S.A.P. Number 4, David Neilson
My latest, Socialist Academic Profile, looks at Dr David Neilson, senior lecturer and convenor of Labour and Trade Union Studies at Waikato University. Neilson has an M.A. from Canterbury University and a PhD from the University of East Anglia. Like his previously profiled colleague, Paul Harris, Neilson has a solid Marxist background.
One of NZ's most hard line communist parties is the Socialist Party of Aotearoa. In Auckland and Hamilton, SPA runs a school called the Workers Institute for Socialist Education, or "WISE" In March 1993, according to "SPA News", April 1993, David Neilson addressed a WISE seminar in Auckland, on "Marxist subjects".
According to Waikato University's website, Neilson's "research interests are generally focused in the areas of political economy, social class, work, and the labour market. His particular present interests centrally include the competition state, flexicurity and the neo-proletariat."
A list of his recent publications include such page turners as;
"Left, Right, Green" 2001
"Bringing Back Class Theory in a Postmodern World: A Preliminary Framework" 2001
"The Dislodging of the Visible Hand and the Destruction of Social Institutions. A Critique of NZ Style Market Reforms" 1998
"Marxism and Post-Marxisim: Continuities and Discontinuities" 1998
"Neoliberalism, Globalisation and Maori Nationalism" 1998
You will be also pleased to hear, that your taxes, enable David Neilson "to supervise graduate research on political economy, class and politics, trade unionism, and Marx and Marxism."
posted by Trevor Loudon at
1/13/2006 05:32:00 PM
5 Comments:
Sounds like some of his work might be quite interesting, especially the one on neo-liberalism, globalisation and Maori Nationalism.
I read the works of many left-wing authors, Jane Kelsey, Chomsky, Marx, Negri, John Pilger etc but many of these NZ academics you're witchhunting I've never heard of. It's very good because I will be able to search out their works and have a good read of them. I might even be inspired by them or have my views on the World altered. :)
I hate socialists as much as the next far right fruit loop, but what difference does it make if certain academics are socialists? In an ideal world you'd want them to be completely neutral but you can't really expect intelligent people to be opinionless.
The Cold War is over. In the developed world communism has been banished to the political fringes and IMO for the better. Why do you bother with your witch hunts?
In many of your other postings, why do you accuse left leaning liberals of being communists? They are further left wing than you are when it comes to fiscal policy but they aren't even close to being communists. Accusing them of being communists is as stupid as if they were to accuse you of being a communist for having a stance on crime that is closer to the Soviets than they have.
BTW, socialism isn't the same thing as communism. Socialism has multiple definitions. One of them describes the style of fiscal policy of parts of Western Europe especially in Denmark where some large industries are nationalised and healthcare and education are free. Several countries with socialist governments are near the top of the OECD in terms of real GNP per capita. Those countries tend to have lower crime rates and fewer social problems than the US.
Oh right. Denmark. Let's see. 40 percent of its adult population live on government transfer income full-time, all-year. About one third of the people who hold a job work for the government. Top effective tax rate around 70 percent in 2003(www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=1274)
And have a look at Denmark's report card in the Index of Economic Freedom (www.heritage.org/research/features/index/country.cfm?id=Denmark)
to see that in 2004 Denmark slashed its tax rates by suspending payments into their pension scheme, in the hope that this will boost productivity, consumption and employment.
When you've finished with those read Cowboy Capitalism by Olaf Gersemann, who "discovered that the common perception in Europe and elsewhere of America's economic model is either wrong or misleading. The greater market freedoms in the United States create a more flexible, adaptable, and prosperous system than the declining welfare states of Europe."
Personally I wouldn’t vote for a government with a Danish style fiscal stance. What I was getting at is that the modern democratic European style socialism is very different from communism and still allows high standards of living and plenty of social freedom. The socialist countries in Western Europe have a higher ranking than NZ does in terms of real GNP per capita. The economies of these countries are growing and haven’t collapsed like some right wing extremists have claimed.
The reason why the rate of state employment is so high in Denmark is because the government owns much of the natural monopolies. There are some sound economic merits to state employment. If the state employment is in government entities that don’t have a profit maximizing mandate, recessions don’t hit the economy as hard. If the natural monopolies are owned by the government and have a profit maximizing mandate with a CEO on performance based pay, the SOE would be just as efficient as if it were in the hands of the private sector.
Quite often poorly read right wing extremists will claim that Singapore’s growth was due to the government not interfering with the free market. What they don’t seem to realise is that Singapore’s government invested heavily in creating large SOEs. The government formed SOEs because it spread the risk thinly across the whole population rather than across a few major shareholders. Since Singapore is a small country, it is very hard for there to be enough individuals with the courage and vision to go ahead with large scale asset creation. More importantly it has been Singapore’s geographic position that has helped its economy the most.
New Zealand is near the top in terms of economic freedom because governments of the past sold many state assets at well below their true value to foreigners. The dividends from these SOEs were much higher than the total interest charged on the government debt. As a result, New Zealand’s current account remains a deficit even to today, mostly because of a deficit in international investment income. A lack of asset ownership by New Zealanders is the main reason why NZ slipped down the OECD rankings. IMO the state assets should have been corporatised but not privatized.
USA’s fiscal stance is rather unusual. They pay only slightly lower taxes than New Zealanders do but spend around 45% of their government budget on the military. The US government pays very little towards healthcare and tertiary education. Poverty traps are a much bigger problem in the US than in Western Europe. The largest companies can merge very easily while the labour force gets more casualised. The people worst off in Denmark have higher standards of living than the people who are worst off in the US. Europeans tend to hold Rawlsian and Egalitarian philosophies in higher regard than the Americans do.
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