Occupy Has Nothing to Say? I Blame the Parents

 Socialism, or at least its 20^th Century version, collapsed for two main reasons: because it couldn’t find a political form which demonstrated at least much personal freedom and democracy as the Western liberal democracies it opposed, and because it failed to deliver economic progress at the same speed or to the same apparent degree of efficiency as capitalism. 

Like everyone else of a certain age I watched this collapse on prime time TV in the late 1980s and early 1990s. It had a profound effect on me. I was, after all, a card carrying Communist at the time – a historical materialist stranded on what appeared to be the wrong side of history.  

It very quickly became clear that there was no ‘easy intellectual retreat’, as it were, to social democracy. Generations of refugees from Marxist parties had made that journey before The Fall, comforting themselves they were still pursuing the aims of socialism but by defensible, democratic means.

Actually, a very large slice of the Marxist tradition had, by the 1980s, made a serious attempt to make this shift within its own intellectual framework anyway. Classical Trotskyism had its own (to me, always unconvincing) version of this which ran broadly along the lines of laying stake to the heritage of a purified and re-claimed ‘democratic’ Leninism; the libertarian Marxists had a more root and branch version, and my own tradition, that of Eurocommunism, somehow accepted the theoretical inapplicability of much of Leninist political theory in the West ( I mean, what else was all that bigging up of Gramsci about?) whilst still maintaining an institutional allegiance to the broad hope encapsulated in the ‘moment’ of 1917. All three, were, in their different ways, quite keen on refusing the supposed gap between ‘politics’ and ‘economics’ of course, and laying stress on the economic and workplace democratic element to a vision of socialism – something they held in common with ‘advanced’ social democracy, at least in Bennite/Livingstonian form. 

Yet none of these positions – not social democracy, not Trotskyism, not libertarian Marxism, not, most of all, Eurocommunism - survived the Fall in any meaningful sense. Sure, there are fragments of each of these traditions still knocking about the margins of the political scene - but the intellectual ‘oomph’ has gone from all of them. I don’t think this is because people looked at their political solutions to the evident lack of freedom in the Soviet bloc and rejected them.

I think this is down, in large part anyway, to none of them actually having a set of economic answers to the critique capitalism posed in 1989-1991: why aren’t you as rich as us ? It was the question that those glossy shop windows in West Berlin in 1989 shouted in the face of the newly arrived Ossi, still grasping the newly hewn piece of The Wall. It stubbornly remains as a question, even though most versions of leftism now have a critique of growth for its own sake and at least a Greenish tinge. The left lacks an economic policy, or even a vision of what a socialist economy might look like.

Given that the centrepiece of Marx’s own intellectual life was subtitled ‘a Critique of Political Economy’, there is a howling historical irony here. Capitalism is now in deep trouble – systemic trouble. So, to put it mildly, it is not immediately obvious to the average Greek that capitalism will make them richer - and fears of the same nature abound throughout the once triumphant West. But no one has any non capitalist economic language with which to discuss alternatives.

& that's down to my generation, not the predominantly young people who constitute the new foot soldiers of the Occupy movement. Good on 'em I say: they may not be practicing socialist politics as I understand it - in fact, it seems more like a usurping of the old religious tradition of 'bearing witness'. But they are practicing anti-capitalist politics, and perhaps such is the poverty of radical inheritance my generation of leftists have handed down to them that is all they can possibly do. But I'm very glad they're doing it.

Once More With Feeling?

I wrote last week about my dismay at finding my children didn't know the words to the Red Flag; Rab said he used the tune as a lullaby to his kids when they were small. & this set me thinking about the role of emotionally charged symbols - be they musical or flags or whatever - in the passing on of political and moral perspectives. 

Let me share another anecdote.

This summer I went to the funeral of a man I hadn't seen for the best part of 20 years. He had been General Secretary of the old Communist Party of Great Britain and, in the 1980s, I was a lowly rank and file member in the same branch as him. I simply wanted to pay my respects. 

There was a fair crowd at the funeral. A lot of faces I half recognised and one or two much missed friends. We were all much older than my mind's eye recalled us being, some very much older it seemed to me. A certain amount of shuffling around went on as, first, the forty somethings gave up their seats in the overcrowded hall for the sixty somethings, and then the sixty somethings gave up their seats for the eighty somethings. Most funerals are like that I suppose.

Anyway, we had the speech from the Son-who-is-a-Professor on his father's personal and political life; we had the (rather beautiful) acappella Burns ballad from the Grandson-who-is-the folk-singer ; and we had the warm appreciation from the (non Communist) woman who had worked with him on pensioners’ campaigns after he retired. I braced myself for the final moments, certain that I was going to find it unbearably sad to hear these gathered extinct volcanoes of British Marxism warble uncertainly through the Internationale for one last time. Somehow the sound of their ageing larynxes were going to confirm the passing away of my youthful hopes of socialism.

But Gordon, or his family, had thought of that. We didn’t end on the Internationale,nor on The Red Flag  or Bandiera Rossa . We ended on Louis Armstrong’s ‘What a Wonderful World'. An expression of hope and confidence in our fellow human beings’ capacity for wonder now and in the future, not a ritualistic reminder of a past world fought for and lost by the greyheads in the hall. It's taken me a few months to fully appreciate what a good decision this was.

Those old songs - like the Red Flag and the Internationale - are for teaching the children so they don't die and so the kids have an imaginative window into how the generations that came before them saw the world.  

The sentiments they were meant to contain need to be passed on in other ways as well though. & any tradition which is  something more than merely a tradition will find new ways of capturing the here and now and a contemporary sense of the  socialist possibilities pregnant in the future. Because, for all the fact that music or flags and banners can't represent a politics in its entirety, we do need to be moved and reassured and warmed at an emotional level - but by a vision of hope for the future, in words and images and melodies that speak to where we're going, not where we've been .   

SWP: Time to Share the Love. No, Really, I Mean It.

A generation ago I was in the old CPGB - I joined because I was impressed with the magazine Marxism Today. The party I joined was both small and in the throws of a civil war. The argument, as I recall, was partly about the relative importance of class and party, as opposed to reaching out towards wider strata. It got unpleasant and it got dirty, as slow motion divorces often do - and, in the end, both sides lost, though hardly for reasons to do with the argument per se. But it did provide a rather engaging spectator sport for much of the rest of the Left.

I can't imagine what has brought this to mind after all this time - oh wait, yes I can: the SWP is about to do a revival of our old theatrical review. They've dumped their leader and a civil war is threatening. So, obviously, there is a part of me which wants to go straight into the tried and trusted tropes of 'the Judea Popular Front' and '1456th time as farce'. Plus make a few encoded comments about how Peter Taaffe et al must be rubbing their hands in glee at the prospect of seeing their number 1 competitor in a pretty crowded market place go off into internal strife.

But...I'm older now. That kind of cheap shot is too obvious, and really, really...well, just boring. The reality is that Left political groups, in the main, encourage, even produce, a kind of emotionally two dimensional behaviour. The quixotic search for 'the correct line' gives a sort of ideological cover for the most childish and vicious sort of in-group/our-group definitions of reality. In all honesty, I sometimes wonder if this has put more people off socialism than even the collapse of the Berlin Wall...

I disagree with the SWP. I think their ideas contain the seeds of totalitarianism - they are Leninists,after all. If pushed I could produce a long list of political questions on which I think they've fucked up. But I think the original motivation which brought them to Left politics was, for almost all of them, not that different from mine.

So here's a word of advice: have a good, dignified divorce. Argue out your differences and then part in disagreement but some kind of mutual respect. Don't let 'politics' be winner-take-all in an emotional sense. Think of the kids.

Let A Thousand Flowers Bloom?

This is new - at least for me. Compass are asking all and sundry to propose new policies. People can organise their own meetings to discuss the ideas proposed. It's not a sudden outbreak of unmediated direct democracy however - they still have an 'expert panel' to judge the ideas before Compass members get to vote on them.

No doubt all this is a predictable outgrowth of the Howard Dean and Obama campaigns - and an attempt to link the 'flash mob' phenomenon into the political process. But what interests me is that it seems to be a step on a path to re-imagining what a political party might be in the internet age.

'Modern' political parties are all, in essence, run by their full timers. The only real difference between the Tories and, say, the SWP in this respect is that the Tories' full timers are mainly elected representatives. Much as I dislike the paraphernalia of democratic centralism - the list system, the absurd insistence on defending the line - in strictly sociological or organisational terms all political parties are deeply alike in this respect, however different their ideology, party rules or policy offerings. The membership - even if you call the membership the 'cadre base' - is there to act as a transmission belt of ideas and activities generated from the top. The members are 'amateurs', theoretically in democratic control of the 'professionals' but in reality almost always subservient to them. So being a member ain't much fun unless you're an election/ paper sales junkie - which many of them are - or very keen on endless policy wonkery.

This sort of initiative might well prove to be e-window dressing that still leaves the professionals firmly in control. Indeed, it is likely that many of the proposals submitted will come from other professionals in various campaigns and pressure groups. But I still think it is worth two cautious cheers. Who knows, one or two ideas genuinely originating from amateurs might actually make their way through the process. & in the ossified world of politics that really would be something new.

( Hat-tip Tom P)

What Ex-Eurocommunists do rather than surf the net for pornography

We read book reviews like this. I think the clue to why this feels dirty might just be in the title:
“Socialism and Left Unity – a Critique of the Socialist Workers Party” . From the Socialist Party, nee Militant, those well known practitioners of Left Unity. Good old fashioned, knockabout 'As-Soon-As-This-Pub-Closes' stuff no doubt.

Mind you, this is just the soft stuff. If we're really feeling perverted we redundant Euros washed up on the tides of history even spy through the keyhole at conversations like this balanced, reasonable and entirely dispassionate discussion of internal shifts of personnel in the SWP Central Committee (234 entries on the discussion thread as I write these words, but rising fast - I wouldn't be surprised to see that thread top 500 contributions).

And- yeah, I know I'm sneering as well. Which isn't nice. What's worse I'll no doubt laugh like a drain when Splintered turns his attention to the matter. But I'll be laughing in despair really. It was ever thus in my youth, as I've mentioned here and here. Why hasn't it got any better?

Update: awh, fooey. Splintered's gone all serious on the SWP thing. I retain hopes of him turning a beady-eye on the Taffe book though.

What Does That Membership List Really Tell Us?

Today I've had some 20 entirely random email or phone call exchanges with people all round the country of various Leftist persuasions and various current levels of activity (from zilch to full-on-local councillor/ TU-full-timer/ campaign diehard levels). As I see my friends as typical of wider strata of opinion, I have a hunch that more or less the entire British Left has ignored the law and either holds or knows a person who holds the BNP membership lists.

Interestingly, not all of them actually felt OK about this: roughly half* felt that even BNP members were entitled to a level of personal privacy. But the temptation to go and download it was simply too strong. I mean it's not as if how to get it went under-publicised on the web.

If there is anything like a pattern in my randomly chosen respondents it is that those who are currently active in politics seem more chary of downloading it themselves for fear of legal consequences - but they all knew a friend who had done so. & they'd all been offered specific names and addresses in their neighbourhoods. Current non-activists didn't seem worried by the law at all - they just downloaded it. This activist/non activist division seemed more important than specific political allegiance.

Information 'wants to be free' say the geeks. Even people hard wired to argue about the politics and power relations of personal information can't resist getting hold of it once it escapes on the net. I mean, who did you ever know that heard of the existence of a juicy piece of gossip and voluntarily didn't try to find out what it was ? If there is a human nature I can't help thinking this need to gossip is one aspect of it - the human equivalent to chimps grooming. Secrecy isn't natural and now the net has given us the means to defeat it, it will be defeated almost everywhere.

But the politics of this is something I'm still grappling with because it is the State and Corporations who are most likely to make use of this vanishing secrecy, not the Left.

*The other half just wanted the BNP to be concerned that the Left 'knew where they lived' as our Liverpudlian friends might put it.

"The first role of the revolutionary..."

....& so to the Trots.

Both Militant and the SWP have gone through evolutions since I last considered them, and have, in their very different ways, tried to 'turn outwards' . I'll detail these turns in another post, but they don't feel to have been that successful to me. Today it seems the SWP is gearing up for an spot of internal blood-letting as the 'afters' to the collapsed Respect project. Splintered rips into them of course. There's a lively debate - couched in language I recognise as that of the authentic Kremlin watcher - about all this going on over at the Socialist Unity blog, which includes this classic contribution from 'tonyc'

"The first role of the revolutionary isn’t to fight against the bosses - it’s to develop an ability to fight against the revolutionary leadership."

I spent 7 years of my youth sharing a flat with a former Militant 'supporter', and a subsequent 7 years sharing with someone who had been in the SWP. Both of my flatmates had dropped out of activity - but both somehow internalised this as somehow being personal failures, rather than because their revolutionary organisation was necessarily wrong about anything.

To be fair, I don't think this is uncommon: not everyone actually likes political activity - it's not so much the boredom and repetitiveness of,say, paper selling or rote learning 'the line' as the psychic pressure created by always being in conflict - 'merciless criticism of all things existing' being Marx's recommended method. It wears you out, it really does.

& I'm glad I never shared a flat with tonyc...