which every single aspect of life, including its reproduction, must be subject to the barbaric whims of market law and its drive toward the dismantling of social bonds toward such an end.

It is in moments of rapture, being tossed about by a roiling crowd, that I have a reaffirmation of my politics unlike that which anything else could induce. This is why I must do this. This moment of fulfilling connection which refuses the alienation of person to person. In the mass, I de-individualise for a moment, and in the aftermath of that moment I am refreshed with the feeling of being fully human. For a second, I would die without question for each and every person in the crowd. Of course, I return to straightforward thought by the time the song is over and the crowd calms down, but the impact lingers. It is for a chance to experience on a routine basis a life for which the impersonal alienation of market logic is abolished, and in which the reproduction of life is organised such that focus might be placed on the development of beautiful and worthwhile things, to which I make what contributions that I can.

However, if I am experiencing a renewal of determination now, what kept me around through long years of cynicism before? I start to wonder if, in part, there was an unacknowledged sense that things could be different. That there was, in spite of bitter disagreements and stinging defeats, a latent potential for a revival. And, if that potential is real, that it might be something I could contribute in some small way to, that I might experience. Perhaps part of what kept me around was a certain degree of faith mixed in with a desire to see that fulfilling world of beautiful things with my own eyes. That, and a theoretical and historical inspiration which only grew the more I engaged, may have swirled all together to keep me tracking through times where I questioned why I was still doing it all. Now, with the benefit of a healthier, more experienced, and more widely read vantage point, it seems that there is not only the room but the reason to engage, intervene, cooperate, and start doing.

And now I find that I’m doing
All those things you would have done
…
So do I thank you? Do I curse you?
These tracks stretch out before me – the ones you left behind

– New Model Army, “Inheritance”, Thunder and Consolation (1989)

To return briefly to matters revolving around Notes South from Nowhere, I want to mark the passing of the Nowhere Ephemera Archive which was for most of its life the Radical Aotearoa Digital Archive (or the RADAR Project). The archive remains, but it is now entirely merged into the blog. For the most part, this is purely a technical matter of convenience. However, as the RADAR Project website had a much larger readership than the blog ever has, it is worth making note that the underlying project has gone nowhere. Given the hosting itself was always over at the Internet Archive, as is the case with a few other collections of Aotearoa’s left-wing periodicals, the actual access to those documents is literally unchanged.

I largely bring up the archive in order to note that, given the PhD, I’ll be digitising material for research reasons again and hopefully in larger numbers than before. My email will also remain very much open to anyone who might have material which fits with the archive, digital or physical. Likewise, I remain as open as ever to collaborations on archival and historical matters regarding the left in Aotearoa. If a reader wants to get involved or has an idea on that particular front, do contact!

There is something to be said, in this reflective mood, about ensuring that this historical focus is not backwards looking. Odd as this may sound, the point in my mind of making sure this material is preserved and promulgated is not just out of some fidelity to days gone by, nor is it simply to mine for lessons to inform present activity. To me, this has to be part of an ongoing project of establishing intellectual and practical infrastructure for the development of both the socialist left and New Zealand studies as a field. It serves a joint and mutually reinforcing purpose, even if these are largely or entirely separate projects.

There’s something of a complex tightrope to walk when engaging in the archival and historical legacy of socialism, a need to neither naval gaze about the past nor treat it only as an auxiliary to the present. It must be integrated both as historical reality and as a factor in the present when making a material assessment of current conditions. This is all to say, it must be assessed both on its own terms and in the broader context in which it resides to truly be intellectually illuminating. This archival material should be preserved and promulgated, yes, but it must be critically studied as well. Simply making it available and saying “here it is, preserved so that it may not disappear” is insufficient if it acts as mere curiosity. It must have a role to play.

I been excited, ain’t nobody read
They don’t know what to get ready for
Let’s get ready and stop the war

– Grand Funk Railroad, “People Let’s Stop The War”, E Pluribus Funk (1971)

A last thought before I finish off is the question of political infrastructure, a concept I’ve been mulling over and have begun to elaborate in recent and upcoming articles. Generally speaking, political infrastructure is an attempt to conceptualise a materialist assessment of political organisation, inspired in part by Social Movement Theory among other fields of study. The reason I think it worth bringing up here is that it, with some other things I’ve published about recently, is something that I can see being an increasingly important part of my thinking as well as a way stone in how I not only contribute to the socialist movement but conceptualise it as well.

In a way, this is my own attempt at allowing experience to inform theory to inform practice. I have long yelled into the void about the political fragmentation of the socialist left in Aotearoa, not only organisationally but in activity. Every group pulling in its own direction in ignorance not only of other groups but also our own broader history. There is, or has been, a great dearth of coordination which has continually hobbled the collective capacity of the socialist left to act. Each group, tendency, sect, or network either conceptualises itself as the sole and only constituent body in which the politics of socialism could be expressed or as merely one in a dizzying constellation of bodies heading in countless directions.

I won’t try to say the Federation of Socialist Societies has not become a major pole of political attraction within the socialist left in recent years, but it is not the only extant pole of attraction that exists and nor is it (or is it trying) to be some final central organ for the socialist project in this country. I believe that, in understanding the various projects of the socialist left instead as political infrastructure which each have a nominal function and an actual function (to crib from Stafford Beer, the point of a political organisation is what it does), the potential to cooperate and from there coordinate activity is revealed.

If an organisation or project is understood as a body which is fit to serve (nominally or actually) a particular function, then its interrelation with other projects which serve functions in the wider interest and context of socialism as a political movement can have a great deal of friction alleviated. Put simply, many of the organisations of the socialist left are, in theory, conceptualised as the first step towards the creation of the chief organ of socialist activity. Yet, many such chief organs supposedly exist, and at least until quite recently have done so in deliberate isolation from the other supposed chief organs. Without coordination, or a conception of the organisation as infrastructure which is intended to serve particular political purposes, an organisation may labour on, fruitlessly, for decades.

To put these thoughts in short terms, any extant socialist organisation today should try to conceive of itself as part of the infrastructure of the socialist movement and to attempt to work out what its nominal role and actual role in that movement is. Without taking steps towards figuring these basics out, we’re going to remain paddling a single boat in different directions. To quote from the old British socialist band The Redskins: “let’s make it work!”