The whole point of democracy was to enable the political power and democratic legitimacy of an elected government to protect ordinary people against the otherwise overwhelming economic power of those who dominate the so-called free market.
That inevitable tendency towards the ever-increasing concentration of power has been graphically confirmed in an important book by the French economist Thomas Piketty. He analyses data over a period of more than two centuries to show that, with one brief exception, economic power has increasingly passed to a few at the expense of the many.
The exception is significant. In the two or three decades after World War II, power moved back to ordinary people and away from the powerful; this reflected the determination of ordinary people whose efforts had won the war to ensure there was no return to the "bad old days" that had produced war and the Depression.
They used the power of democratic government to strike a better balance between the rich and powerful on the one hand and ordinary people on the other. If they were told - even by Winston Churchill - that this would mean a dangerous "move to the left", they paid him no attention.
Since that time, the rich and powerful have found ways to reclaim and increase their advantages, and to restore the normal condition of widening inequality in our society; indeed, Piketty believes that process is gathering pace. And there is no message more congenial to the powerful than that this is how it must be.
Yet we can do something about it, if we have the courage to use the power that our forefathers who fought for democracy have bequeathed us. The whole point of democracy is that it allows us to challenge existing power structures.
Is the Labour Party's proposal to use a universal savings scheme as an alternative to ever-rising interest rates left-wing? Or is it just a sensible and better alternative to a failing policy? Is the Greens' proposal for a carbon tax left-wing? Or will it do the job of reducing climate change more effectively and provide a tax break for ordinary people? Is the refusal to accept that businessmen always know best left-wing or just a reassertion of the democratic principle?
We should take heart from the fact that most New Zealanders will affirm, if asked, their belief in the values of fairness, compassion, tolerance and concern for others. But those values have become submerged under the tidal wave of free-market propaganda; democratic politicians need to find effective ways of bringing them back to the surface.
Most people do not think about politics in any systematic way; they are perfectly capable of nodding in agreement to contradictory propositions offered from every part of the political spectrum. What determines the way they vote is which of those contradictory values is closest to the tops of their minds on polling day.
The rich and powerful are expert at using their dominance of the media to raise the salience in the popular mind of values that suit their interests. The task facing politicians who want to resist the further concentration of power is to remind voters at every opportunity of the values they continue to hold - values which built this country and define a healthy and integrated society.
The advice that this should not be attempted for fear of seeming left-wing could hardly be more suited to those who have everything to gain from protecting the status quo. If our democracy is to prosper, we must remember what it is for - to resist the concentration of power and to ensure that the interests of the majority are properly taken into account.
Bryan Gould is a former UK Labour MP and former vice-chancellor of Waikato University.
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