Brian Easton wonders if David Seymour really IS an old fashioned lefty

This is a re-post of an article originally published on pundit.co.nz. It is here with permission.

David Seymour describing himself as an ‘old-fashioned lefty’ caused a flurry in the commentariat.

The responses were not always informed. One thought he was saying he was a Marxist. In fact it is relatively recent when Marxism became an important strain on New Zealand’s left. Our Communist Party formed only in 1921, after the rise of the Soviet Union. In 1890 William Pember Reeves, a key New Zealand left-wing thinker, wrote a series of articles on socialism and communism covering a myriad of leftish thinkers. His treatment of Marx's thought was described by his biographer, Keith Sinclair, as ‘inadequate ... Marxism had not then, of course, achieved its pre-eminence among socialist systems, nor were Marxists the most numerous socialists, so [Reeves] neglect of them is not surprising.’ That is not to dismiss Marx. He was a great nineteenth century intellectual, but his ideas have not been at the heart of the broad New Zealand left.

What Seymour actually said was:

‘And in many ways, I’m an old-fashioned lefty ... I believe that we pay taxes for education so every child has the opportunity to be developed to their full academic potential. I don’t think we’re doing that right now.’

He is referring to the Fraser-Beeby principle articulated by Minister of Education Peter Fraser in 1938:

‘The government's objective, broadly expressed, is that every person, whatever her or his level of academic ability, whether he or she be rich or poor, whether he or she live in country or town, has a right, as a citizen, to a free education of the kind for which he or she is best fitted and to the fullest extent of her or his power.’ [1]

The two were only stating a sentiment which went back a long way in our history. When I was writing Not in Narrow Seas I was faced with the question of why Europeans came to New Zealand in the nineteenth century. If they wanted to migrate, North America and Australia were closer and easier.

Pursuing an answer proved tortuous, but the short one is that, while there were many and varied reasons, an important one was that our Pakeha ancestors pursued opportunity, especially the opportunity to live the rural life that was collapsing in England as a consequence of industrialisation. Their ambition was to own their farm. Initially, many of those farms were ‘subsistence’ – largely self-sufficient, only marginally interacting with the commercial market. But the advent of refrigeration proved seductive and the farms became profitable commercial enterprises.

As the country urbanised, opportunity remained a central aspiration of the nation, captured in the Fraser-Beeby principle and the claim that New Zealand was a class-free society. (‘Social class’ not Marx’s notion of political class as in ‘class conflict’.) Sinclair wrote in 1959 that ‘New Zealand is not a classless society. It must be more nearly classless, however, than any other society in the world’. Well, somewhere in the world there has to be a society which is at the top of the rankings and it just could be the one down-under.

Or was. Even as this was written Sinclair’s friend and colleague, Bob Chapman, was identifying emerging class divisions in urban New Zealand. They have continued, which has meant that there are fewer relative opportunities for many groups. Hugh Lauder and David Hughes showed that a child with a working-class background had to have, on average, a significantly higher IQ than one from the middle class in order to get to university. But this was based on 1980s data and we do not know whether things have got harder or easier after 1990; the increased access to tertiary education may have ghettoised the poorest. I do know, anecdotally, of able young people who have missed out on the education they were capable of because of class/family circumstances. One might argue that the Coalition Government’s education policies will sharpen class divisions as it will make it easier for those higher in the social rankings to buy educational advantage for their children.

The above discussion was primarily about Pakeha. The Māori story is different. We talk about it, ignoring that there is hierarchy in Māori society. Focusing on Māori/Pakeha as the most significant societal dividing line has suppressed discussion of class in Aotearoa New Zealand.

As class has evolved here, the equal opportunity goal faded. When do you last remember a politician – Seymour aside – talking about the Fraser-Beeby principles? [2]

So one might welcome Seymour’s raising the issue of educational opportunity, hoping his concerns will be taken up by a wider public. But in a fundamental way his conclusion is misleading. There has long been a tradition in New Zealand that the schooling system is key to providing opportunity. The implication is that it can compensate for family failings.

How families fail and succeed is largely outside the remit of economics, except in one key area. If we put families under economic pressure, they are more likely to fail. The 1990 Richardson-Shipley benefit cuts and the neoliberal twist of taxation away from the rich have put additional pressure on family incomes, increasing social divisions and reducing opportunity for those at the bottom.

In principle the 2018 Child Poverty Reduction Act was intended to address these pressures although its targets were not pursued at all vigorously by the Ardern-Hipkins Government. By softening the targets, the Coalition Government has indicated it will be even less vigorous. Children will continue to turn up in the education system poorly prepared to take advantage of it no matter how much money is poured into it. The irony is that Seymour wants to prioritise strengthening the state over strengthening families.

If Seymour wants to identify ‘left’ as support for promoting opportunity for all, so be it. But in that case the right, as far as he is concerned, are opposed to the notion. Maybe Seymour is really an old-fashioned lefty.[3]

[1] It was drafted by his head of department, Clarence Beeby and is gender-amended as, later, Beeby said that Fraser and he would have wished.

[2] There is one exception I know of. Some New Zealand economists – among then some in Treasury – discuss Amartya Sen’s notion of ‘capability’. The complicated idea is not too different from the Fraser-Beeby principle. It hardly touches our public policy.

There is also the 15-year longitudinal study Competent Children which demonstrates the importance of family.

[3] State solutions rather than supporting the private sector is a feature of the political right in other areas such as crime. Contrast Tony Blair’s claim to be ‘tough on crime; tough on the causes of crime’.

*Brian Easton, an independent scholar, is an economist, social statistician, public policy analyst and historian. He was the Listener economic columnist from 1978 to 2014. This is a re-post of an article originally published on pundit.co.nz. It is here with permission.