Communist Party of New Zealand
|
Communist Party of New Zealand
|
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Abbreviation | CPNZ |
| Founded | 1921 |
| Dissolved | 1994 |
| Succeeded by |
Socialist Unity Party (1966) Organisation for Marxist Unity (1975) Socialist Workers Organization (1994) |
| Ideology |
Communism Marxism–Leninism Stalinism Maoism (1964-1976) Hoxhaism (1976-1994) |
| Political position | Far-left |
| Colours | Red |
The Communist Party of New Zealand (CPNZ) was a Communist political party in New Zealand which existed from March 1921 until the early 1990s. Although spurred to life by events in Soviet Russia in the aftermath of World War I, the party had roots in pre-existing revolutionary socialist and syndicalist organisations, including in particular the independent Wellington Socialist Party, supporters of the Industrial Workers of the World in the Auckland region, and a network of impossiblist study groups of miners on the west coast of the South Island.
Never high on the list of priorities of the Communist International, the CPNZ was considered an appendage of the Communist Party of Australia until 1928, when it began to function as a fully independent national party. Party membership remained small, only briefly topping the 1,000 mark, with its members subjected to government repression and isolated by expulsions from the mainstream labour movement concentrated in the New Zealand Labour Party.
During the period of the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s, the CPNZ sided with the Chinese government headed by Mao Tse-tung. The party splintered into a multiplicity of tiny political parties after 1966 and no longer exists as an independent group.
As the 20th Century dawned, New Zealand was recognised by adherents of International Socialism around the globe as a sort of laboratory test case of social democratic government in practice. One June 1901 pamphlet put to print by J.A. Wayland, proprietor of the mass circulation socialist weekly Appeal to Reason, detailed the ways in which the island nation of 720,000 had already passed extensive legislation for the benefit of wage workers, backed by 200 agents of the "Labour Intelligence Department." While the country was declared "no Utopia," New Zealand nevertheless was said to have "no real want" and "no unemployment problem to solve." Instead trade unions were not merely formally recognized but were pervasive and had managed to mitigate the class struggle through arbitration laws sanctioned by law, with disputes decided by three member courts of arbitration, each including representatives of capital, labour, and the courts as provided in the 1894 Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act.
...
Wikipedia