Issued: May, 1997
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Sam Richards and Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
[Note: This Programme was endorsed by the Workers’ Party for publication in October, 1991. Amended in May, 1997].
I. Commodity production has existed in New Zealand since the Wakefield settlements of the mid-nineteenth century. The capitalist mode of production established at that time is still dominant.
II. Industry and agriculture have both developed by way of technical progress, marked by the concentration of means of production in the hands of a relatively small number of capitalists and resulting in the ousting overall of small-scale production by large-scale production employing wage-workers (proletarians). The general tendency of modern capitalism is to increase exploitation of the working class and to force small farmers and other small producers into ruin and into becoming proletarians.
III. New Zealand is an integral part of world capitalism. Earlier it was closely tied to Britain in the subordinate role of a favoured supplier of farm products – meat, butter, wool and cheese – to the British market. Since that time the markets for its produce have become diversified and industry has grown substantially, so that New Zealand can now be classed as a small but capitalistically developed state. From its beginnings it has grown up on a capitalist basis without having to overcome an entrenched feudal system.
IV. For the workers, capitalism has meant widespread unemployment, accompanied by homelessness and rack-renting by landlords. At the same time, the exploitation of those in jobs has become more intense. Mass poverty escalates while multi-million dollar fortunes are accumulated by the big capitalists and landlords. An ever-greater tax burden is being borne by the working people compared to the exploiters.
In agriculture, too, many small farmers and rural proletarians face a bleak future.
However, the most intense hardship is visited upon the Maoris and Pacific Islanders, especially among women and young people. This is accompanied by growing racism, which is class-based at bottom. They also experience the worst discrimination in matters like housing, and suffer from police persecution and lack of protection of their limited rights.
V. In Britain and Europe capitalist economic relations (those between the class of capitalist employers and the class of wage workers) grew up within feudalism and became dominant with the overthrow of the feudal social order which took place in the revolutions of 1640 and 1688 in Britain, and later on in Europe.
Capitalism is a system of commodity production (that is, the production of goods for sale and not for direct use by the producer) which is distinguished by the fact that labour power itself becomes a commodity. The major means of production and exchange which make up the capital of society are owned privately by a small minority, the capitalist class (the bourgeoisie), while the great majority of the population consists of proletarians or semi-proletarians. Because of their economic position this majority can only exist by permanently or periodically selling their labour power to the capitalists and thus creating through their work the incomes of the upper classes. Thus, fundamentally, capitalism is a system of exploitation of the working class (the proletariat) by the capitalist class.
VI. The development of exchange throughout history has led in the modern world to close ties being established between all the civilised nations on earth. The emergence of capitalism as a social system greatly accelerated this process. It also brought forth two powerful, antagonistic classes, the decisive classes of the system: capitalists and workers. Its international character meant that the struggle of the proletariat for its emancipation from class exploitation and oppression also became, and has remained, international.
VII. The Workers’ Party of New Zealand – WPNZ – adheres to Marxism-Leninism as its basic ideology, taking into account the creative role of Mao Tse-tung in the modern era. Thus, it refers to its ideology as pro-Mao, Marxist-Leninist. Its members regard themselves as an organised detachment of the international army of the proletariat, all working towards the same ultimate goal as other similar Marxist-Leninists. This goal is determined by the character of modern bourgeois society and by the trend of its development. Under capitalism social production replaces the individual production of the feudal era. It is based on an ever-greater socialisation of labour. However, although production is social, ownership is private. The working class produces the commodities which constitute the wealth of capitalist society, but it does not own them. They are appropriated by those who own the means of production – the capitalist class.
IX. The contradiction between the social character of production and the private character of appropriation is the basic contradiction of the capitalist system, impelling its development and giving rise to the motive force of capitalist society, the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
It also manifests itself as an antagonism between the high level of organisation in the individual factory or enterprise on the one hand, and on the other, the anarchy of production prevailing in the social economy as a whole. Anarchy of production is the tendency of capitalist producers in general to produce to the maximum without regard to their competitors or to the capacity of the market to absorb their production.
X. Technological development under capitalism, stimulated by competition, together with other conditions favourable to the concentration of capital, leads to the steady growth of larger enterprises at the expense of many small ones. At the same time it reduces the employers’ demand for human labour, which lags behind the supply, resulting in the development of a large pool of unemployed, a ’reserve army’ of labour, and in intensified exploitation of those in work. The existence of such a reserve army enables capitalism to expand rapidly in ’normal’ times, providing a ready-to-hand supply of extra labour in boom times which can be laid off whenever it suits capital.
XI. This situation in the bourgeois countries and the steadily-growing competition among them in the world market make it ever more difficult for them to sell the goods which are produced in ever-increasing quantities. The development of the productive forces of bourgeois society brought about by technological advance leads to over-production, resulting in severe economic crises followed by lengthy periods of economic stagnation. These still further ruin the small producers and lead still more rapidly to the relative and sometimes absolute worsening of the conditions of the working class.
It can be seen, then, that while technical progress brings about greater productivity of labour and increased social wealth, it cannot get rid of the evils of capitalism or solve the problems of the working class. Rather, it intensifies them. Only socialism, which results from the class struggle of workers against capitalists, can solve them.
XII. The contradictory tendencies which we have pointed out exist within capitalist society grow more acute, sharpening the conflict between workers and capitalists as the very conditions of factory production strengthen the numbers and solidarity of the wage-workers while heightening their discontent with the existing state of affairs.
Production is socialised to an ever-greater degree while the means of production are concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. Social production and the socialisation of labour are enhanced by the advance of technology, creating a material basis for the transformation of capitalism into socialism, and in due course, into communism – i.e., classless society. That is, it becomes both possible and necessary for the working class, the main and decisive productive force in capitalist society, to carry out a social revolution which it is the historic mission of the working class to accomplish.
XIII. By replacing private ownership of the means of production by social ownership, by transforming the anarchy of production which is a feature of capitalism into planned proportional production organised for the well-being and many-sided development of all of society, the proletarian socialist revolution will end the division of society into classes and emancipate all of humanity from all forms of exploitation of one section of society by another.
A basic requirement for this revolution is the conquest by the proletariat of political power such as will enable it to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat, the necessary class instrument for the suppression of all resistance on the part of the exploiters. The dictatorship of the proletariat for the first time establishes real, proletarian democracy, democracy for the toilers and exploited, for the great majority. Bourgeois democracy is democracy only for the exploiters, the ruling classes.
XIV. The Workers’ Party of New Zealand sees its task as the leading and organising of the workers’ class struggle in opposition to all the bourgeois and reformist parties. It aims to assist the proletariat to understand the irreconcilable antagonism between the exploiters and the exploited, and explains to it the significance of the social revolution and the necessary conditions for it. As well, it reveals to all other toiling and exploited sections how hopeless their position is in capitalist society and the necessity of a social revolution if they are to free themselves from the yoke of capital. Accordingly, the Party calls upon all members of the working class to join its ranks and to win over to the standpoint of the proletariat all sections of the exploited people.
XV. At about the beginning of the twentieth century, world capitalism reached the stage of imperialism. Imperialism, or the epoch of finance capital, is a high stage of development of the capitalist economic system, one in which monopolist associations of capitalists – syndicates, cartels, conglomerates, consortiums and trusts – have assumed decisive importance; in which enormously concentrated banking capital has fused with industrial capital to form ’finance capital’, the basis for the creation of a financial oligarchy; in which the export of capital to foreign countries has assumed vast dimensions; in which the whole world has been divided up territorially among the richer countries, and the economic carve-up of the world among international trusts and combines has begun.
While uneven economic and political development existed under earlier capitalism, in the era of imperialism, of monopoly capitalism, this unevenness becomes intensified. Some powers lose strength, others gain it, and the ruling groups of monopoly capitalists in each power or alliance of powers, seek to redivide the world in their favour. But in an already-divided world the only means of redivision possible is by force.
Imperialist wars, i.e., wars for world domination, for markets, for the subjugation of small and weak nations are inevitable under such a state of affairs. The First World War of 1914-1918 was just such a war. However, it intensified the contradictions of imperialism to such a degree that it hastened the bringing about in Russia of the epoch-making Socialist Revolution of November 7, 1917. Under the leadership of Lenin and the Bolshevik Party (later to be renamed the Communist Party), this was a proletarian revolution. Its success fully proved the correctness of Marxist theory. In alliance with the peasant masses, the workers established a durable socialist state apparatus, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and proceeded to build a socialist society despite a hostile capitalist encirclement.
XVI. From the late nineteenth century New Zealand capitalism developed as a junior partner of British imperialism until the waning of British power after World War II. New Zealand forces were used in conjunction with British imperialist forces in the Boer War and two world wars aimed at maintaining Britain’s former world domination against other, competing, imperialist powers. Since then they have been assigned the role of assisting Anglo-American imperialism to crush national liberation movements in South-East Asia. While the first World War was wholly imperialist, the Second, after a similar beginning, underwent a change of character with Nazi Germany’s attack on the (then) socialist USSR, even though the Allied imperialist powers’ aims remained basically unchanged. The Soviet resistance to, and victory over, Nazi Germany gave great impetus internationally to the struggle of the world’s peoples for socialism and national independence, and as the war in Europe ended, a number of peoples of Eastern Europe broke away from the capitalist system and established socialist states of people’s democracy. On top of this, during and after World War II, a great colonial revolution and national liberation movement developed, shaking the foundations of imperialism. Particularly was this true of the great Chinese Revolution led by Mao Tse-tung at the head of the Communist Party of China, which unfolded in two stages – New Democratic and Socialist. Unlike the directly proletarian socialist revolution in Russia, a New Democratic revolution is waged by an alliance of classes, under the hegemony of the proletariat.
Although after World War II the old colonial powers found themselves unable to maintain their former direct political rule over the colonies by force, in many cases they have been able to substitute neo-colonialist regimes by means of which finance capital can still extract from the oppressed peoples vast amounts of super-profits, that is, profits well in excess of the average profit on capital invested in the home country. Thus, the fundamental character of imperialism as a system of world plunder by the big capitalist powers has remained essentially unchanged.
XVII. After the death of Lenin in 1924, Stalin carried on Lenin’s policies for the construction of socialism in the USSR. Although Stalin made errors, his positive achievements outweighed these. However, in 1936 he prematurely declared that there were no antagonistic classes in the USSR. In fact a number of different privileged sections existed and continued to grow, constituting a new bourgeoisie which became the social basis of a revisionist clique within the Party. In the mid 1950s this clique, headed by Khrushchev, brought the new bourgeoisie to power, launched an attack on the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism, began restoring capitalism and established a regime of social-imperialism (socialism in words, imperialism in deeds). They used material and ideological pressure to split the world communist movement, turned many parties into revisionist parties and pushed a large part of the socialist camp on to the capitalist road which they themselves had taken.
XVIII. A thorough scientific analysis of this trend by Mao Tse-tung led him to the conclusion that it arose from the carrying over of ’bourgeois right’ (a juridical term used by Marx to cover property relations under capitalism) into the newly-born society. Because socialism is not initially erected on its own economic basis but emerges from the womb of capitalist society with all the defects of that society, the inequalities and privileges enshrined in ’bourgeois right’ cannot be eliminated overnight and inevitably persist for a considerable period, continually giving rise to a new bourgeoisie during the early stage of transition from capitalism to communism. This explains why the new bourgeoisie is common to all socialist countries and is an inevitable product of the transition period. It also means that the question of “who will win”, capitalism or socialism, cannot really be settled for a long time, perhaps a century or two. The growth of a new bourgeoisie under the conditions of socialism creates the possibility – but not the inevitability – of restoring capitalism. However, given an understanding of the economic and social basis of this trend, it is possible for Marxist-Leninist parties holding power to prevent a capitalist restoration. The basic condition for this is, recognition of the necessity for continued revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat, a theoretical principle enunciated by Mao Tse-tung.
Only by understanding Mao’s theoretical work on the economic and social basis for the rise of a new bourgeoisie in socialist society is it possible to understand properly the loss of socialism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and its connection with revisionism.
Under the leadership of Mao and the Communist Party of China, supported by the Albanian Party of Labour (the PLA), a great ideological struggle against Soviet revisionism was waged during the 1960s, as a result of which a new, anti-revisionist, world Marxist-Leninist movement came into being, though without any formal organisation. In the course of this struggle it also transpired that a new revisionist bourgeoisie had developed in China, the country having utilised many of the same economic policies which had led to the growth of Soviet revisionism. Consequently, there was a danger – to which Mao pointed – of a capitalist restoration there. In order to prevent this, Mao launched a cultural revolution – which soon became a political revolution. Only after Mao’s death did it become possible for the new bourgeoisie to seize power. This they did in 1976 by means of a coup d’etat headed by the new Party Chairman Hua Kuo-feng, soon replaced by Deng Xiaoping, who quickly began restoring capitalism while retaining some of the outward forms of socialism for the purposes of deception. This has led to a state of affairs where, in formerly socialist Russia and China, a highly bureaucratic form of state monopoly capitalism exists, with a ruling class consisting of the new bourgeoisie.
Following the Hua-Deng coup in China, the PLA leader Enver Hoxha (now defunct) launched a left dogmatist attack on Mao, which included denouncing him as a lifelong revisionist (!), thereby causing a split in the new, world Marxist-Leninist movement. The WPNZ declares that while Mao made certain errors during the cultural revolution, he was nevertheless a great Marxist-Leninist revolutionary leader throughout his life. A party cannot have a correct ideological-political line in the present epoch without recognition of this fact and incorporation of Mao’s main teachings into their standpoint.
XIX. Because imperialism is a system of world plunder and exploitation of small nations, individually and collectively the big imperialist powers headed by US imperialism still send in their armed forces to crush small countries and destroy struggles for national independence.
At the same time their economic rivalries cannot but render alliances between them temporary and unstable, and can once more lead to a new world war.
It is therefore necessary to struggle to educate the peoples in the understanding that the main source of war in the modern era is imperialism. Without the overthrow of imperialism and the main imperialist governments the threat of world war remains.
While it cannot be denied that world nuclear war may threaten the existence of life on earth, the WPNZ regards it as probable that in the event of such a war, while great mass destruction will take place, a proportion of the peoples and the world’s productive forces will not be destroyed, and it will still be necessary for humankind to build a new social order.
XX. Imperialism is the era of social revolution. This is assured by the growth of social production and its contradiction with private appropriation; by the high level of development attained by world capitalism in general, the replacement of free competition by monopoly capitalism, by the fact that finance capital has prepared the machinery for the social regulation of the process of production and distribution of products, the rise in the cost of living and increased exploitation in the now-monopolised enterprises, the tremendous obstacles standing in the way of the proletariat’s economic and political struggle, the vast burden of taxation and unemployment imposed on the mass of toiling people by the capitalists in pursuit of profits from the arms race and the militarisation of the national economy – all these factors transform the imperialist stage of capitalist development into an era of proletarian revolution.
This era is still with us. Despite difficulties and setbacks which include the restoration of capitalism in both the USSR and China, and to waves of reaction and counter-revolution, the final victory worldwide of the international proletariat is inevitable. Owing to both objective conditions and the treacherous role of revisionism, the revolutionary movement in the economically-developed countries has temporarily slowed, and the most intense struggles for new democracy and socialism are being waged in the so-called ’third world’.
XXI. Under the circumstances the Marxist-Leninists and the proletarians of the economically developed countries have the twofold task of (a) waging class struggle to the point of eventually capturing state political power and establishing a socialist order, and (b) giving the utmost support to the national liberation struggle in the oppressed countries both to hasten their victory and maintain and strengthen the closest internationalist unity of the workers and the oppressed peoples.
The fulfilment of this task is impossible without an intense, long-term practical and theoretical struggle to defeat the opportunist and revisionist trends in the working class, which stem from the domination of the workers’ movement in the imperialist states by the labour aristocracy over many decades. The labour aristocracy is a creation of the imperialists, i.e., the monopoly capitalists, who are able to utilise a small proportion of the immense super-profits they derive from the exploitation of the colonial and neo-colonial peoples for the purpose of bribing an upper stratum of the working class with concessions such as extra pay, special privileges, positions on government and industry commissions etc., so that they become thoroughly opportunist and reactionary, channels of bourgeois influence in the working class. The bourgeois and imperialistic Labour Party has been the main representative, both in the political sphere and in the trade unions, of the labour aristocracy in New Zealand. There are also small revisionist parties which are outcrops of the labour aristocracy and objectively align themselves with imperialism.
XXII. As well, it is necessary for Marxist-Leninists to struggle against the left dogmatism-revisionism of the late E. Hoxha and the PLA and its followers. The left dogmatists not only play a splitting role internationally; they also have no understanding of dialectical materialism, of the nature and development of the Chinese Revolution and the creative role of Mao Tse-tung in the world revolution. They completely underestimate the overall significance in the world revolution of the national liberation struggle of the oppressed peoples. In addition, they assert that Stalin made no mistakes, thereby misleading the international proletariat as to the cause of the rise of revisionism and the loss of socialism in the Soviet Union and socialist countries generally. Fundamentally, the ideological-political line of the Hoxha-ites is anti-Marxist-Leninist and gives assistance to both Soviet and Chinese revisionism.
I. In New Zealand a bourgeois parliamentary system exists which is constitutionally subordinated to the British monarchy through an appointed Governor-General. This effectively leaves ultimate political power in the hands of the British government, which itself represents the interests of the British ruling class – i.e., the British financial oligarchy.
Thus, New Zealand’s independence is more fictional than real. Subordination to a governor acting for a monarch is a relic of feudalism, useful to both the New Zealand and the British ruling classes. Where the capitalists think it necessary, the governor’s powers can be used to prevent even a mild encroachment on their wealth or privileges. In the 1970s in Australia the then Governor-General used his plenary powers to dissolve parliament and call new elections in order to remove a Labour government.
The party of the proletariat cannot rest content with anything short of complete independence from Britain and its feudal-type control over New Zealand. The core of such control is constituted by the bourgeois armed forces, police and the privileged bureaucracy. These are typical state forces of capitalism.
II. The Party has not the least doubt that the proletarian socialist revolution will throw up forms of workers’ democratic power far superior to existing parliaments in that they will spring out of, have concern for, and practise, working-class democracy, in contrast to the present bourgeois parliamentary system which is a screen for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. However, in view of the fact that the new workers’ political forms do not yet exist, the Party considers it premature to advance a specific new state form for the dictatorship of the proletariat. However, it is confident that the experience of the workers in mass struggle will in due course indicate clearly what that form should be.
The Party fights therefore for a form of republic that will give the fullest scope to the democratic aspirations of the proletariat and the mass of working people, aspirations which are given lip service by the bourgeois ruling class and its servants but which are utterly denied in practice. Such a form will be a working people’s republic, in which the police and the standing army will be abolished and replaced by the armed workers, a working people’s militia; all officials will not only be elected but also subject to recall at any time upon the demand of a majority of the electors; all officials, without exception, will be paid at a rate not exceeding the average wage of a competent worker; representative institutions will remain but will be reorganised so as to give full expression to working-class democracy; they will function both as legislative and executive bodies.
III. The basic constitution of the New Zealand working people’s republic must ensure:
1. The sovereignty of the New Zealand people. Supreme power in the state must be vested entirely in the people’s representatives, who shall be elected by the working people and who shall be subject to recall at any time, and who shall constitute a single popular assembly, a single chamber.
2. Equal and direct suffrage for all working men and women who have reached the age of 18 and as well for others who accept the new order, in the elections to the popular assembly and to the various bodies of local self-government; secret ballot; the right of every such voter to be elected to any representative institution; biennial elections; salaries of average type to be paid to the people’s representatives; proportional representation at all elections; all delegates and officials, without exception, to be subject to recall at any time upon a decision of a majority of their electors.
3. Local, elective self-government on a broad scale; regional self-government in localities where the composition of the population and living and social conditions are of a specific nature while the workers’ state retains overall control; all state-appointed local and regional authorities to be made elective.
4. A citizen’s person and home shall be immune from violation except in cases of grave criminal charges.
5. Freedom of conscience and religion, which are private matters in relation to the state. Freedom of assembly, strikes and association for the working masses.
6. Organisations of the working people to exercise a large measure of control over the media, to which they will be guaranteed freedom of access in the interests of the working people.
7. All citizens accepting the new order are guaranteed the exercise of their rights irrespective of sex, creed, race or nationality.
8. The right of the population to receive instruction in their native tongue. Maori to be the official second language. Special training colleges to be set up for training Maori teachers and interpreters so as to enable the Maori people to take full advantage of their constitutional rights; similar training to be given to Pacific Island minority groups or their descendants to enable them to play their full part as citizens; the right of every citizen to use his or her native language at meetings and in official proceedings; the obligatory use of the official language to be abolished.
9. A high degree of autonomy for the Maori people up to and including the creation of Maori Autonomous Regions with special state financial assistance aimed at redressing past injustices. Such regions to be set up on the basis of friendly consultation with elected representatives of local Maori populations and ensuring their special rights in the exploitation of the region’s natural resources, while at the same time guarding against any apartheid-type development.
Rejection of the Treaty of Waitangi and also of the new Maori bourgeoisie’s slogan ’Honour the Treaty’ aimed at feathering their own nests at the expense of working-class Maori. The WPNZ regards the Treaty of Waitangi as an instrument of British imperialism, whose representatives used it to facilitate the seizure of the land for capitalist-controlled settlement by expulsion of Maori tribes from their home territories, thereby giving rise to the pauperisation of the Maoris, enforced assimilation, and long term anti-Maori discrimination.
The working people’s republic must develop and strengthen the unity of its constituent nationalities not by force but exclusively by voluntary agreement on the question of forming a common state. The unity and fraternal alliance of the workers of all countries are incompatible with the use of force, direct or indirect, against other nationalities.
10. The right of all persons to sue any official in the regular way before a jury.
11. Judges and other officials, both civil and military, to be elected by the working people and those accepting the new order with the right to recall any of them at any time by decision of a majority of their electors.
12. The police and standing army to be replaced by the armed workers; workers and other employees to receive regular wages from the capitalists or the state for the time devoted to the public service in the working people’s militia.
13. Separation of church from the state and schools from the church; schools to be absolutely secular.
14. Free and compulsory general and polytechnical education (familiarising the student with the theoretical and practical aspects of the most important fields of production) for all children of both sexes up to the age of seventeen; training of children to be closely integrated with socially productive work and physical training. All students to be provided with food, good, standardised clothing and school supplies at the expense of the state.
15. University and other higher education to be made far more available to children from working-class backgrounds by means of special bursaries and other assistance. Elimination of higher education ’elitism’ by combating the bourgeois ideology at present dominant in that sphere. Strong representation of workers’ organisations on controlling educational bodies.
Transformation of universities etc. from institutions serving the capitalist class to institutions serving the people. Redirecting higher education towards the long term aim of abolishing the distinction between mental and manual labour.
16. Public education to be administered by democratically elected organs of local self-government; the central government to supervise the arrangement of the school curriculum, in consultation with the teaching staffs; teachers to be appointed directly by democratic organs of the population with the right of such organs to remove undesirable teachers.
IV. From the 1960s on there has been a marked weakening of international socialism owing to the restoration of capitalism in the USSR and later in China taking place under the influence of revisionism. This has accompanied a high level of development of monopoly capitalism, manifested internationally by the growth of banking cartels and multi-national corporations which have spearheaded a sustained capitalist offensive against the toiling people of town and country worldwide. On the one hand this situation has led to a worsening of the living conditions of the masses, including escalating mass unemployment, and on the other, it has begun to awaken new forces among the working people to the necessity of establishing workers’ control over, and social ownership of, the main means of production and exchange. With this in mind the Party considers it necessary to demand the nationalisation of the banks and the main industrial and commercial concerns which occupy the commanding heights of the economy. Such nationalisation not to be of the old Labour Party type carried out at a profit to the private owners and merely amounting to state capitalism, but to be without compensation and to take place under workers’ control.
V. To safeguard the working class from physical and moral deterioration, to enable it to adequately defend itself against the capitalist offensive, and to develop its ability to carry on the struggle for its emancipation, the Party finds it necessary to demand:
1. A 7-hour working day and a 35-hour working week for all wage workers, including a break of not less than one hour for meals where work is continuous. In dangerous and unhealthy industries the working day to be reduced to from four to six hours.
2. Complete prohibition of overtime work.
3. Prohibition of night work (from 8pm to 6am) in all branches of the national economy except in cases where it is absolutely necessary for public health or for technical reasons endorsed by the workers’ organisations – provided, however, that night work does not exceed four hours.
4. Prohibition of the employment of children of school age (under 17), restriction of the working day of adolescents (from seventeen to twenty) to four hours, and prohibition of the employment of adolescents on night-work in unhealthy industries and mines.
5. Women to be released from work, if they so desire, 12 weeks before and 12 weeks after childbirth without loss of pay and with free medical care and treatment. All pregnant women to be eligible for similar treatment. Prohibition of employment of women in all enterprises entailing heavy physical labour.
6. Establishment of nurseries/creches for infants and young children and rooms for expectant mothers at all factories and other enterprises where women are employed; nursing mothers to be allowed recesses of at least half-hour duration at intervals of not more than three hours; such mothers to receive nursing benefit and their working day to be reduced to six hours; parental leave with right of return after twelve months.
7. Full social security as of right
a) for all forms of wage labour.
b) for all forms of disablement, namely, sickness, injury, infirmity, old age, occupational disease, childbirth, widowhood, orphanhood and also unemployment etc.
c) The transfer of the administration of social security from the state bureaucracy to appropriate organisations of the working people.
d) The cost of social security to be borne by the capitalists and/or the state.
e) Free hospitalisation. Free state-subsidised medical and pharmaceutical services to be placed under the control of welfare societies, the management bodies of which are to be elected by the workers. An end to privately-funded health schemes and to state subsidies to private hospitals.
8. The transfer of the inspecting functions of the state in relation to safety and hygiene in all workplaces to a special Labour Inspectorate. Safety and hygiene provisions under existing legislation to be widely extended and rigorously checked on by the Inspectorate, for which purpose the number and powers of the staff of inspectors shall be substantially increased; the Inspectorate shall be elected by the workers’ organisations and cover all enterprises employing hired labour; women inspectors to be appointed in enterprises where female labour is employed.
9. Housing laws to be enacted and a housing inspectorate elected by workers’ organisations to be instituted in order to ensure that good minimum standards of construction and hygiene are observed in dwellings, and that such dwellings are supplied with recognised standard facilities. However, only by abolishing private property in land and building low-cost but good hygienic dwellings can the housing problem be solved.
10. Job placement offices to be established for the proper organisation of work-finding facilities. These offices must be proletarian class organisations, closely associated with the trade unions and other working-class organisations and financed by self-governing local bodies.
VI. In order to lay the basis for a socialist agriculture in New Zealand and to free the majority of farmers from the domination of big capital –i.e., the banks, loan companies etc. – the WPNZ:
1. Fights for heavy reduction of the debt burden on small and medium-sized farms, this to be realised by and through the nationalisation of the banks and other financial institutions and to include a moratorium on mortgages and other forms of loans.
2. Calls for the confiscation of all large-scale and/or high-income farms and their reorganisation as model state farms, employing rural wage workers at comparable standards of living to city workers; it urges the rural workers and semi-proletarians to strive to turn the state farms into highly productive, efficient enterprises; such farms to be managed by agricultural workers’ committees with the assistance of agricultural experts and with the aid of the best modern technical equipment.
3. Seeks to develop among both small and medium farmers co-operative forms of ownership and of working the land with the aid of state-funded mechanised equipment and basic supplies of fertiliser etc., the achievement of this end to be based on persuasion and voluntary agreement, and not on compulsion.
4. Demands the nationalisation of all lands other than small holdings and Maori land, to include urban lands, providing that home ownership below a median value standard fixed by local democratic self-government bodies remains allocated to existing owner-occupiers. Nationalisation implies that all property rights in land, other than lands specifically excepted, are vested in the state, while the right of disposal of the land, buildings, dwellings and offices – including rental of any of these – is vested in the local democratic institutions.
The Party will unswervingly work for the independent class organisation of the rural proletariat, and will explain to the latter the irreconcilable antagonisms that exist between it and the big capitalist farmers; will warn it against the false attraction of the system of petty farming which, while commodity production exists, can never do away with the poverty of the masses; and finally, will urge the need for a complete socialist revolution as the only means of abolishing poverty and exploitation.
VII. The Party will actively assist women to take their full place in society as equals with men; this implies;
1. Ending the economic and social basis of the dual exploitation of women by employers at work and by male supremacy in the home and society generally, through
a) establishing equal standards of pay and rights with men throughout the economy;
b) a ban on all forms of discrimination on the grounds of sex or race;
c) recognition of the need to emancipate women from the narrow and restricted life imposed by housework and family rearing through wide provision of child care centres at workplaces and in residential areas, and centres for laundry; provision also of communal restaurants which can serve proper meals or supply them to homes at moderate cost.
2. Encouragement of birth control (though not from the reactionary standpoint of Malthusian population control) and recognition of the right to abortion according to the choice of the women concerned.
3. Encouragement of the proletariat to carry out a long term struggle against the deeply-embedded tradition of male supremacy, one which has existed since ancient times as a weapon of the ruling class in exploiting society.
Workers of All Countries, Unite!