The Communist Party of New Zealand (CPNZ) was a Marxist-Leninist party in New Zealand which existed from 1921 to 1994. 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 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 Communist Party headed by Mao Zedong. The party splintered into a multiplicity of tiny political parties after 1966 and no longer exists as an independent group.
History
Background 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".New Zealand in a Nutshell. Wayland's Monthly No. 14. Girard, KS: J. A. Wayland, June 1901; pp. 5–6. 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 recognised 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.New Zealand in a Nutshell, pp. 7, 21.
An extensive system of public works were in existence, governed by the principle of "fair work and fair pay."New Zealand in a Nutshell, p. 7. More than 200 employment bureaus dotted the country, connecting every willing worker with a job.New Zealand in a Nutshell, pg. 8. Sweatshops were banned, as was systematic home manufacturing, with mandatory labelling of all products made outside of factories. Wages were generally high and the 48-hour week said to be a local maximum.New Zealand in a Nutshell, p. 9. The presence of "tramps" had been eliminated through town allotments of small homesteads to poor workers, granted through easily affordable perpetual leases.New Zealand in a Nutshell, pp. 10–11. The power of eminent domain had been assumed by the New Zealand parliament in 1896, allowing the state to assume ownership of large estates at their assessed price for division into small farms.New Zealand in a Nutshell, p. 11.
State finance had been accomplished by a tax on land values and the establishment of a progressive income tax.New Zealand in a Nutshell, pp. 12–13. The national government itself owned and operated the railways, telegraph and telephone systems, schools, and postal savings banks throughout the country even before the landmark election of 1891.New Zealand in a Nutshell, pp. 15–17, 34. Workers' compensation insurance to protect against injury was required by law, and low cost life insurance had been provided by the state since 1869. Old age pensions were provided to all New Zealanders 65 years of age or older who had been resident in the country for at least 25 years.New Zealand in a Nutshell, p. 19.
"The New Zealanders are collectivists, although they adhere to the old party names of liberals and tories," the American examiners enthused, with the New Zealand Liberal Party reckoned as equivalent to the Fabian socialists of Great Britain. Richard Seddon (1845–1906), Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1893 until his death in 1906, oversaw implementation of an array of social welfare programs as leader of the Liberal Government
This idyllic vision – which incidentally paid no attention to the treatment of or conditions endured by the indigenous Polynesian population – proved to be short-lived. With the eruption of World War I in 1914, New Zealand sent soldiers to Allied campaigns in Turkey, Palestine, and France and Flanders. Over 120,000 New Zealanders were enlisted in the New Zealand Expeditionary Force, with about 100,000 men and women eventually serving as soldiers and nurses in Europe, out of a population of 1.14 million."First World War – Overview," History Group of the New Zealand Ministry for Culture and Heritage, p. 1. Of these, about 18,000 were killed in battle and another 41,000 felled by wounds or disease – a casualty rate approaching 60%. Conscription was introduced in 1916, with the stream of volunteer enthusiasts exhausted."First World War – Overview," p. 5. As casualties continued to mount into 1917, public war-weariness set in, fuelling political discontent. A revolutionary socialist movement began to emerge.
Establishment
There were isolated reflections of international radical tendencies present in New Zealand from shortly after the turn of the 20th century. The New Zealand Socialist Party (NZSP), founded in 1901, included in its ranks a left wing which eschewed political action, arguing that socialism could only be won by the direct efforts of the organised working class acting through their unions.Kerry Taylor, "'Our Motto, No Compromise': The Ideological Origins and Foundation of the Communist Party of New Zealand," New Zealand Journal of History, vol. 28, no. 2 (October 1994), p. 162.
Others adhered to the theories of Daniel DeLeon, which advocated the use of the ballot box for a revolutionary transformation of society leading to a socialist state governed by revolutionary industrial unions.Taylor, "'Our Motto, No Compromise,'" pp. 162–163. From 1911, the ideas of syndicalism began to gain a foothold in the Auckland area under the banner of the Industrial Workers of the World, while the anti-political impossibilist ideas of the Socialist Party of Great Britain made their mark upon others. All of these tendencies would contribute adherents to the pioneer New Zealand communist movement.
Particularly worthy of note were a small network of Marxist study circles were formed during the wartime years, concentrated mainly in the small mining communities of the South Island.Bert Roth, "New Zealand," in Witold S. Sworakowski (ed.), World Communism: A Handbook, 1918–1965. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1973; p. 337. Wartime violence and the 1917 October Revolution in Russia proved a stimulant to revolutionary ideas, drawing members to these groups, leading to their formal affiliation during the summer Christmas holiday of 1918 as the New Zealand Marxian Association (NZMA). This group electing T. W. Feary as secretary of the organisation and in 1919 dispatched him and two others to North America to gain additional information on the revolutionary movement through the American and Canadian prism.
Visiting the Pacific Coast cities of San Francisco and Vancouver, Feary and his co-thinkers obtained copies of a number of influential publications, including Ten Days That Shook the World, a participant's account of the October Revolution by John Reed, and The Soviets at Work, a widely reprinted pamphlet by Vladimir Lenin. These were successfully smuggled back to New Zealand, with the Lenin tract immediately put into print in yet another new edition.
Adding to the complexity of the fragmented radical movement was the Wellington Socialist Party, formerly a branch of the NZSP which had split with the national organisation in 1913 over the issue of electoral politics. While the main body of the NZSP had gone on to found the New Zealand Labour Party in 1916, the Wellington Socialist Party believed in direct action and use of the general strike for the intended overthrow of capitalism and had forced a split.Taylor, "'Our Motto, No Compromise,'" p. 168. Suffering attenuation but surviving the war, this Wellington organisation would constitute the main component of the new Communist Party of New Zealand.
By 1921, sentiment had begun to build for the establishment of a communist political party along those lines advocated by the fledgling Communist International. A preparatory conference was called for Easter weekend, 26–27 March 1921, in Wellington. This preliminary gathering was followed with a formal organisational conference held on Saturday, 9 April, at Wellington Socialist Hall – headquarters of the Wellington Socialist Party – at which time the Communist Party of New Zealand (CPNZ) was formally established.Taylor, "'Our Motto, No Compromise,'" pp. 170–171.
Of the origins of the Communist Party, historian Kerry Taylor writes:
"The foundation of the CPNZ will always remain shrouded in a degree of mystery. No direct record of the event survives — the minutes have long since been lost and no reports appeared in the media at the time.... The precise nature of the discussion and debate is obscure but the delegates had before them the constitution of the Communist Party of Australia and a draft manifesto and constitution drawn up over the previous few months by members of the Wellington Socialist Party."
E. J. Dyer of the capital city was elected as the first secretary of the new organisation.
Early years
In contrast to demographic findings made of the early Communist Party of America, for example, the communist movement in New Zealand was never dominated by Slavic, Scandinavian, and Jewish emigrants from the former Russian empire, with one academic study showing that a big majority of the movement's participants during the decade of the 1920s were either native New Zealanders by birth or first-generation immigrants from England, Scotland, Ireland, or Wales.Kerry Taylor, "Kiwi Comrades: The Social Basis of New Zealand Communism, 1921–1948." in Kevin Morgan et al. (eds.), Agents of Revolution: New Biographical Approaches to the History of Communism. Bern: Peter Lang, 2005; p. 281.
The CPNZ participated in elections for the first time in 1923, with its inaugural candidate drawing an impressive 2,128 votes in a race for election to the Dunedin city council.
Unable to take over the newspaper of the Federation of Labour, the Maoriland Worker, in 1924 the CPNZ established its own official publication, The Communist, published in Auckland.Roth, "New Zealand," pp. 337–338. Despite the establishment of this new central organ, the organisation remained highly decentralised in its formative years, with branches operating in virtual isolation and the small movement failing to achieve critical mass.Roth, "New Zealand," p. 338. A conference was consequently held during the 1924 Christmas break, attended by delegates of the Communist Party of Australia (Hetty and Hector Ross), at which it was decided to make the CPNZ a subordinate section of the larger Australian party. Harry Quaife from Australia also visited in 1925, and had "some success in putting Auckland communists on a more unified footing".