The death of Socialism?
It is entirely appropriate that the destruction of Labour in New Zealand in the polls has happened in the same week that the last of the true British Socialists, Tony Benn, died, because Socialism has been being pushed into back-seat status for some time.
With the demise of Julia Gillard, Australia's Labor is a pale shadow of what a Labour Party should be, while Labour in England is desperately trying to escape the pseudo-Conservative legacy that Tony Blair left. Even changing their name to New Labour" did not hide the fact that Labour UK, once the home of Socialism, had become Conservatives in all but name.
Blair presided over not just the declaration of war on the sovereign states of Iraq and Afghanistan, but also generated a widening of the gap between rich and poor that no previous Labour government would have found thinkable, let alone desirable.
In USA, the Socialist movement had never got past first base, and despite Obama's inclusive rhetoric at his first election, he is just another Clinton in blackface. The irony that the most Socialist president USA has had since WWII was Ronald Reagan is truly awe-inspiring.
In New Zealand and Helen Clark, we were the last bulwark of genuine Socialism; we had a government with heart and social conscience, both traits now missing in action.
David Shearer had the potential to be a great Socialist leader, but he lacked the charisma and drive necessary to sell the idea to voters. His replacement has been exposed as a hollow man and he will lose the election more horribly than even I would have thought possible only scant months ago. as it turns out, the man who should be leading is Shane Jones, a laughable figure thanks to his publicly-funded porno habits, but underneath, a true Labour man.
NZ Labour itself has reached a stage where Socialism has been confused with gender equality and instead of trying to gain the Treasury benches, the Labour Party has made itself ridiculous with the insistence that 50% of MPs must be female.
The Greenmunists could have inherited the Socialist mantle, but their idiotic pursuit of "green" agendas means that they will never be more than a bit-player in NZ politics.
So, where now for Socialism?
My guess is nowhere.
Voters with the brains to see that Democratic Socialism is the one answer to inequality, poverty and injustice are few and far between, with selfishness and self-interest ruling the day to the extent that Conservatives and pseudo-Conservatives now hold power in every major democracy on the planet.
Even in France, where the President is leader of an actual Socialist Party, the meaning of the word has been destroyed thanks to slavish pursuit of dollars and euros subsequent to the GFC.
Conservatives are uniformly against spending money for the public good, as evinced by the refusal of any of the ruling parties to take action against human-caused climate change. The catastrophic effect of this refusal is about to be highlighted by the International Panel on Climate Change, which is about to release a blueprint of mayhem, starvation, mass migration and civil war - all caused by climate change - towards the end of this century.
If ever action were needed, it's right now, but instead of steely determination to combat a warming planet, we see budgets for climate action cut to zero, and the problem shoved to the back of the queue. What may cause recession now will cause mass tragedy in the future.
Thankfully, apathetic humankind will wait until it's far too late to stop the rot.
It is widely predicted that the Southern Oscillation will trip into El Nino mode this year, and that is highly likely to bring warm water to the surface of the Pacific Ocean; warm water which has been tucked away in the deep over the past 10-15 years, causing a pause in the warming of the planet.
It therefore becomes likely that if the El Nino develops, we will see the buried warmth of those 10-15 years all come back to haunt us in the space of 1-2 years. Given that the planet has just had two of the warmest years since humans began keeping records, we could well be looking at a fairly immediate catastrophe.
Copyright © Alan Charman